Comment by goodbyesf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by goodbyesf | Hacker News Reader

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> HN is one of the few communities where I've had scenarios where I've gotten into a spirited discussion, been gently told to cool off (or gotten a temporary rate limit), taken a step back and realized, you know what? I was not interacting in the spirit of the community.

Not the spirit of the 'community', the spirit of the company. The community didn't set the guidelines. The company did. It's a private company so it's their right. Also, what you experienced is a form of social/behaviorial engineering. It's what happens in cults, when the leader admonishes a follower for hurting the group, collective or community by breaking the group's rules. Of course the group doesn't make any rules, the leader does. The stubborn or independent minded tend to fight against leader and get banned. But most people are docile, blame themselves and rejoin the cult becoming even more fanatic than the leader.

> Thanks dang!

They even come to love the dear leader.

> something I immediately miss when I step into other less curated forums such as Reddit and Twitter

It isn't less curated. It's even more curated using the same dark arts and patterns of social engineering. It's just that reddit and twitter have many more users. If this 'community' grew to the size of reddit and twitter, it would be a much different place.

Edit: If you ever wonder if social engineering works, read the comments in this post. Nothing 'hacker' about it.

> Not the spirit of the 'community', the spirit of the company.

The spirit of the company aligns with most people's basic ethics and morality. When that's the case, having an exemplary moderator just reemphasizes the basic ethics that most people already believe: "I should treat others with respect, and attribute any unintended harm with ignorance rather than malice". Sure, we don't all believe that. But most people think that at the very minimum, it's good to treat other people well.

The difference with a cult is apparent looking at the definition. Google gives me this:

* a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.

* a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.

You could argue there's a weird veneration of dang, which I do find kind of odd, but most people wouldn't consider "treat others with respect" as strange or sinister.

> The spirit of the company aligns with most people's basic ethics and morality.

Even if it did, the guidelines are still company guidelines not community guidelines. That was my point. Calling it community guidelines is a form of social engineering to appeal to many people's natural desire to conform.

> The difference with a cult is apparent looking at the definition. Google gives me this:

I didn't say hn is a cult. I was just pointing out the common tools of manipulation used by both cults and social media sites like twitter, like reddit, like hn.

> You could argue there's a weird veneration of dang, which I do find kind of odd, but most people wouldn't consider "treat others with respect" as strange or sinister.

You are building a straw man. Where did I ever even mention anything about 'treat other's with respect'. You are attributing to me an argument I didn't make. And are hammering at it. I made no assertion about any specific guideline. I didn't say whether they were good or bad. I even went out of my way to say the company has a right to set whatever guideline they want. I was just pointing out the social engineering aspect to it. Whether the guidelines says be 'mean to others' or 'be kind to others' is meaningless to my argument as it is about social engineering. Hope that cleared up the confusion.

> You could argue there's a weird veneration of dang, which I do find kind of odd,

I’ve managed a (small) community myself, back in the day. Dang is no superhuman, but managing the cats’ bag HN is, with so few terrible events and so many interesting discussions is impressive. The community is more or less self-selected; you have to be in circles where HN is known, and you have to appreciate a text-only website with only links and opinionated discussions. Still, the fact that it works at all is great, and this is due in no small part to the moderation (not only dang, but he’s the most visible). From that perspective, some degree of admiration is not surprising or odd.

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