All unmoderated social networks are either dorky or abusive. Dorky is actually the best case scenario.
Hacker News is dorky/abusive, too. Have you noticed?
When strangers interact with each other, that’s what happens.
Hacker News is dorky/abusive, too. Have you noticed?
When strangers interact with each other, that’s what happens.
So, I should be more specific. In the years I have been using HN and commenting, I have never seen a moderator visibly intervene to enforce the submission guidelines for comments. Perhaps they intervene by silently killing threads in extreme cases?
I've never seen a moderator write anything AS a moderator to improve an interaction. The guidelines say don't be snarky. But I've gotten a lot of snark from people in comments. I've dished out the snark, as well. Nobody stops them. Nobody stops me. This is what I'm talking about.
The few forums I'm on that are consistently professional and non-dorky have visible moderators. We know who they are. They comment on what's happening. They give warnings. That's what I mean by moderation.
I've written* tens of thousands of moderation comments over many years—you can find them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=dang. As you can see, I've written a ton as a moderator to try to improve interactions on HN. The interesting thing is that even after all that, some users (who knows how many, but probably quite a few) have no idea. It's tempting to overinterpret that, but it's explicable by randomness alone. Even in a rainstorm, a few spots stay dry because no raindrop hits them.
In any case, please don't dish out snark, regardless of how badly other commenters are doing that or you feel they are. We eventually ban accounts that keep doing that! even if randomness gives them a long run beforehand.
* (I'm using the first person here because I'm currently the only mod who posts publicly to HN. There used to be another (sctb) but he's back to being a civilian. Ditto for pg before that of course.)
See what happens when you go against the cultural grain around here, man.
Or maybe I'm the only one experiencing it... But it's not all the time, or else I would stop commenting altogether.
(FWIW, the challenge you just made is reasonable and not any sort of abuse.)
Or the use of words like disingenuous or orthogonal? I mean I keep coming back, but there is a distinctive 'flavor' of discourse (for lack of a better word) here.