(This is a stub reply so I can collapse the various comments responding to this, so as not to distract too much from the rest of the thread. Sorry, non-JS users.)
Assumes there are no new readers on HN and that everyone reads almost everything and nothing needs repeating. Also it's very 'no noobies' as if anyone who is anyone should know the ropes already. And that is not the case.
And I've mentioned this before a few times so I will repeat. Why don't you have in your profile that you are a moderator? How would someone new to HN know why you are saying what you are saying and why you have the right to pin what you say at the top?
There are benefits to "RTFM". They may involve making sure there are shared assumptions during speech that allow further speech to be economized equitably between speaker and receiver. They may involve the internalization of the structure of a model so that they it be applied fluently in some practical setting. Your suggestion fails to satisfy either condition as the cost is either inequitable, or the benefit is irrelevant.
Putting a tag that says "moderator" next to a username is such a cheap quality of life improvement that even if what you claim is true, it really shouldn't be the job of the audience to figure anything out in the first place, as by comparison, it looks like a strong disfavor.
Words to avoid living by.
I don't see this as RTFM; there's no FM to begin with, other than perhaps https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
What are those 'downsides....quite strong downsides actually'?
HN hasn’t been turning into Reddit for a long while because sometimes the moderators make comments like this and the community goes “Okay” because they value the community and can see the moderator’s point and those matter more than typing something easy to type because it is all over Twitter.
More seriously, if HN’s moderation conflicts with your deeply held principles, HN might not be for you. Like any social media that makes someone unhappy, a voluntary break, temporary or complete, may be warranted.
HN is not going to suddenly become a democracy or collective. Moderation is a big part of what makes HN HN.
We already have software support for a subset of trusted users to do things like add years to titles. (If anyone wants to be incorporated into that set, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com.) That was an experiment and it's worked out really well. I want to extend it and this is on the list of possible extensions.
that feels super gross, I love mostly passively reading HN, but manipulation like that because basically it sounds like you don't want to see stuff you've seen before ...
poor decision.
'Manipulation' and 'moderation' and 'curation' and so on refer to the same thing, just with different emotional valences. We're not trying to be manipulative per se, but it takes human attention to prevent the system from falling into its failure modes.
It would be wonderful (especially for us!) if community action plus software were all that was neeeded for an optimal solution, but sadly they're just not. There needs to be a third component: humans who pay attention to the site as a whole and jiggle it so it doesn't degenerate. That's what we mean by moderation.
When that third, human component is working well, it fades into the background and creates an impression that the system is regulating itself. That's a sort of paradise mode. But then when moderation shows up intrusively (as in my comment above), some readers feel like we're interfering with the system that exists. Actually we're already part of the system that exists, and if we weren't doing what we do, the whole system would be very different.
How downvotes encourage that? I mean it can be abused and is abused for bullying opinions that some people do not want to hear.
There are some interesting opinions reflecting exactly this "Curiosity likes diffs" that get downvoted and how it encourages to write something interesting if it will be invisible and become deleted anyway just because it's not in the trend or too different.
Or if I get downvoted for stating the facts I observe. In theory it should sparkle curiosity! Not shutting up the facts using downvotes. Once I've experienced getting downvoted for stating the facts it's not really encouraging to say what I think is really there.
Can we remove downvotes and leave only upvotes? Or can we limit downvotes to some degree so at least somewhere in the end of the threat you can still read them. I mean at leat let me read those downvoted opinions, it's not too comfortable to read almost white on white and it's annoying.
May be we can put a red line in the end of the thread and put some comments beyond that line to let know those have been downvoted a lot. But let me read those, at least we can learn why they have been downvoted.
I appreciate your work. Indeed HN is a unique place and supports curiosity to some good degree. I just wish it to encourage it more and I think people need some more safety for this.
I observe that if people want to say what they really think they just create temporary account just to express that specific opinion because new accounts are protected from downvotes as I understand. This observation should be worrying I think if we wish to encourage "diffs" and "unexpected".
For now I've learned that saying something really different here would get downvotes and this is not what I wish to learn here.
I wish to explore concepts that I am not sure are correct and I wish get answers helping me to explore them. Not downvotes that tell me mostly nothing about the concept.
It's not encouraging to write something different if it will be invisible/deleted anyway.
And if it's not because it wasn't accurate or good but because some people simply trying to shut up some facts/opinions then it's not encouraging to say something really different
This leads to say standard things that you 'know' will be supported.
We already check for strict duplicates but that's so strict a test that basically no post passes it. What would be needed is software to group the repetitive posts into equivalence classes but exempt the posts that are on the same topics but add some original twist. That seems hard for software! even with modern AI. I'd love to be proven wrong though. If anyone wants to take a crack at it, the data is all public.
I don't think hners are elite? and yes, many people use both HN and Reddit - why shouldn't they?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”
Honestly it's sad how people on this website are okay with this Maoist nonsense, considering how brutally they attack trends like censorship and political correctness.