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Part of why this works on HN is our small size. I will almost certainly bump into you again on here, and likely have before.

Prisoner's dilemma is altered when it's a repeated trust action.

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Back in the 'olden days' you almost always knew the people in your groups and knew the trolls. Heck you sometimes knew who the trolls in other groups were.

Then AOL came and ruined it for everyone. Millions of new people. No-one read the rules and the quality of content went down precipitously.

And that news group apocalypse now seems quaint in comparison to Facebook and Twitter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

One interesting design choice on HN is that the user names are not very prominent. I often don't even notice them, skipping right past the user name and to the comment. So I do think what you're saying here is partly right, but not completely.

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