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Comment by jimjimjim | Hacker News Reader

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I've been in a lot of "discussion things" over the years and i've seen them go bad. As they become more well known the worse they get. Initially somewhat-like-minded people are drawn to something for somewhat-similar reasons. When things become popular the noise from people of all walks of life drowns out the signal of like mindedness. In the case of twitter some of the noise Actively tries to ruin the signal.

The initial users of tv, radio and even cars must have felt a similar despair (after the initial thrill of their interest becoming used by more people).

It's not nostalgia, things were better "back then" where "back then" is a point between gaining users and acceptance by the general population.

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Yet HN is so far managing the onslaught. Part of that is of course very tightly controlled moderation where crass behavior is immediately and severely punished, but maybe requiring civility at all times is the only way to have a meaningful discussion.

Also possible one of the least flashy UIs. It's not just about making the content stand out, Medium does it better and is quite a bit closer to Twitter in terms of quality of content/interaction. It's also about being actively simplistic, and requiring some effort from the reader.

But also the tight moderation.

I value the equality and freedom (and not being downmodded anonymously and unfairly) on Twitter but I also value this space. They are merely different spaces. I don't have to choose. Nobody reads all of twitter - it is what you make it. This place has a much more restricted demographic than Twitter. Twitter is shouting things in Central Park, whereas you wouldn't do that (I hope) at a wedding in New England. I hope I am always civil but only expect that in return in some spaces.

HN is widely know for being full of self absorbed white tech guys.

Yes it got more civilized in the last years, but while not being offensive it's still filled with one sided views of the world by <1% of its population.

I feel like HN is very well moderated in a way that's completely opaque which is its main strength. Users should not have to learn rules to participate, and they should not even be aware that they're breaking the rules really. Ideally they would just think that they are participating while not being aware that none of their contributions are ever seen by another user.

HN-the-original hasn't survived the onslaught. It used to be a business + tech forum, with about a third of the articles being relevant to the business side of startups. Now it's a hacking + politics + general interest forum (no doubt due to changing 'Startup News' to 'Hacker News' and adding time). HN is managing, but it's had to pivot to do so.

For example, it used to be that an article about hiring was about the business side; how to remunerate, how to obtain the best-bang-for-your-buck. These days it's about the employee side; how scummy employers are, how they're all clueless about interview process, how to job-hop, even a little bragging about salaries.

Gone are the days of articles about A/B testing, and here are the days where there's usually a few NYTimes articles on the front page.

> maybe requiring civility at all times is the only way to have a meaningful discussion.

In larger forums, yes, but not in smaller forums.

I think that's the recurring lesson of online communities: moderation works. Without it, the community will eventually degenerate into a haven for trolls. Unless it was always meant to be a haven for trolls; then it will become a haven for different trolls.

Maybe this is a sad lesson. I would prefer if a completely unmoderated discussion could remain civil and constructive at all times, but there's probably a reason why even panel discussions with only a handful of people need a good moderator.

Communities start with who's invited (or permitted) -- with Twitter, tech movers/shakers/early adopters; Facebook, students at elite colleges; Usenet... well, students and faculty at connected colleges.

Once the community expands, it loses some of its initial intimacy and collective mindset. Perhaps we should invent social networks that keep people in little collectives of positive feedback, rather than subjecting ourselves to the negativity of warring fiefdoms.

For anyone with an open mind, please look into why India came up with the caste system. We need a more modern version of it stripped of it's incentives for exploitation of the weak.

An Alex Jones or Trump type character believe whatever they want but systems that prop them up and give them more influence than they deserve, while hiding behind terms like equality and freedom of speech are just producing an inversion of the caste system.

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