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Comment by Yhippa | Hacker News Reader

I really liked Slashdot's moderation system. Not everybody got to moderate. You got selected at random. Being able to moderate felt much more like a privilege than a right and I took it much more seriously than I do on Reddit.

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And I genuienly hated it.

Those one-off 5 mod points made you feel like scraps off someone's moderation feast table and made it absolutely obvious that you had no say in shaping the site. This sucked above all other issues with Slashdot and it was the reason why I jumped ship as soon as I discovered HN.

The other thing about slashdot that's nice is you can't moderate a discussion in which you're taking part.

So the fate of a conversation is shaped by the people who are most likely to know absolutely nothing about the topic at hand (or they would have contributed to the thread).

But is that a problem? You don't usually need technical expertise to judge whether someone is speaking in a productive way or not. The purpose of moderating a conversation isn't to try to remove technically incorrect arguments, surely? It's to stop conversations from being derailed by snarky, aggressive comments, or outright trolling, etc.

> The purpose of moderating a conversation isn't to try to remove technically incorrect arguments, surely?

... and this is why we can't have nice things.

Sadly, mainstream discourse works in exactly the same way. You can utter the most outrageous lies, as long as you whisper while smartly dressed; but if you shout the truth with uncombed hair, you will be sanctioned.

There are reasons why a calmly-spoken lie is more welcome than a shouted thing-the-shouter-is-really-sure-is-a-truth: the lie can be challenged in a productive conversation, the "thing" can't. We all _think_ we've got the truth on our side, you know: your opponents aren't going to be persuaded by you bluntly shouting your arguments at them, any more than you would be persuaded by them bluntly shouting their arguments at you. What can we do about this situation? We can either hive off into separate bubbles, where we rely on the "moderation" of like-minded friends to remove "incorrect" arguments of the opposition, or we come together and make an effort to talk to each other productively and understand each other. The second option is _really difficult_, particularly in anonymous internet forums. But I think it's worth striving for: one of the greatest advances civilisation has offered is the ability to consider which argument is best through rational discourse rather than a shouting match. This requires civility, though, because people shut down if they feel they are being treated dismissively.

tl;dr: Rational discourse is the "nice thing" that's worth striving for; treating those with different views with respect is the way to get it; none of us has a monopoly on truth.

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