The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
This article does seem to get at the essence of HN, appreciative of dang and sctb&#x27;s humanity while not ignoring the problems. Personally, I would actually consider it an excellent demonstration of the fallibility of one of HN&#x27;s favourite tropes, Gell-Mann amnesia.<p>If there&#x27;s one critique that I believe is paramount it&#x27;s that HN has, due to its readership, an ethical obligation that goes beyond making discussions all nice and civil.<p>Political issues are obviously divisive and it&#x27;s perfectly fine to keep stuff like the El Paso massacre of the front page. But when hot-button issues intersect with technology, the HN readership is in a position of power, and shouldn&#x27;t routinely be spared the anguish of being reminded of their responsibility.<p>Yes, articles about, for example, discriminatory ML do often make it to the front page. But in my impression, that topic (as well as employment discrimination, culture-wars-adjacent scandals in tech academia etc) are far more likely to be quickly flagged into oblivion than similarly political takes that just happen to be in line with HN&#x27;s prevailing attitude (e.g. cloudflare-shouldnt-ban-&lt;x&gt;).<p>The article impressively articulates what toll divisiveness takes on the moderators: Even if I read the same ugly comments, I am unlikely to experience the sharpness of emotion that apparently comes with considering the community one&#x27;s baby, and making it&#x27;s failures one&#x27;s own. When such divisiveness is then reflected in the &quot;real world&quot; of mass media, the pressure only increases.<p>But as this article shows, abdicating the responsibility by keeping the topics sterile is similarly suspect, in the sense of fiddling while Rome burns. I believe a willingness to confront the ugly sides of technology with some courage of conviction would eventually be recognised, even if it may occasionally involve a bit of a mess.