Do you think Hacker News should be more welcoming of insults, racism, etc? When someone complains of misogyny, Dang could come by and say, "Toughen the fuck up"?
Or would that be disastrous to the point of the forum?
Or would that be disastrous to the point of the forum?
For example, a perennial topic around here is a lack of diversity in the software industry. My personal opinion is that a) for a variety of reasons, men and women have had different levels of interest in developing software, and b) these differences in of themselves are not a cause for concern.
I'm well aware that some consider this view misogynist. But what is the point of discussing a topic such as diversity if only "approved" viewpoints are welcomed? That would turn Hacker News into an echo chamber.
By who? I would be surprised if someone said that. You might be worrying too much, but maybe I don't know. Can you provide a link to someone saying that?
If their numbers were such that they could force all the technology posts off the front page and flood the site with mountain biking posts and pictures, should Hacker News morph in MTB News?
Most sites suffer from an Eternal September sooner or later. If new people start making very low-quality insult comments, and other new people flood those comments with upvotes, should discussions turn into toxic flame wars, because that’s what garners votes? Should the Hacker News discussion become YouTube comment threads?
The idea that votes should triumph over moderation presumes a certain critical mass of people who consistently vote in favour of quality. But given enough time, and enough success, exceptions to this take place. And when they do, if left unchecked, the site can degrade very rapidly, as the original core people get outvoted and give up.
Hacker News exists in part because this happened to Reddit. If left to become an absolute, unmoderated “democracy,” it will happen to Hacker News was well.
I will close with a reference to the word “democracy.” Countries have a lot of friction associated with citizenship. Most people don’t leave when things stink, they try to make it better for generations before fleeing and becoming refugees somewhere else. Most countries don’t allow absolutely everyone to show up and vote on everything.
The lack of friction associated with joining and leaving social media sites makes the business of “democracy” on social media very different than the business of democracy in the US or Canada.
http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html
My opinion (copied from another post I made awhile ago):
I happily would accept unfairness, and suffer its slings and arrows myself, for a higher signal-to-noise ratio. I'd happily lose a few good comments in return for of better quality overall (i.e., false-positives are not really a big deal - so what if my good comment occasionally gets voted down or otherwise buried).
By prioritizing quality over fairness HN can best distinguish itself from a million noise-filled alternatives where 'rights' [or democracy] are the priority. Everyone has a right to their opinions, but not to my time.