

Ask HN: Disappointed with the current state of discourse - kunai

Recently, a quite heated (and needed) discussion took place on HN, and, as expected, was voted dead, yet again, by mods.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6216685<p>The justification for this sort of heavy-handed, draconian, and dictatorial policy is in the interest of keeping the HN community &quot;pure&quot; and avoiding the eternal September that Reddit and Slashdot have faced.<p>However, there comes a point with all leadership, where laserlike focus on absolving a single problem that presents itself regardless of what circumstances exist, and the problem that can be solved <i>without</i> heavy-handed and draconian approaches, yet continues to grow worse. We saw this approach with USG, and I fear it is coming to Hacker News.<p>There <i>needs</i> to be discussion on how to present the best way forward for this community. We can&#x27;t solve the problem of the eternal September unless we take a holistic approach and think of exactly what we want to accomplish in this community. Abuse of power and micromanagement are the farthest from a panacea I could possibly think of.<p>The community will have its fair share of lunacy, unqualified posters, &quot;me-too&quot;ers, but that&#x27;s what gives an online community breadth and depth. It gives a community character. The reason I came to HN in the first place was to engage in intensely scholarly discourse, and I have received that.<p>To keep it that way, let&#x27;s be creative and not unnecessarily rename editorialized titles irrelevantly or hellban users that want discussion about the future of the community.
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ScottWhigham
_There needs to be discussion on how to present the best way forward for this
community._

Holy smokes I've never been involved in a community that talks about the need
to talk as much as HN. I bet there are ten "Ask HN" posts a week whose main
idea is that we should talk about our community and how we need to this or
that.

 _The community will have its fair share of lunacy, unqualified posters, "me-
too"ers, but that's what gives an online community breadth and depth. It gives
a community character._

You haven't been here long - less than a year. This community had a character
- a great character - for years. It's been in the last 2-3 years that it's
lost most of that character. So to have newbies come here and say that we need
x or y for "community character" is a bit laughable.

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kunai
Just because I hadn't signed up for an account until this January doesn't mean
I haven't been lurking around here since 2009.

The reason we need to have this talk is that we've never been given a chance
to.

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ScottWhigham
I don't know how most people feel but my personal thoughts are that, if you
are lurker, then you are not 'part of the community'.

 _The reason we need to have this talk is that we 've never been given a
chance to._

I don't even know how to talk intelligently to that statement. Who has stopped
"us" from talking about it before? I was here before there were mods and after
mods - are you saying that there are mods who hate change and will
autokill/hellban anyone who tries to talk about what you are talking about? Or
perhaps that pg himself is doing it? Sorry - you've lost me.

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DanBC
You don't know that the mods killed it. Many people on HN hate meta discussion
and will flag those threads.

Having said that, recreating a meta thread when you've seen another meta-
thread recently killed seems foolish at best.

Is there a suitable META sub-reddit, where all meta stuff can go? (EG, all the
Stack overflow meta stuff that gets closed on SE, or the Wikipedia meta that
gets derailed by BaseballBugs, or etc etc?)

~~~
Fuzzwah
It could be that the lack of a meta sub HN is key to the frustration people
are feeling.

Some brief explanation of the moderation goals would be nice.

