Here we are on HN, one of the most censored and moderated forums on the internet. Personally, I find it quite refreshing.

There are plenty of similarly moderated subreddits on Reddit that no one complains about. It’s easier when you can just ban all political content that gets out of hand because the forum is not focused on politics.

I agree that HN is heavily moderated, but from what I've seen the comment moderation is more focused on maintaining civility and tone. I think dang and friends will let you say controversial things as long as they're framed in a productive way and you aren't a jerk about it (and as long as you don't commit the sin of editorializing a post title!)

I think that's a stark contrast with reddit, where being a dick is often excused if one has the right ideology. Not to mention that many subreddits (especially, but not exclusively, the political ones) have become carefully maintained echo chambers thanks rules against disagreeing with even a single facet of the "correct" beliefs. r/The_Donald even had an explicit "no dissent" rule.

This is a great way of putting it. HN is heavily moderated for tone and respectfulness but not for ideology (within reason). Reddit is heavily moderated for ideology but not for tone or respectfulness.

I believe this policy is actually responsible for political subreddits there being so consistently toxic. The site’s moderation encourages extreme ideological echo chambers to form in which members can be almost arbitrarily uncivil as long as they exist within that community’s ideology.

"...what I've seen the comment moderation"

It's what you don't see, friend.

Moderated in scope, not in opinion. Except the downvotes of course, which are easily the worst part of HN.

I too miss the old forums you had dedicated to one thing and set up by volunteers who liked that one thing and weren't interested in growth above all.

This one seems pretty decent.

This site one is one of the best. If political dialog could be moved to a peer site it would be even better.

I'm guilty of engaging in discussing politics here (and tried to do so in a factual and respectful manner) but it's pointless. It just becomes people talking past each other and generates arguments rather than dialog.

This is precisely why I browse Lobste.rs. It's just like HackerNews but without the political posts.

It's getting pretty exciting now! I can't wait to see what happens next.

Isn't that Hacker News? I'm assuming you aren't a regular user of Reddit as almost all of the subreddits I've used are heavily moderated?

HN allows a very wide swath of opinions without over-moderation. I've seen arguments commonly from every ideological & political segment, even though HN leans left (because its userbase foundation derives from the Bay Area, which is 95% left leaning). You see Capitalists here, you see Communists, you see conservatives, you see liberals, you see libertarians, you see every flavor of Socialist, you see everything inbetween.

You can argue for most points of view here, so long as you remain within their decency guidelines. Obviously HN won't tolerate certain extreme ideas that involve genocidal camps, killing people, violence or racism, that you might see bubble up out of eg the pro fascist or pro communist camps.

If there are 20 slices in a gradient of political ideology in the US (as an example), HN will allow you to very freely argue 18 of them, only dropping the extreme left and right (both of which commonly involve arguing for murder, racism, genocide, oppression, gulags, forced re-education camps, violence and countless other horrible things).

If you go into the largest political sections of Reddit arguing strongly (but decently) for Trump, you'll get moderated because the mods won't like you. That doesn't happen on HN, Dang will mostly leave your opinions alone (you will get downvoted though), so long as you are arguing in a way that isn't belligerent.