Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays | Hacker News Reader

Thanks Dang, Happy Holidays

news.ycombinator.com

1,452 pointsO__________O152 comments

Getting one of my comments banned by dang in his calm and substantiated manner was a wakeup moment for me. I like my discussions hot, but this was the time where I realized that keeping a discussion valuable and on point is probably more important than winning it in the grand scheme of things.

Incidentally, it also gradually managed to cure me from free-speech absolutism. (By now, I think almost all Xisms and extremes are nonsense, but that‘s a different hot discussion to be had).

This forum wouldn‘t be the same without him.

Thanks dang.

I also had pleasant interactions with dang. Thanks!

> Incidentally, it also gradually managed to cure me from free-speech absolutism. (By now, I think almost all Xisms and extremes are nonsense, but that‘s a different hot discussion to be had).

Just out of curiosity, were you in favour of absolute free-speech on a private forum like HN, or that there shouldn't be laws banning specific speech acts?

It was more of a philosophical than a political support of free speech, minted by the same forces of the early internet (in a time of true single-channel mainstream media) that a lot of us older hackers experienced.

It‘s just that over time I realized that in such a situation not the most accurate and consistent voice would win, just the most obnoxious, manipulating and brazenly lying.

There seems to be a tipping point lurking behind „pretty free speech“.

Counter-intuitively, I‘ve seen deeper, way more meaningful, effective and vulnerable conversation happening in places with very high amounts of moderation (EO Gestalt language protocol, Chatham House rules).

Count me in as a fan of well done moderation these days.

Thanks for explaining. Sounds very reasonable.

"isms in my opinion, are not good.". --ferris Beuller

I find it interesting that you like to resolve conflict using passionate discussion. Some of my best friends are this way. I have always preferred to calmly put forward supporting evidence, taking turns like a card game. I always felt like allowing myself to become emotional when debating something meant I had lost. That is what my debate teachers said. But my friends felt if I wasn't passionate, I must not be invested in the conversation and had thus lost. It took a bit for us to understand each other. Particularly because I wasn't really invested in winning, just finding out which position was correct.

At my last job, I was brought in by the then new CTO to make their company “cloud native” as they were both trying to bring development in house and pivot toward selling access to our micro services to large health care providers. We aggregated publicly available (non PII) provider data from all 50 states and national databases.

I never had a formal interview. We met for lunch through a recruiter that was helping him hire. We just talked like adults. I had no real non theoretical AWS experience at the time. But I had led projects before.

He took a chance on me. After a couple of months and we got to know each other. I told him that neither one of us had time for “shit sandwiches”. We have a lot to do and we need to be able to be honest with each other.

After a while, when we were just talking alone he would just be blunt. He once asked me “why are you coming to me with this shit. You have admin access to everything. Come up with a solution and let me know how much it will cost”. I would also tell him “you know in your heart that’s a dumb move and isn’t going to turn out well”.

We had passionate technical disagreements. But if the argument was well made, either one of us would “disagree and commit” or change our opinions.

We got a lot of shit done. Two years later, I ended up at AWS in ProServe almost exclusively because he pushed me to be better, more articulate, stretch myself, etc and the company had an exit for 10x revenue (small company - $30 million exit). I probably would have gotten about $50K - $70K if I had stayed or about $30K if I had exercised my options - not life changing money. But my two year sign on bonus was more than that at AWS.

I still talk to him sometimes and he said one of the major motivating factors for the acquisition is how well my designs stood up to the growth and increase in traffic right after Covid and they could point at their cloud maturity - scalability, redundancy, etc.

I'm not sure what you are saying. Do you mean that calmly stating my position and reasons could perceived as a dishonest "shit sandwich"? If so, that is what my friends and I came to in the end. If they didn't give me reasoned argument, I would ignore them regardless of their passion, and if I wasn't sure enough of my opinion to act upset that it was being challenged, they would ignore me as well. I say act but it is more me allowing myself to become emotionally attached to my position for the purpose of truth finding. With maybe a few expletives added strategically if I know they value them. So a bit of acting too.

A shit sandwich is

1. Spend time saying something positive

2. “This is why you suck”

3. Spend time saying something positive.

Let’s just get to #2. Don’t waste time trying to protect my feelings. Most of the time even for #2 you waste time trying not to be too “hurtful”.

