Comment by scarejunba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarejunba | Hacker News Reader

Every one of these community groups inevitably has some sort of internal political strife of some sort. I've never found any meaning in attempting to engage their politics in any more than the most basic sense.

The groups always exaggerate the impact of actions upon the rest of us when it's usually a no-op as far as we're concerned.

E.g. Reddit iama had this massive controversy around a Reddit facilitator being fired and everyone predicted insta failure or whatever. Lots of time passed and the product is still pretty damned successful (Bill Gates was on it within the last year). I'm sure Wikipedia has had "I'm stepping down" posts and whatnot.

Perhaps the learning is that it isn't a worthwhile way to seek meaning in your life to give away volunteer hours moderating sites unless they're your own or you're paid for it. It is a pointless place to put your self-worth because disagreements will occur and they will be enforced as the site owner desires. Your hours earn you no power.

Reddit is one hell of a case study where owners were willing to let a lot of user goodwill burn and came out on top.

Heck, I was one type of user (wrote comments, had a 6+ year account) until things started to change. Years later, I became a mobile user to scroll through the memes because I wanted something to infini-scroll.

The gamble was that whatever was left of the old reddit would be a springboard for a more conventional user-generated content platform. They were right.

I think I haven't really read an AMA for years now, they're all very bland now.

Bigger names, politicians, etc. too often seem to be bland, seemingly PR-run affairs. For smaller names and niche topics, there is often some legitimate discussion worth reading.

Of course sometimes the bigger ones are great for another reason, their PR-run effort blows up in their face. The recent Beto AMA was a great dumpster fire of a read.

The quality of iama clearly declined and has not recovered. Is that success? Not by my standard. But it might be successful from Reddit's corporate point of view, since they are no longer paying her salary.

One of the forum I'm a member of had some drama the last two weeks, over forum avatars. First all the avatars were replaced by the one from a notorious moderator/news poster making browsing a very interesting experience, at least for myself, since I recognize people there more by avatar than handle and I was catching myself "nope, that's not that mod, it's so-and-so".

Then all the sidebar info (name, posts count, location, badges and tags) and forum signatures were removed, so you'd get no information on who's posting, making it nearly 4chan-style (not a big change on the usual level of discourse there, though). And yesterday only the users who have donated money (either to the forum or to fundraisers events) have their info + signatures back.

Misguided yet understandable conclusion.

People enjoy doing things for others. It's a deep Need people have. If mass violence and wars, natural disasters of all kinds through the ages, have not been able to make us more selfish and wipe out that need, internet drama is not going to either.

The process is messy sure, and if you are experiencing it for the first time it can be confusing, repulsive and misleading. It's not a good idea to follow those feelings and make conclusions. Because those conclusions will obscure from your view, the reasons why anything good happens in the world.

People enjoy power over other people. The benefit of closing questions or moderation on Stack Overflow is questionable.

If sure you didn't intend it, but your tone "misguided", "if you are experiencing it for the first time..." is rather condescending.

Bear in mind there are many of us with many years in the online trenches who have reached the same conclusion - participation is one thing; giving over a huge part of your time and energy is more questionable.

Also the idea that people do it out of an altruistic need to help may be true in some cases but neglects the significant motivation of validation, the need to feel noticed and appreciated through upvotes and other reputation buzzes, and the following increase in "power" and "status", which isn't so obviously positive and healthy.

Oh no, I've been around this stuff for decades and I contribute to Wikipedia. It's the tying your self-worth and identity to it that's going to lead to unhappiness. I like contributing to Wikipedia. If I were banned, I'd just eat it and go away. It wouldn't hurt me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com