Ask HN: How does HN maintain quality vs. Reddit and the media at large? - fapi1974
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wvenable
HN quality has certainly declined and honestly some areas of Reddit (even
/r/programming) are quite comparable now.

But strong moderation and a culture that abhors the typical meme crap that
fills other forums is certainly helpful in keeping HN reasonable.

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faet
Less cross pollination. I think of HN as a very specific subreddit, without
the worry of having users from other subreddits 'brigading' as the cost to do
so requires registration.

At reddit you can come across a post and easily make a pun, incorrect
statement, or troll much easier.

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lumberjack
In essence, I think what makes HN work is having had a very good "seed" of
users and high quality contributions at the very start. Every new user is then
peer pressured to only submit/post content of equal quality and will be
punished if they don't (by being ignored/downvoted). But also good moderation.
I am yet to come across a web community that works and doesn't have good
moderation.

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AnimalMuppet
Somewhat by peer pressure. When that fails, moderation.

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fapi1974
It seems to me like the model should be able to scale beyond just HN to
improve the quality of discourse elsewhere on the web...right?

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psyc
That depends on your idea of quality. Is the repetitiveness of humorless
demands for peer-reviewed studies to back every word you write, and culturally
enforced cynicism and contrariness, quality? 8 years ago, HN was 99% bright
entrepreneurs having genuinely intelligent and polite conversations. Now it's
an echo chamber of self-styled 'scientists' that reminds me of Less Wrong
meets RationalWiki.

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curiousgal
You joined less than a year ago.

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psyc
_Dwight Schrute voice_ False! I joined under my real name in 2009.

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llccbb
Posts/comments that are pure images aren't tolerated.