Only discussing #2 avoids wasting time and helped me improve and get to a solution.

I can be diplomatic when necessary. But it’s like when you are learning a foreign language and translating everything in your head.

Oh, yeah, I agree that tact is simply a form of dishonesty. I just don't really care if I am wrong or right, and I project that on to others. Since they don't care if they are right, they won't mind me calmly telling them all the reasons they are wrong. If they get upset at that when defending their position then my instinct is to assume they are irrational. But what my friends taught me is that passionate arguments, like most instincts can be used as a shortcut to bypass work. So becoming impassioned as I tell them all the reasons they are wrong, can help my argument.

Some people will respond well to this - I'm one of them - but many (most?) won't.

> tact is simply a form of dishonesty

Maybe it is, but our primate brains tend to get very attached to our ideas and opinions. People aren't rational. Tactfulness is one way to get the other side to see your argument without making them feel threatened. Is it manipulative? Sure. But in many cases it's the only path that will get results.

Yeah, I hate playing that game. I kind of like playing the one where you lead someone to an answer instead of just telling them, so that it is their idea. It can be seen as teaching instead of manipulation.

> tact is simply a form of dishonesty.

I see what you’re saying, and I like the gist of your point for multiple comments in this thread, but for some reason this phrasing rubs me completely the wrong way. It will tend to be inflammatory and escalatory in a bad way in a debate or discussion to think of people who are well intentioned and trying not to hurt feelings as liars. I’m not sure that’s fair or accurate either. Like why, exactly, does a compliment next to a criticism irritate you? What if the compliment is true and the criticism is true, then where’s the dishonesty? Maybe what you mean is that the indirectness wastes your time or lacks clarity?

Does tact necessarily mean spending time giving compliments next to criticism? You can be tactful in the very wording of a direct criticism without being indirect or giving useless compliments, right? And it’s very very possible to be direct and tactless. Isn’t tactlessness sometimes a function of ignorance, not necessarily lack of compassion?

Some people make a distinction between critique and criticism, and this distinction may come down to tact? The critique is viewed as constructive criticism, how to improve, while criticizing is stating destructive negatives, “you’re doing it wrong and you suck.” The more tactful one of those actually happens to be the more useful one too…

Depending on what is comsidered tact my statement could be hyperbolic. It is important to encourage others and stating the good as well as the bad is important. Though negative reinforcement must be unflagging to be effective, and positive reinforcement must be irregular to be most effective. At least that is what cogsci taught a couple decades ago.

But phrasing criticism unemotionally and directing it toward the decision or product instead of a person, isn't what I'd call tact, it is just standard politeness. It isn't manipulative so much as precise. The decision is what you want to change.

On the other hand, saying nice things to spare feelings without any actual intent to encourage specific behavior is dishonest and manipulative even if well intentioned. In extreme cases it can even turn into gaslighting where you gloss over problems and they think they are doing fine when they aren't. That sort of tact is toxic.

Good stuff in there, but instead of doubling down on “dishonest”, and escalating to gas-lighting and toxicity, how about we just acknowledge that some people aren’t the best communicators in the world and are afraid of hurting feelings and starting fights and being confrontational? What’s potentially toxic is presuming someone else’s motivation. You’re setting up a mental framework for making assumptions and jumping to conclusions that people are being actively malicious when they simply try to soften their critique. This will infect your responses in a negative and destructive way, at least it has mine when I’ve made this mistake. If compliments or critique-softening bother you, how about just directly asking your conversant to get straight to the point?

My whole point was that unfounded praise and assurances don't rely on any specific motivation to be harmful or yes, dishonest. I have been guilty of gaslighting before, mostly out of indifference. I let bad behavior slide and said it was fine because I truly didn't care or think it was a big deal. But that simply made the individual think they were crazy when they did get called out for it. So indifference, conflict avoidance, excessive compassion, none of the reasons matter if it harms people.

I disagree pretty strongly that tact is a form of dishonesty. Being tactful does not mean dancing around the issue or feeding someone a line of bullshit. It simply means communicating in a way that's less likely to make someone defensive. Tact is orthogonal to clarity or directness. The fact that people may dance around difficult conversations because they already know how it will be received is neither here nor there.

