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Comment by fatbird | Hacker News Reader

The mods don't read threads, and don't respond to questions directed at them. Traffic on HN is too high for them to actively monitor. They depend upon users emailing them to alert them to issues with content.

Meta-comments like this are useless at best, trolling at worst.

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Even if mods don't respond. I think this comment is useful for the community as well.

There is no dedicated meta-discussion section on hacker-news. So it has to happen somewhere.

And no I am not trolling. I do value the high signal to noise ratio on HN, which is why I participate. My comment is meant to make not just mods, but users think about what counts as signal, versus noise on this forum.

I don't think you were trolling, but you were addressing the mods while aiming at the users, which is a coy sort of tactic to have a meta-discussion. Why not be more direct and address the community about whether a broader range of acceptable topics is desired?

If I appeared coy, I am sorry. That was not my intention.

I've seen comments in several previous HN discussions respectfully address the mods. Based on this I assumed it was fair to address comments to mods if it helps improve quality of HN discussion.

I don't think this is accurate.

I've previously alerted the mods to threads of discussion within a post where one user was calling for the mods to nuke a blatantly anti-semitic post, and I emailed them. My email got a response, the plaintive posts in the thread didn't, and the mods said you need to email them to get their attention [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21003570

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