Yes it is. HN's moderation is run by HN. The rules are applied consistently because there are are no third party mods or rules. People know what to expect and that builds community better.
You don't have to wonder if some edgelord mod is going to get home from school and delete your post based on their mood.
> HN's moderation is run by HN
No, it's run by a few humans.
> The rules are applied consistently
Yes, because those humans are awesome and consistent.
> because there are are no third party mods or rules.
That's not why reddit is different. It's because a lot of the humans that run the subreddits are inconsistent.
But some run their subreddits just like HN.
If you think of HN as a well run subreddit it makes more sense.
Dang is employed by HN.
>That's not why reddit is different. It's because a lot of the humans that run the subreddits are inconsistent.
You're disagreeing and then saying something that isn't appreciably different.
Dang has a direct relationship with the owners of the site and responsibility to them, that relationship doesn't exist in any way on reddit. The mods run amok.
Suggesting HN is effectively just another subreddit dismisses several important differences.
People unfamiliar with the setup here tend to think about YC first when they think about its management, but they should think about Dan first. My understanding is that things are pretty hands-off; even the perks that YC companies get here are, I believe, pretty much things Dan decided to give them.
I'm sorry but this is absurd. If dang had a mental break and decided only cat picture posts were allowed going forward, there would definitely be a conversation. It being hands-off so far means that YC and dang have current consensus and trust exists.
I saw the conversation as one about the structure of moderation. Paying a mod that you meet with every week to sync up with is very different from someone making some small sub themselves and enaccting any rules that don't break the sitewide rules. Likewise, a mod has no vested interest in the site nor its policies.
That mod-admin relationship is special on reddit, in a mostly bad way since admins ignore many mod issues. Dang is more like a moderator and an admin rolled into one.
If a user or mod noticed them breaking those guidelines over time, and they continued doing so after being repeatedly warned, then they absolutely would have been banned for their ideology.
Otherwise, I don’t think anyone really cares how disagreeable their viewpoint is, so long as they’re courteous and contributing while expressing it (and it’s not derogatory, hate speech, etc).
it's why I still end up browsing here even if I decide to delete multiple reddit accounts. People on reddit seem to have fallen into Poe's law of that Big Lewboski quote:
>"you're not wrong, Walter you're just an asshole!" >"Okay then"
Another forum gives some leeway for discarding courteousness if the post is truly dangerous to heed and absolutely needs to be smacked down as an example of what not to do. But reddit presses that button for every situation. pet being outside, car doing something that may be legal in their state but illegal in the commenter's state, one-sided relationship drama, video games. It's all just flooded with insults and in-fighting over inane stuff.
But this is the very point of contention, and is not actually known.
I think this is why we won't have great transparency around banning, shadowbanning, or a check on the censorious power of flagging.
Lobsters [1] has mod logs, but it also has a much smaller community, and it's invite-only so there's less need for moderation in the first place.
But for something like Reddit when there is more mods the anonymity basically means impunity to any judgement; nobody but mods themselves can say whether a certain bias in actions can be attributed to few mods or to everyone in the mod team.
And frankly if you can't handle a critique of your actions you shouldn't be moderating actions of others in the first place
And those humans work for HN. Hence, content moderation is run by HN.
Perhaps you haven't had as much moderator interaction as I have, but this is not the case whatsoever. Some subs will have 30-100 mods and each will apply the rules differently per their own interests or pet peeves.
Point being, comparing HN to Reddit is a category error; HN is in the same class as subreddits. This is less about HN and more about Reddit itself: Reddit is not a community, it's a network of communities on a common platform. Each subreddit is its own reality.
I don't know if dang is the only HN moderator, but even if he's not I've never seen any evidence of anyone in that role here just capriciously remove or lock discussions in a way that's absolutely commonplace on Reddit.
There are subs on Reddit that I simply no longer engage with because I'm sick of dimwit edgelord mods locking discussions whilst I'm typing out a contribution even though there's nothing wrong with either the original post or the discussion. There's no sense of consistency in the way the sub rules are applied in each of those subs.
A few weeks ago on the CasualUK subreddit one of the mods went off the deep end and started hurling insults left, right, and centre, and banning people simply for politely calling out their poor behaviour. That mod's conduct absolutely violated the rules of both the sub and Reddit as a whole. It's not OK and, again, it wouldn't happen here.
there's a great reddit bot that explains that "payed" is a sort of nautical term.