WRT to using passion and emotion to win an argument, I'm not so sure. I tend towards the passionate side, and while it served me well in startups and smaller groups where I had a strong reputation for competence and putting in the work. But as I moved into more senior rolls at bigger tech companies, where I need to collaborate with a broader set of people who I don't know closely, I had to tone it down to be effective. What style is most effective? Essentially it boils down to one thing: know your audience.

Agreed, but there is still possibility for nuance in step 2. Something can be merely a bad idea, or it can be a disaster waiting to happen. Sometimes when people stop 1 and 3 they also lose the nuance in step 2.

On jeopardy you phrase your answer in the form of a question. It adds a minor layer of complexity, similar to what you call a shit sandwich. It’s the longest running game show on tv, maybe one of the longest running show of any type other than the news. Sometimes people forget to phrase their answers in the form of a question. Alex would say, “oh, I’m sorry but you have to phrase your answer as a question.” Dan reminds me of Alex Tribeck in that way. The winners on hn, those with the most karma, never seem to make that mistake. It’s a fairly low barrier, but for some of us quite a challenge.

Yeah, it is a problem for sure. I have said plenty of inappropriate stuff on this site I think, and been moderated for it, but I don't have anything against the site or the users. It is just difficult or impossible to really obey the HN guidelines, and if you step out of line just a few times you basically get silenced in a big way (if you post a single "fuck you" here, you're in trouble!)

Do you normally use "fuck you" in conversations in anything other than a light-hearted way? I just read the guidelines and they describe my preferred communication pattern. I said my friends express emotions in their argument, and now I've learned to, but personal attacks and assuming bad faith are going to just cause me to block someone, as I don't see how the conversation could be productive at that point. The couple times I tried to escalate to match that sort of argument it did go well though. I guess that is just the communication style of some? I don't like it, makes want to hit people. Only done that once at work, and luckily they tried first so they weren't safe to report it.

I wouldn’t go that far. There is a huge difference between “your idea is dumb” and “you are dumb”

Exactly! Never go full Linus. Not even Linus does that anymore. Even gentle mockery about breaking the pipeline gets overreacted to, and that is annoying. I try to say the idea won't work rather than it is dumb, but I may try it the other way with one of my mentees, I think they might respond better.

I do and unlike hn, nobody gently corrects. You just end up with fewer friends. Karma, as much as I hate the term, or people “hearting” tweets, or downvoting posts, has made me a better person in the real world. But the important thing is to only submit yourself to good algorithms and good social feedback. There are places in the net where the prevailing wisdom, manifest as upvotes/downvotes will make you a worse person. Clearly, of all the internet, HN is the best in this regard. Largely thanks to Dan’s moderate moderation and the smart, curious and diverse user base.

I'll turn this around: you've never told someone to go fuck themselves?

I would say that I've used it more IRL than online!!

I don't think it is a thing to commonly use in conversations, no. When people are discussing things in good faith, it is inappropriate. But there are times when it is appropriate, IMO. You're having a good faith discussion here I think, if I just replied "fuck you" yeah. It would be pretty mean.

Also, sorry, I should have elaborated: by "fuck you" I don't always mean literally fuck you. I also mean phrases like "You obviously don't want to have a conversation about this" etc.. which are dismissive and against the guidelines of HN (I have been rate-limited for this type of speech, btw)

Sometimes it is appropriate, even if that appropriateness is only like you're saying: advertising to people like you that you don't want to converse with me. Good! :)

Much worse for me to just "obey the rules" and troll you in good faith while adhering to the guidelines, IMO. Much more toxic, too.

It is like your coworker who, every time you try and have a constructive conversation with, says "I'll set up a meeting to talk about this" or "we'll discuss it on standup" or "send me an email about this" or whatever - and never follows up.

Polite, appropriate, work-safe - but much more toxic than if they would just say "we're not doing that b/c of XYZ, sorry" (which is long-form for "fuck you").

So yeah, it should be OK to say "fuck you" on a healthy forum! ;)

Yes, agreed.

One argument for spending time on 1 and 3: Step 2 alone can ignite fight-or-flight responses in people's limbic systems. If that happens, rationality goes out the window. (Even more than usual, I mean!)

