Sometimes you think you’ve been accused of everything you could be accused of. Wonders never cease!
> The "moderation by less", as well as the guidelines, are both farcical in nature. They've given way to ruination of an otherwise decent tech discussion forum
The guidelines have been constant (with minor updates) for most of the two decades HN has existed. Dan’s a moderator for 14 years and I’ve been one for several. Both of us have been active participants almost since the beginning. When did the ruination begin?
Your comment seems a generic vent, largely unrelated to the parent comment but if you have any actionable suggestions you’re welcome to email us.
> Your comment seems a generic vent, largely unrelated to the parent comment
There it is, the "off topic" play. Well done, Tom.
If you'd put anywhere near the amount of attention in moderating the site for over all quality that you put into my "largely unrelated" comment, this entire comment thread would not exist. Think it over.
Please don’t insinuate that I’m “playing”. It’s a slimy tactic, not an earnest contribution to a conversation. You opened this subthread with an accusation that we’re putting our thumb on the scale for the CCP. Yes, it breaks the guidelines, along with basic decency. The only reason this site still exists for people to bemoan that it’s not as good as it used to be (which people have been saying since about three months after it started) is that we have guidelines and uphold them in a way that people can trust, often against pressure from many different people with all kinds of agendas. As I said, if you have any actionable suggestions you’re welcome to email them but all I see is someone complaining about quality whilst having no concern for the quality of their own contributions here. If you don’t like the guidelines you should take your own advice and find a site that’s more to your liking.
What I was aiming for was to point out the oddity of dang selecting the one odd ball thread to tell everyone to play nice, in what is otherwise a site that is daily filled with AI doomer posts, as per the opening comment of this thread to which I responded. And I did mention that I found it amusing - because I doubt either of you are actually shilling for CCP. This wasn't even the main point of what I was after.
That neither of you are at the very least bothering to steer the greater discourse towards some higher ground is a lack of balance that I am highlighting.
To remark my comment as off topic in the context of the thread opener is to dismiss what I am saying using a very lazy tactic that I've seen used countless times before. No, it is not off topic. It is very much on topic and relevant.
And if you have a problem with my comment, feel free to email me.
We’re posting mod comments to uphold the guidelines every day in threads about all kinds of topics, which anyone can see by looking at our comment feeds. There are posts about AI all the time here because it’s the biggest topic in technology and even the world right now. Some topics/discussions are negative and many are very positive, reflecting the broader discourse. We’re curating the content all the time to provide a good balance of topics and perspectives. By statistical trends and what we observe in the quality of the best posts and discussions, HN is the healthiest it’s been in years.
But one of your central complaints was about the guidelines, which have been constant for nearly two decades, so we’re just not having a serious conversation here. We’re always looking for signs that indicate if and how we can be doing better, but this interaction has nothing to grab onto.
FWIW as someone in silicon valley, this really isn't the silicon valley mindset. HN represents a sort of messy combination of many different tech tribes, but I will say its depiction of silicon valley is largely that of someone who reads too much tabloid coverage of it. It's very much the feeling one gets about silicon valley by reading Techcrunch articles without actually being here.
I actually think it's a bit dangerous to try and understand SV from HN comments, in the same way that trying to learn about an event by watching a fictional adaptation of it can often confuse more than educate. The goal of the comments here aren't for SV to chat anymore and it hasn't been for a very long time, for better or for worse.
Twitter is closer to what you'll get among founder and hype circles in silicon valley, but even that isn't a good pulse of what engineers here actually think. The public web is just too adversarial a place for most folks to want to hang out anymore and silicon valley has been so deeply politicized in the news that a lot of people just don't want to air their opinions in public anymore. My suggestion is to save up some money and just come here and visit for a week or two, go to events, rant to a few graybeards, that kind of thing. You'll get a much more authentic look.
It's changed a lot actually. From 2017 onward the epicenter moved up to SF. Then the pandemic really changed a lot of things. Highly recommend coming again and seeing it for yourself. It's diverged a lot from HN for better or for worse.
