An example: the other day someone reposted an old (2011) controversy article about Airbnb. It was a me-too post of the kind users frequently submit in response to something currently on the front page, which tends to be bad for HN because it's repetitive. Also, the article was misleading in several ways (as I understand it) and long out of date in others. Our usual moderation practice is to penalize such stories—i.e. that are derivative of something else or clearly misleading—but we didn't do any of that because it was about a YC-funded startup. We're very clear about this with all YC founders and everyone who works for YC.

Stories about HN itself are a little different because of the evil catnip power of meta, but it's still the same principle: we don't suppress stuff because it's critical of us.

The idea that more data would clear everything up is a fallacy. "Just make everything public" is the sort of argument that sounds great on paper, but I think it would more likely cause just the opposite. People already take things out of context and construct fun, rage-inducing narratives about how awful we are—not because we're special, it's just a fact of life on the internet. Why would it ever stop? Of course it will never stop. What it would do is consume far more of our time and energy than it already does. That would steal resources from the things we should be doing to make HN better, basically giving a small number of users (some well-intentioned, others not so much) the power to do a denial-of-service attack on the good things of HN. Hacker News doesn't magically self-regulate, unfortunately; it takes a lot of work to keep it interesting and stave off entropy, and that's what we need to focus on. Every time one of these things comes up, it takes hours, sometimes a whole day, to answer people's questions about it. There's a burnout risk too.

So I think the balance we gradually arrived at over the years is the right one: be open about the principles we use to moderate HN and answer questions in specific cases. Unless something big happens to change my mind, that's how HN will continue to work; I believe it's what serves the community best as a whole.

HN is quite well moderated, IMO (and I have been a moderator, and I spend a LOT of my time rolling my eyes at how most mods are doing it wrong, damnit). Your comment is a kind of comment I see a lot on HN that sticks in my craw. I blogged about that very recently, so, it isn't you and I don't want to get into a pissing contest, but this is my cranky feeling about remarks of this ilk:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/03/hello-did-yo...

"Get a clue, people. Hacker News is an awesome discussion forum because it serves a business purpose. Please stop acting like there is something bizarre or ethically questionable about the mods making sure that this free service actually serves the business that pays all the bills for it. Geez"

I don't agree with the the assertion that HN mainly "serves a business purpose", perhaps in its early days its main purpose was to funnel prospective people into YC (second step from pg's essays, I stumbled on HN this way back in the day).

While you consider the arguments as "inane", I think there is merit in people trying to understand the mechanisms on which HN is being moderated. The "Don't worry your pretty head, it's being done right" argument only drives up more suspicion, because this is exactly the way less than savory practices in government and elsewhere are hidden. I don't think this is the case with HN but trying to argue that the suspicions arise not (just) because people are just jerks or stupid.

If HN serves no business purpose, why does it employ full-time paid moderators?

/sarcasm

There seems to be this assumption that good only occurs when some Christ-like martyr falls on their sword for the benefit of other people. The entire world seems to think that the only good men are dead men who died as martyrs to a cause and if someone is getting something out of the deal, they are evil predators.

I loathe this idea with every fiber of my being and would like to see it wholly stamped out of existence. I believe HN is as high quality a forum as it is because it has a purpose that serves the needs of the people who created it and run it.

I have done moderating for free. At the scale of HN, unpaid mods would absolutely not work. I wholly approve of them having a personal agenda here. I think the fact that they need to meet a standard of enlightened self interest is part of why they do so much better than most moderating teams.

Is that clearer?

Secondarily, HN has job ads and (more recently) 'Launch HNs' for startups that get special treatment. The job ads are written about in the FAQ and the launches eventually will be, but we're still figuring out the best way to do them. These are concessions HN grants to YC in return for being funded by YC, and our intent is to have them be both secondary and obvious. I agree that it's fair for HN to make these concessions and especially with your reason for saying so: it's the way to have a sustainably high-quality site, which does not come free. What HN doesn't do is make non-transparent concessions, like moderating anti-YC stories differently. But I've covered that elsewhere in the thread.

Any forum with a policy like that will never gain the credibility and respect that HN currently enjoys. If someone wants to create a private forum and moderate it in a way that furthers their personal agenda, as opposed to the community's interests, more power to them, but they should disclose it publicly. As community members, it is entirely reasonable if we ask them whether this is indeed the case.

Thankfully, Dang disagrees with you and isn't moderating HN in a personal-agenda-driven manner (see his post above).