If this picture is correct, then I think it's worth some "overhead" to try to get a conversation between calm, rational beings going. A shouting match between two werewolves may not be valuable even if they get right to the point.

Not dismissing what you're saying. Just adding another picture.

I agree completely. You have to know who you are dealing with and you have to have already established a relationship with the person.

You had a rare person there with that CTO. Most people avoid conflict at all costs, so as soon as the conversation becomes heated for whatever reason, they shut it down.

My current CTO is like that, and it's an awful working environment.

If it wasn’t a severe conflict of interest, I would love to work with him again as an independent contractor on the side.

I wouldn’t work for him at his new company only because while he is having some similar challenges that we have worked together before to solve, I am not a good long term employee at any company these days except where I work now.

I enjoy seeing a problem, helping to solve the problem, train the organization and moving on. I need to constantly be “putting myself out of a job”.

I am the same way in a lot of ways, if I don't have a "problem" to work on I get in a bad place.

Amazon gives you this, or is the role just so drastically different in other ways?

> I always felt like allowing myself to become emotional when debating something meant I had lost.

Nope, the new meta is just whoever is more obstinate and has the bigger microphone. You want to land zingers while ignoring context. Nuance is for the weak. After all it’s not like anyone is trying to change minds anymore, just get them points.

That's always been the meta. Go watch any historical leader giving a rousing speech or a politician before the elections.

The Xi Jinpings or Winston Churchills calmly announcing their plans are the exceptions to the rule.

It's OK to have passionate discussions with people, though? I don't think it is right or wrong, just OK.

It's OK to have dispassionate discussions, too. But I agree with your friends, they just aren't fun!

Emotion is an important part of cognition and while we shouldn't let it take over we also shouldn't write it off entirely. Life is all about balance

Similar, when I went a bit overboard feeding a troll I got a calmly worded request to not do it again and to refresh on the guidelines -- which I did. It seemed like a fair request.

I've tried to keep it in mind since too. I also set my delay setting to 10 minutes so that I can self-mod anything that reads back a bit too snarky. That's handy.

Something else was swapping out HN replies by email to HN replies by RSS. Can't get caught up in a flamewar if I only check once a day :)

The moderation style here (light handed on first infraction, and ideally paid for the work) will be kept in mind if I'm ever running a community of some sort.

I guess. I have very mixed feelings about HN moderation, but not dang.

I think dang does an awesome job. I feel like he does such a good job, that I hope he has a really good support network, and a great therapist, too! That's not an insult. Just that I can't imagine how hard it must be for him.

However, HN guidelines are so ridiculous they feel like laws (especially in the US): you're probably breaking one of them with almost all of your comments. For example, here is one of the guidelines:

> Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

What? Hahaha. The level of policing here (and how much it is up to interpretation) makes them impossible to follow!

Again, dang is awesome. I wish him the best. I don't think anyone else could do that job.

They're guidelines, that means they're not rules.

They may be de facto rules if you get banned or chastised for breaking them.

Yeah, but nobody's getting BANNED for using capital letters to express verbal emphasis in text. It's just a little annoying, and comes across too strong.

So some of them are guidelines, others are rules, but which is which is not for us to know. This is obviously very healthy and constructive :)

I have never read them but I don't have run-ins with moderation because anything an emotionally healthy person would do is legal on HN.

It's emotionally healthy to tell people they're being ridiculous. Can't do that on HN!

The guidelines are (I assume intentionally) vague enough that moderation can selectively object to basically anything, claim it's on the basis of tone/personal attack/flamewar risk/etc, link to the guidelines with no further explanation, and call it a day.

> it also gradually managed to cure me from free-speech absolutism

It's entirely unsurprising that people who appreciate current moderator behavior also have zero philosophical backbone.

I read OP's post as a change from an absolutism to pragmatism. Absolutists on any matter are at risk of behaving like paladins* or tyrants. The change I imagined from it was from "Any speech is good regardless of consequences." to "Yeah, sometimes there are better (such as, less hurtful, or more productive) ways speak, and encouraging that is sometimes helpful."

* A paladin attitude: "Anything which supports my view is Right; any fallout from trying to enforce my view is Good; anything that doesn't support my view is Wrong; anyone who is against my view is my rightful enemy upon whom any harm is Righteous."

