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Comment by hliyan | Hacker News Reader

I've been reading HN almost every weekday for the past six years. It's been consistently great. I have been looking around for other communities (e.g. on subjects such as psychology, physics, economics, basically anything) that have managed to replicate this success. Yet to find a single one that maintains this level of discourse. I'm sure it's in no small part thanks to the moderators.

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Agreed wholeheartedly. The level of discourse on here exceeds all other forums and has managed to do so while avoiding the increasing trend of culture wars on social forums.

I definitely think the mods are the key. As well as the trend of simplicity. It really keeps things focused on where they should be - good discussion.

> I'm sure it's in no small part thanks to the moderators.

I think Lobsters[0] is the only other forum to maintain a high-level of discourse like HN, but it is invite-only (and programming/comp-sci focused). I know some people have started other servers running Lobsters's source[1] that are dedicated to various subjects, but I can't speak to their quality as I haven't visited any of them.

[0]: https://lobste.rs/about

[1]: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/wiki

If you speak other languages you might find out that there are still buckets of the web where old fashioned forums have some good discourse, the ones that have survived often do have good moderation. Maybe it is just me but it feels that it is much rarer occasion to find those in English, that has to be a cultural thing as well as how easy it is to be attacked by trolls and spammers.

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