Comment by mahranch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mahranch | Hacker News Reader

The problem I see with his retiring is one I've experienced on reddit as a moderator.

When someone higher than you "retires" or goes otherwise inactive, yet still retains the power they hold, they inevitably come back. It's guaranteed. Even if it's only for a day. That doesn't sound like a problem at first, but it's a HUGE problem. Why?

Because new policies, rules or ways of handling things get enacted or evolve and those new things don't make sense to them. They haven't been involved with the day to day issues are not familiar with the new challenges the community has been facing. They forget that in community driven sites, the problems are dynamic and evolving. They think the community is exactly the same as when they retired. Only, it's not.

So when they come back they do away with the rules or new policies because "they don't make sense" or they're not needed. It sets the community back, or even destroying the new community all together. Some of the volunteers below them may get frustrated and/or quit because they just witnessed all their hard work get wiped out. Getting undermined by an out-of-touch owner/mod doesn't help the morale for the remaining volunteers.

Hmm... I don't doubt that this happened to you, or that it does happen often, but as someone who was in charge of a fairly successful online community with tens of thousands of community members and upwards of a million posts, I'm happy to say that I never went back. I did the same as moot in this situation - I prepped the people who I wanted to take over and made the transition slowly until I was doing almost nothing myself. Then one day I made a post and I was gone.

I didn't revoke my own access, though I doubt that I still have it (this was about 8 years ago). Even if I did have access, I certainly wouldn't want to go back and start changing things. I cared deeply about my members and fully trusted my administrative team to do what they thought was best, and sometimes that meant putting aside my own beliefs and trying something different.

It all depends on the person that's retiring, I suppose, but I wanted to offer something to counter your experiences.

Even if I did have access, I certainly wouldn't want to go back and start changing things. I cared deeply about my members and fully trusted my administrative team to do what they thought was best, and sometimes that meant putting aside my own beliefs and trying something different.

Probably what the OP was referring to is precisely this. Apparently you were able to stand by your decision to not come back, but I have a feeling that the OP was referring to those people who actually think they can go away but actually do come back.

moot has always been pretty hands-off when it comes to managing the site; the current list of rules has been more or less the same for the entirety of the existence of 4chan. Some more board-specific issues arise from time to time and they tend to be resolved as they come up. They're almost always addressed by appealing to the existing set of rules or by making changes to the board technology itself; e.g. changing how post numbers are calculated so people aren't overly obsessed with "doubles"[1].

But admins and powerful mods have always been able to fuck with the boards in ways normal users can't, such as embedding auto-playing youtube links in posts or having fun with formatting. They've used this power sparingly in recent years and, despite what certain posters want everybody to believe, it hasn't caused any major controversies. I doubt very much moot is going to have a burning desire to come back and embed a stupid video in a board.

[1] Doubles are post numbers ending in repeating digits like "593987144." People's obsession with "dubs" on the random board /b/ have been met with several solutions, such as hiding the last three number from posters (593987XXX) or altering the generation code to skip doubles entirely (593987143 is followed directly by 593987145)

If you spend any time browsing the archives/ghost boards or the public ban list, seeing what content gets deleted and what people get banned over, I think you'd change your tune.

>admins and powerful mods have always been able to fuck with the boards in ways normal users can't, such as embedding auto-playing youtube links in posts

I remember the day /b/ had the Trollololol song on auto-loop.

This was actually the plot of Ran (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ran_%28film%29). The lord retires and divides his territory amongst his sons, but retains his title. His sons resent that he carries himself as lord even after they have inherited the land and conflict ensues. It's an absolutely enthralling and gorgeous film.

Veering way off-topic:

A gorgeous film and one of my favorites. It's a retelling of Shakespeare's "King Lear" set in Japan by the great, great director Akira Kurosawa.

However, the King does not attempt to reclaim or exercise power; his children abuse him once he has surrendered it and is defenseless. It's a story about power and cruelty; the rashness of old age (and youth); the consequences of his prior life; trust, love and loyalty; and consequences.

Kurosawa actually denied that it was inspried by King Lear, but rather the similarities were pointed out to him afterwards. It was based on some Japanese folk story about a king with 3 good sons, that he flipped to 3 bad sons.

Thanks, and good to hear from someone else who appreciates Kurosawa.

It's hard to believe the similarities between Ran and King Lear are coincidence. It's not just the plot but many elements of the story, too. Also, Kurosawa based other films on Shakespeare plays.

Wikipedia, FWIW, says he started with a Japanese story and incorporated King Lear "after he had started pre-planning".

I saw something like that just a few months ago. A mod who'd gone offline decided to come back and was angry that nobody knew who he was and that we have our own private in-jokes and way of doing things. It was like having a friend come back from a year abroad and getting angry that we didn't wait for them to continue being friends.

It goes the other way too; many communities are now dead because heavy handed moderators who were seldomly the folks who grew said communities. Often, after the death of the original place, the same people can be found stomping on original though in the next popular place, because such people seek their power.

If there are people trying to clean up 4chan, they're probably simultaneously damaging it, because let's be honest, the lax rules, for better or worse, is what it really has going for it.

>the lax rules, for better or worse, is what it really has going for it.

Better. 4chan was the most culturally influential website out there. I don't know how much that's true today but it shaped the humor and language of the internet in a way nothing else did. It's good to have places where there are no rules, no sacred cows, no need to be polite and politically correct. In a sea of bland derivatives, it at least had a personality. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad this site and others are not like that, but it's good to have that somewhere. There is no denying how influential that site was over the last 10 years. The stuff we joke about today was born in the depths of 4chan a long time ago.

One thing I noticed that is really interesting, is that MANY 4chan memes that leaked into internet at wide, started at 2chan...

4channers that also frequent 2chan frequently end posting 2chan memes in 4chan, 4chan then modifies them as needed (ie: "westernizes" them), and then those memes might one day become widespread on the english internet.

This has the interesting side effect of syncing many memes between the english and japanese internet, while some other countries are very isolated in general (Brazillian memes for example are usually only Brazillian)

I think there's been quite a lot of interplay between these forum sites, in a way that is pretty hard to track. There's also a reasonable amount of 4chan's cultural/linguistic/meme output that is an adaptation of stuff from SomethingAwful's forums, especially in 4chan's earlier years.

I once had to tell the co-founder of a site that had been handed over to my control "go back to lurking for a while".

There are probably two sides to this story. You might see someone as out of touch when what really bothers you is that you were second-guessed or that a limit was placed on your power. One situation, multiple descriptions.

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