Comment by na85 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by na85 | Hacker News Reader

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Look, when everyone gets to be king of their own sandcastle, you obviously end up with a larger number of smaller castles. But the not-so-obvious consequence is that because people implicitly know they can just start making their own sand castle, it foments divisiveness because all of a sudden everyone "knows" they can do a better job moderating/curating/whatever, and they're sick of seeing $content_type in what they've come to see as their personal newsfeed.

IMHO the "benevolent dictator" style works better. People on 4chan complain, sure, largely as a consequence of no upvotes and complete anonymity from other users. But they also mostly just "make it work" when it comes to classifying content. On the tech board /g/, there's a surprisingly diverse stream of content that makes its way through. Because there's only one /g/ it all fits into one melting pot and the community is more vibrant and diverse as a result.

I think the same happens here on HN. A lot of different people with different tastes frequent this site. If it was simply "news for startup founders" or "javascript framework news" it would be a lot less interesting.

People on 4chan don't just complain, entire board subcultures have completely vanished along with the people in them. For example, /u/ used to be the unofficial lesbian advice and discussion board, and there was an entire community there co-existing happily with the porn posters and seekers. Got wiped out overnight by a new mod who decided the board should be solely for yuri porn, pissing off everyone in the process - and now the /u/ culture of that time is dead, with no record it ever even existed. (moot added a proper board for LGBT discussions a few years later for unrelated reasons.)

> Got wiped out overnight by a new mod

It is (was) moot's website. Other people aren't the ones who set the rules.

Since the design of the site has official topics for each board, you do have to set limits on what's relevant and make new boards when something new comes up. And it's not always possible to make new boards if you don't have mods for them.

In this case, mixing 2D and 3D can be dangerous. It's also a little unfair in that the yaoi board wouldn't be usable for the same thing.

> it foments divisiveness because all of a sudden everyone "knows" they can do a better job moderating/curating/whatever

That is a legitimate force, but it's canceled out by the fact that when you create your own sandcastle, no one comes to to visit it.

You can start your own subreddit, but it will be dead until you build an actual community there and that takes a ton of effort. In the meantime, it provides you no value—all the links on it are ones you yourself added, there's no discussion, etc.

I think the difference between Reddit and 8chan, the difference, is the lack of a voting system. Consider that Reddit, after any post has three more downvotes than upvotes (score of -2), by default, that post will be hidden. Most Reddit users browse not logged in (according to their own stats), and of those that are, most have this "threshold" option still turned on, and it leads to more echo chambering since views that are unpopular will simply go unseen. Another plague is that people will go through your comment history and attempt to use that to discredit you.

On any *chan style imageboard, this isn't a thing. You can hide posts that you don't like, but by design, all posts are equal. If someone posts something you don't like, your options are to ignore it or respond to it, but it's there, in the open, for all to see.

This, I think, is the better system, combined with the default anonymous posting style of these boards that completely ensures that any post is judged on its merits, rather than the identity of its poster. That's not say that board culture doesn't exist, it does, but it exists purely socially, rather than being a feature of the software. The things I've seen happening on YouTube and G+ and Facebook have convinced me that existence of a coherent identity has zero impact on people's behavior.

>Another plague is that people will go through your comment history and attempt to use that to discredit you.

I don't know that accountability is a bad thing. If you're so ashamed of what you're saying that you don't want people bringing it up later, don't say it. Or use an alt.

This can balance out the fact that it's an anonymous anything-goes site. Yes, people can say pretty much whatever they want but if they know they will get shamed for it later, it might prevent them sharing the worst stuff.

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