The spirit of the company aligns with most people's basic ethics and morality. When that's the case, having an exemplary moderator just reemphasizes the basic ethics that most people already believe: "I should treat others with respect, and attribute any unintended harm with ignorance rather than malice". Sure, we don't all believe that. But most people think that at the very minimum, it's good to treat other people well.
The difference with a cult is apparent looking at the definition. Google gives me this:
* a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.
* a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.
You could argue there's a weird veneration of dang, which I do find kind of odd, but most people wouldn't consider "treat others with respect" as strange or sinister.
Even if it did, the guidelines are still company guidelines not community guidelines. That was my point. Calling it community guidelines is a form of social engineering to appeal to many people's natural desire to conform.
> The difference with a cult is apparent looking at the definition. Google gives me this:
I didn't say hn is a cult. I was just pointing out the common tools of manipulation used by both cults and social media sites like twitter, like reddit, like hn.
> You could argue there's a weird veneration of dang, which I do find kind of odd, but most people wouldn't consider "treat others with respect" as strange or sinister.
You are building a straw man. Where did I ever even mention anything about 'treat other's with respect'. You are attributing to me an argument I didn't make. And are hammering at it. I made no assertion about any specific guideline. I didn't say whether they were good or bad. I even went out of my way to say the company has a right to set whatever guideline they want. I was just pointing out the social engineering aspect to it. Whether the guidelines says be 'mean to others' or 'be kind to others' is meaningless to my argument as it is about social engineering. Hope that cleared up the confusion.
I’ve managed a (small) community myself, back in the day. Dang is no superhuman, but managing the cats’ bag HN is, with so few terrible events and so many interesting discussions is impressive. The community is more or less self-selected; you have to be in circles where HN is known, and you have to appreciate a text-only website with only links and opinionated discussions. Still, the fact that it works at all is great, and this is due in no small part to the moderation (not only dang, but he’s the most visible). From that perspective, some degree of admiration is not surprising or odd.