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Comment by tqi | Hacker News Reader

That probably helps here, but I don't think moderation works once you get beyond the point where one moderator can handle everything.

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I guess the issue is keeping moderation consistent (like bar exam grading) coupled with a manageable size of community that handles scaling. I wonder if social media platforms could cluster 10-25 people together into "troops" with a "troop leader" and a "guidance counselor." This way, it's not just a sea of individuals floating along ephemerally disconnected, but brings some tribal belonging and support back that people yearn for.

I've since come to believe that to have a high quality medium, you really need not just the editorial guidelines I've mentioned, but also someone who interprets those guidelines in the intended way, and the ability to enforce them properly.

That means you can, at best, have a small team of moderators/community managers, likely with the person who has manifested the editorial guidelines at the top. This does not scale, so the community is limited in size.

When I think back to the times of TV channels, professional magazines, radio shows etc., I remember how amazing the quality of that content could be. Reading the same magazines printed back then today confirms that to me.

Curated content wins.

Sure, some TV channels and magazines were terrible instead, but that's just because I did not agree with their curation.

Slashdot had metamoderation 25 years ago.

Slashdot died from the incoming content, not the posts, as far as I recall from those days. Digg suffered the same fate. Reddit has so far been kept from it since moderators can only pin a few posts and only have "negative" control of the posts that appear at the top.

Yes, I was there. :) 23 years ago ;) I meant some sort of mechanism to improve the training/fairness/consistency of moderators rather than merely double-checking them.

Their metamoderation was innovative but ultimately pointless.

Instead of having one popularity contest, it was like a popularity contest that qualified you for another popularity contest. Theoretically the metamods were "good" posters, but being a "good" poster was ridiculously easy - you could just rack up karma by parroting the hivemind and bashing Microsoft or whatever.

That's true. If a community platform's moderation were more professional like the example I used of bar exam graders, who grade practice samples and do other calibration exercises, it would improve the signal and tend to reduce biases if the culture were one of strict professionalism.

HN has basically one moderator. It's just that we've trained an army of downvoters and flaggers that mostly clobber anything "un-HN" almost immediately. There's a community here and it defends itself.

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