"Free speech" is not the notion of "say whatever you want regardless of if it's helpful"; it's "don't prevent people from saying things that are subjectively unhelpful".

Free speech "pragmatism" is essentially completely meaningless - if the belief isn't extremely hard-line, it rapidly degenerates to something that has zero moral consequence.

He he, yeah I've been told off a few times too. Quite militant with the things I care about but sometimes that needs to be tempered and he really does make HN a better place.

Many a long time forum has come and gone, degraded in culture, succumbed to featuritis or any of the many possible ends such gatherings online can face as the years slip by. It really is special how HN has stayed on balance a place one can discover fascinating new things and people who stimulate the mind. Moderation plays a huge role in tending that spirit, and I too am truly grateful for the work you do here.

Happy holidays to the whole of HN as well. Moderation tends things, but the great people far more knowledgeable and from far different backgrounds from me who submit and discuss are the meat on the bones! Thanks to all of you, you've helped me through quite a few challenges!

Thank you @pg and @dang for maintaining this forum, because you’ve been my MBA.

See, I’m an engineer, a moderately good one, passionate with business but unable to get the connections to start one, let alone know how to start one.

Thanks to countless essays, from Paul Graham’s to Kalzumeus or Joel on Software, and countless comments, bouncing ideas, and books (Founders at Work), etc., when I started my company, I knew exactly what to do, how to react to catastrophic events, how to notice a pivot, etc. It led me to hiring 3 employees and having the money to hire 5-10 more, bootstrapped and always spending wisely. Thank you HN.

I wonder whether there’s now a place to learn how to go from 3 employees to 30. We hear very few stories of managers on HN, as opposed to stories of founders.

Lots of my friends call me talented, and treat my 10-year business with respect.

Well, I have a little secret.

It’s always been you, HN.

PS: Maybe I should apply to YCombinator in the end, to give you the 7% of my business I owe you ;)

this is a great list of resources. any other blogs or books you recommend? would love to start a company eventually.

Dang, thank you for everything you do - Happy Holidays!!

For the unfamiliar, here’s more information on Dang:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

Some more Daniel Gackle appreciation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225775

And the related discussion of said link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040

There's a real wealth of thoughts from dang about this site buried in there! Also definitions for MOT (Major Ongoing Topic) and SNI (Specific New Information) which I'd not seen before.

Direct link to Dang’s comment covering topics of “Major Ongoing Topic” and “Specific New Information” mentioned above:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490

> In an Emacs file, Gackle collects ...

I would love to see this "Emacs file" :D

Jokes aside, a nice article

and an obligatory NewYorker alt link:

https://archive.ph/DfXFL

Best wishes to all.

Up until this moment I assumed Dang was a last name and visualized an asian person whenever the name popped up.

Cool article :)

I had always thought it was just what he said every single time he had to moderate.

Thanks to this comment, I found out about the twitter account @shit_hn_says, and what a finding.

Happy Holidays! What is Bell's username?

Here’s Scott’s HN username:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sctb

Though per Dang, since sometime in late 2019, he’s no longer a HN mod:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055115

* Might be wrong, but my understanding is that Dang is now the only official moderator, but others do help out unofficially.

Thank you to everyone participating in HN. pg, dang, but also everyone posting and commenting: you're the part of what makes it a unique place.

I've learned a lot from HN. It's been a source of distraction feeding my ADHD, but it's also made my knowledge a lot more vast and thorough and my thinking sharper. I'm grateful, and I'm sure I'll continue revisiting it almost every day.

May everyone's holiday bring you all that you cherish in this period.

Has Dang ever done any AMA? Would love to know how he doesn't get burnt out.

I once emailed him about a very minor thing, he replied at the same day and was very accomodating. I was very happy about that but at the same time was very confused. I bet he is getting hundreds of email like that but how does he manage the time for them?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

While I really dislike the track of moderation policy on HN over the last 5+ years, I do have a lot of respect for dang being willing to engage in earnest discussion about moderation when prompted.

I came here in 2019, and I personally think, HN is LinkedIn but with anonymous people. Most people I know professionally know my HN handle. At least for me, the idea of HN being a place where people exercise free flowing polarizing ideas is pretty foreign. Everyone here follows a particular framework, but I wouldn't call it monolithic.

