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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

> Is Reddit not like a forum? What about HN?

Biggest difference for me betweeen HN/reddit and the forums of yore is how the ranking/sorting is done. On HN/reddit, "most popular" opinion or "best sounding" post usually "wins" and gets most discussed, as it's at the top of the page.

Meanwhile, forums doesn't re-order things like that (didn't used to at least), you made a post and it ended up after the message posted before you, and before messages posted after. Everyone's view and message was equal, so pile-ons or hive-mind "this is the right way of thinking" seemed less common.

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I think group moderation/points emerged as a remedy for trolling and the flame wars which would ensue. And not only flame wars but also simply low-quality, substance-free posts.

In certain unmoderated Usenet forums, and later web forums (e.g. Slashdot), there were often huge chunks of threads you'd have to scroll past and read between to find nuggets of value. Points systems emerged to separate the wheat from the chaff, and in many ways ushered an improved reading/discussion experience.

> I think group moderation/points emerged as a remedy for trolling and the flame wars which would ensue. And not only flame wars but also simply low-quality, substance-free posts.

> In certain unmoderated Usenet forums, and later web forums (e.g. Slashdot), there were often huge chunks of threads you'd have to scroll past and read between to find nuggets of value. Points systems emerged to separate the wheat from the chaff, and in many ways ushered an improved reading/discussion experience.

The following was built and deployed in Taiwan and proved to be very capable at sidestepping policy gridlock.

I've often wondered if some of the concepts that power it could be applied to help facilitate more generalized discussion and debate (which could also optionally tie into instances of the original political purpose it was built for).

https://www.plurality.net

https://github.com/pluralitybook

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/17/audrey...

You're right, but we also underestimated how easy it would be to game these systems and how the owners of these platforms would be incentivized to allow or even assist in gaming these systems. Voting solved a problem that existed, but created another one that is arguably worse.

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