I am not exactly sure, how it was 5 years ago, but I have seen some older HN users. They are busy with their family, and they have outdoorsy hobbies now. So, I think you will always see new blood in this place with different ideas and cultural values, while the older users getting more interested in carpentry or sailing their boats.

> At least for me, the idea of HN being a place where people exercise free flowing polarizing ideas is pretty foreign

Precisely. HN used to be a lot more about discussing novel/controversial ideas freely. That kind of discussion is ruthlessly suppressed now.

Care to share some recent links to what you consider ruthless suppression?

What are you expecting, a post where you say "you're not allowed to talk about controversial topics"? No, the way this works is that a controversial topic comes up, an interesting conversation ensues, you see something you don't like, and the post gets removed or flagged or you come in with a vague comment like "please do not start flame wars <insert link to HN rules>", "personal attacks are not allowed <link to rules>", etc. Do this enough times and people obviously stop having these discussions. Most of the people I used to enjoy talking with on this site either no longer post here or treat HN as a sort of linkedin, as the ancestor post described.

You are not directly responsible for all of this - there is also a less tolerant culture among commenters, resulting in massively more echo-chamber-ish voting and flagging patterns, as well as a tendency to bother people off-site. I have started using nym accounts because in recent years, people have tried to harass me or my employer over posts that wouldn't have garnered any special attention whatsoever 5-10 years ago. This cultural shift is (I think) partially due to growth, but also partially due to the culture your moderation techniques encourage (intentionally or not). The culture of rigorous open discourse over novel/controversial topics has been almost completely destroyed here, in favor of a culture of facially polite business-friendly chatter (i.e. linkedin).

I think I understand the constraints you are operating under, and this outcome is a not-unreasonable compromise given those constraints, but it is not the one I would have picked. We already have linkedin for this. HN used to serve a different (and arguably more socially useful) function, and it still could, in theory.

When you make a categorical claim like "X type of discussion is ruthlessly suppressed" on HN, I think it's reasonable to ask for links to where this ruthless suppression is showing up.

You've given an abstract answer, but what would be helpful to me as the alleged-ruthless-suppressor are specific examples. If the phenomenon is as significant as you say, links ought to be easy to come by.

And on the flipside to dang's question, do you have any links to some threads from the good old days you're describing? It'd be interesting to read through them.

I emailed him with something and silly as wondering why I didn’t have downvote powers and he replied saying I was 1 off and he upvoted a comment of mine to push me over the threshold. Such a small thing but doing small things for everybody must be a lot of work.

HN is literally the only place online that doesn't feel like a toxic environment.

Reminds me of older internet forums where you can have your arguments but at the end of the day, you realize everyone is on the same team more or less.

That has been a blessing.

> HN is literally the only place online that doesn't feel like a toxic environment.

I don't doubt that this is your lived experience, but if that's the case, you might want to consider adjusting your media diet. There are nearly infinitely many calm little corners.

Fair, I totally can believe it. I think between HN and some group chats I have all my “online socializing” covered though :)

To think I've been pronouncing it like the minced oath all these years.

Maybe it is, but now my head's going to insist on "Danjee," rhymes with Angie.

Hacker News, a.k.a. DanG's List. ;)

Sincerely, thanks, Dan, for all you do here. HN has some of the most polite and thought-provoking online discussions I know of thanks in no small part to your work, and I come back year after year for it. You've helped make this place a hugely valuable resource and just a genuinely nice hangout spot. Thanks again and Happy Holidays to you and yours.

You just made me realise I've been pronouncing in as in dangle, I know it's Dan G but for some reason my mind refuses that when reading it XD

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767267

I guessed pretty well then!

Thanks and uh, sorry for any headaches, I know I'm a unconventional guy with some ideas that particularly recently aren't the easiest to defend. I never intend to create a moderation burden but I fear it may have happened on some occasions this year.

Also I believe that it may be more than Dang behind the scenes so thanks to the rest of the team as well.

The CmdrTaco of the modern age. Thanks for your hard work.

OOff i dunno if that's the compliment you meant it to be :)

Gene Spafford, maybe?

Brings back memories ;)

https://spaf.cerias.purdue.edu/

Thanks, dang! Closest analogy is probably The Wells' Tom Mandel:

What Tom Mandel knew, and what many companies and individuals still refuse to learn, is that on- line is not about selling something to someone or bringing information to the starving masses. What it is about is people wanting to connect, in a real and genuine way, to other people free of the filters of older media; to establish, no matter how ephemerally, communities of like minded souls who are not separated by the facts of geography; to create a place where it really is the content of one's character that is the first and foremost thing people see

https://americandigest.org/mt-archives/005663.php

Also, Tom Mandel was the first man to stream his dying live on the internet, so there is that to live up to!

Did Taco get himself cancelled or something? Way back when, slashdot was every bit as central to tech culture as HN is today.

CmdrTaco was/is a good person [1], but as a moderator he had biases and faults like many others.

Before Slashdot, there was Usenet, and Mr Spafford was one of several there who helped explore what "online community" might mean.

There's a few BBS sysops I could list too but they're not as widely famous and in some cases were always pseudonyms anyway.

[1] insofar as a vi user can be

Dang this is the best place on the internet and for as long as it lasts, I appreciate your hard work and commitment!

Long time lurker, seldom poster, thanks Dan G! As a mod for one of the bigger tech subreddits, I take queues from your moderating style. Peace! And happy holidays!

HN is ~~probably~~ the best online forum I've found since Slashdot in its original glory (/r/AskHistorians is pretty good too). Kudos to dang and anyone else who does the moderating (and to the users who post, of course.)

edit: not "probably"

You run a good ship. Thanks for the well managed forum. Happy hols.

The internet sucks, HN sucks less than most and its in no small part due to Dang - thanks Dang.

This place is a refuge for me in the modern world of online discourse. I'm deeply indebted to those who made it and keep it running.

Thank you dang! I often see your comments while browsing and always find them informative and reasonable. Good quality moderation.

Occasionally I peruse dang's comments just for fun: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

Jeeze what care he shows by patiently asking trolls not to post flamebait.

Dang, thanks for helping make my most oft visited website stay true to its values. I really appreciate the work you do.

Agreed. Thanks a lot Dang!

HN is not perfect but it's Pretty Damn Good, and in no small part thanks to Dan.

Happy Hollidays, everybody ;-)

Thanks dang! It can be a difficult job, and you do it well. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Dang, you're a model for my own communication style, a source of indirect advice for a project that I'm building (one day I'll be ready to reach out to you for direct advice), and someone I see as an example of a good human. Thank you!

Happy holidays, dang! Thank you for all the effort you pour into making HN as useful and vibrant a forum as it can be. You help set the bar for productive online discourse, and that means something and is more and more important in the world.

As much as I have my share of beefs with the site, I know that Dan.G has a thankless and Sisyphean task

Happy Holidays and try to relax a bit (I don't even know when does he manage to get some sleep, for real)

Certainly not thankless. I am thankful. We are thankful.

Your work really positively impacts this community. Thank you, dang.

All of my interactions with dang have been extremely positive. He is one of the main reasons why HN is the community it is. Thank you for all you do and happy holidays!!!

Thanks for dealing with my bullshit dang, and the bullshit of everyone else that doesn't all-that-strictly follow the guidelines every single time

Happy holidays and thanks for making this such a great space dang! Hacker News is my new favourite site for news in 2022.

Dude is a beast. Very grateful for this site.

Thanks, indeed. With the increasing traffic, and the spikes in polarization, it must get harder to keep up every year.

I'm curious: How does dang manage moderation when he's unwell for a few days, or has some personal event/emergency to attend to? I ask as it seems that dang is always moderating HN.

Thank you Dang. I hope you understand and feel how many people you are affecting positively. What a direct positive impact you have on so many people that share some core values and/or affinity.

Happy holidays! Thanks for almost single-handedly keeping this place from devolving.

Thank you Dang, our supreme Overlord. We hear your orders to build more pylons at every corner of HN.

May your judgement be just and eternal.

From one Dan G. to another (?), thanks.

Are there other moderators? I only know of Dang, who does great work, but don’t want to omit anyone else.

Might be wrong, but my understanding is that Dang is now the only official moderator, but others do help out unofficially.

There are, but I'm the only public one.

Thanks @dang but please stop "shadow bans" & ridiculous post limits.

Thank you Dan, for your efforts but also for the time and help you have given me.

Merry Christmas! And thanks.

Thanks Dang! Appreciate all the work you put in!

I really respect people who think this is a really good moderation on this site. Your belief that something that does not exist exists is truly astonishing.

Merry Christmas

I spent time on Lobste.rs to see what "the other HN" was like and man...the moderation there is draconian and just. Weird. It's odd, because the only reason I learned about that site was a comment here from someone unhappy with being moderated.

All that to say, HN, while irritating at times, is definitely better (for me) overall thanks to dang and the rest of the mod squad.

Thank you Dang! Happy holidays!

Dang! Another year flied away.

best moderator, thanks dang!!

You da man Dang, thanks !!

Anyone else think dang would make a great guest on Lex Fridman’s podcast??

Happy Holidays Dang!

It's gonna be a big loss for HN when Elon Musk signs him to moderate Twitter.

Not before Musk builds CloneX to make a couple dang clones to manage the whole of Twitter. But I reckon he'd want to rewrite the whole thing in Arc :)

He'd have to moderate Trump oops I mean Musk and Musk isn't one to be moderated.

Just train ChatGPT on his mod history and off you go ;)

I suspect that HN users are uniquely moderateable in a way the general public isn’t.

I’d be very curious if Dang would agree that we’re more rational and more prone to accept course correction than normies, or conversely that we think we’re so smart that we’re harder to moderate than anybody else.

merry xmas!

I hope everything levels out next year and we are not all in a constant state of infighting and can start to work on something better than the tyranny of "Breaking News". thx dang for keeping it civil in the last years.

Thanks for putting up for those of us whom are too rebellious! Promise changes in the coming year. Happy holidays!!

No appreciation from me.

How about integrate AI to automate comment moderation ? So you can retire now ?

Nice to see some humor thrown around in this thread :)

Screenshotting this thread as a valueable appendix to my thesis on Stockholm syndrome.

dang worship!

We want to build our heroes and feel good about ourselves at the end of the day.

I think dang is genuinely a good person, or even great person. How could he not be?

I do also think the moderation guidelines on HN are pretty hot garbage and almost impossible to follow without losing almost all substance.

Political activist moderators ftw

I troll this site so much and he warns and bans me on all my accounts but I still appreciate his attitude, there’s no inconsistency to it and all his arguments for why he enforces rules are always well-reasoned.

Why though? You're just making his job harder and the forum a worse place.

I get bored and lonely sometimes and I don’t always have the energy for intelligent discussion, I usually save that for work. Tbh I probably suffer from ASPD.

Instead of making dang's life harder and making HN a worse place, have you tried therapy? It might cost money, but it at least has a chance at treating the underlying cause or of teaching you better coping mechanisms.

The scientific consensus is that therapy doesn’t really help much for sufferers of ASPD and resources are better diverted toward the people they hurt. I donate to a homeless shelter in my area and give money to homeless people to make up for the havoc I wreak here.

Chaos can cause happy accidents, as well as unhappy ones.

I sometimes throw out comments i know will catch flamewars, because (a) I think i can say something funny, at the least, and (b) if I catch a flamewar, then the rest of the thread will hopefully be less polluted with char, smut and smoke.

Dang, I believe, and again this is my belief alone, is like moderators of other social media, an FBI (or US Nation security state) insider. He has shown ruthlessness anytime someone criticized FBI in this site. Given the recent development, how much power FBI has on content moderation in ALL social media and how they go out of their way to PAY moderators, this is hardly surprising. And in fact, in a dystopian universe, dang would probably have to resign as a moderator and bow to FBI claims if he did not do what he frequently does.

So no I don't thank dang but I am grateful for this site to exist.

I realize that replies like this don't necessarily help, but I'll try. We're not in contact, let alone cahoots, with FBI or any other government agencies, or any other organization for that matter. I think there have been a handful of subpoeanas (maybe 3 or 4) over the years, related to ongoing investigations, but nothing memorable.

We don't have any problem with people criticizing the FBI or anyone else, as long as the comments stay within the realm of thoughtful conversation and don't cross into flamewar or fulmination (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). That's not to protect the FBI or anyone else—it's just trying to prevent HN from deteriorating (too quickly).

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