Strongly agree. I'm deeply disappointed with the depth of discourse in other internet communities which implement upvoting; the highest voted comments are usually shallow hot takes or low-effort jokes. However, on HN the most substantial and interesting comments are the ones that typically find their way to the top of the discussion. I can't remember the last time I ever learned anything new and interesting from any other social media site, whereas the HN community continuously offers a wealth of deliberately considered perspectives.

Major thanks to the HN community and those who keep it running!

Agreed. Kinda makes you wonder why other communities haven’t been able to reproduce the level of quality and civility (I know HN is still far from perfect, but night and day vs. other platforms).

A great community to be a part of, and much appreciation to those that oversee and contribute to the high quality and respectful discussions.

There are lots of specific things one could mention - moderation, text focus, down voting, etc, but I think unfortunately the big differentiator is that (as far as I know) HN doesn't make money.

Rather, the way HN makes money (helping YC founders advertise and hire) are aligned with the interests of the community.

Downvoting, which on the surface seems less civil, leads to more civil discussions. Just my opinion of course...

Happy Holidays! I second the gratitude for all the work by dang and the rest of the HN team. Well done and thank you!

I was almost tempted to downvote this. But I disagree with you, so I won't.

I think the fact that the primary topics here are niche and therefore self selecting plays a big role - vs. open platforms (Reddit) that are not only much larger but low effort discovery wise. For me car forums still have that sense of community that is here as well, albeit a completely different topic and a vestige of the 00s design-wise.

On HN there's the process of shadowbanning entire users accounts.

By losing the noisy/spamming/trolling posters entirely, we might also lose their constructive/valuable content too.

Since I was a teenager, in the vBulletin v3+ forums era, I've wanted to develop an access control / rate limiting system where moderators would be responsible for categorizing posts depending on the contents of the submitted posts and the user who created them.

When an account has an established history, we nearly always tell them we're banning them and why:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

We only use shadowbanning when an account is new and shows signs of spamming, trolling, or serial abuse.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

> By losing the noisy/spamming/trolling posters entirely, we might also lose their constructive/valuable content too.

That's why we added the vouching feature many years ago: so users can identify and restore the valuable comments made by banned accounts. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch.

There’s no shortage of constructive/valuable content by people who don’t also regularly spam or troll, they likely stick around _because_ the low-value commenters get shadowbanned.

> By losing the noisy/spamming/trolling posters entirely, we might also lose their constructive/valuable content too.

That's why showdead is great! (The checkbox in your profile to unhide flagged and other 'killed' posts.) Not clear on if it unhides IP banned posters though. And I would like to try a forum that let you toggle it by category (IIUC Slashdot has post categories, though it peaked before my time and I don't know if they're used for that).

I regularly "report" behaving shadowbanned people. If someone has gone a while only saying productive things, the system unbans them.

On the other hand, I'm surprised how profilic certain people are. They get absolutely no feedback, but will go around trolling people several times a day.

We have to unban accounts manually, though users of course can still vouch for their comments in the meantime, which is basically a per-post unban mechanism.

If anyone notices an account that is banned that shouldn't be banned, they're welcome to let us know at [email protected]. We don't want anyone to be banned if they've fixed whatever the original issue was and are abiding by the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

I think the biggest thing is size. HN is "big" but also the size of a large subreddit in terms of users.

All quality internet communities I've ever seen start with strong moderation. Everything else is secondary.

As someone who has moderated forums in the past, I 100% concur that I don't know that HN is what it is without dang. And I also still can't fully wrap my mind around how he and the team have been able to guardrail the discourse to keep it as high quality as it is...especially over the last few years.

It's insanely impressive, and I'm incredibly grateful that this community exists.

I kind of agree with this. It’s like I have my grievances with the HN community, and I think there are times where articles get flagged because they are of a certain bent, but mostly it is surprisingly fair.

I’ve been (rightly) chastised by dang, though generally I try not to troll. (Sorry to those I’ve been a troll too)

For the most part I don’t know a better place to have discussions of the kind you can have here.

Happy holidays, and Merry Christmas if you’re so inclined, and a happy new year!

> I’ve been (rightly) chastised by dang, though generally I try not to troll. (Sorry to those I’ve been a troll too)

Preach. Same here. Took me a while to fit in but dang was always correct in his rebukes to me.

HN is my favorite daily read, the incredible amount of knowledge gained through this site has been one of the greatest gifts which I get to enjoy every day!

Happy Holidays!

Absolutely true, and a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone here!

Same to you!

Happy holidays!

Well now, seems this Ebaneezer needs to be visited by some ghosts tonight. Merry Christmas, I hope you bring cheer and happiness to those in your life.

Some of the most outstanding things are precarious and not as well supported as they should be.

Especially those times when one single individual makes such a significant difference.

Think about Einstein, most of his life people had to face that there would be no suitable replacement once he was gone for any reason.

Christmas can mean many things to many people, of course even a miracle if you would like.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ― Albert Einstein

“I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.” - AEinstein

"I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” ― Albert Einstein

Frosty, Redbone w/ Dr. John:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXfDBH2bij4

Sir Reddit is down the hall

Long time lurker. Your attitude suggests you're not feeling jolly and merry. Not a Christmas fan I assume?

I've always found it so weird that "account age," or lack thereof, is used as an attempted insult here and on Reddit. I've remade my account, both here and there, several times, as I'm sure a large majority of other users have at one point or another. Account age is literally and figuratively meaningless.

Profile says your account is…5 months old?

HN is 15 years old. It isn't fragile and its position isn't precarious.

1: how are hosting costs paid for?

2: how many people need to get hit by a bus to bring it down?

Yes, it is fragile and precarious and transient. Why would you delude yourself? I think your emotions are clouding your logical faculties. If Dan G got hit by a bus I know for a fact there is nobody who could replace him.

To serf

That’s a very elegant observation. When I imagine hacker news shutting down I can only think of the massive implications it would have for my life and I imagine feeling scared because it’s like a part of me is gone. It would be a massive thing and I’m not sure everyone like me realizes it. I’m working on a replacement now even if that’s insane and impossible.

1. Hosting costs are paid by Ycombinator, in exchange Ycombinator alumni can see each other(orange names I think), there are job ads for Ycombinator companies and launch threads for Ycombinator companies. dang talks about it often.

2. I think there are two active moderators, that also work on the software side. I have no idea if they are the only people that can do this job or the best in a long list of candidates, so it's hard to answer that question.

> If Dan G got hit by a bus I know for a fact there is nobody who could replace him.

I think that too, and that makes his presence and contributions all the more valuable to me. In a way, the fact that you care deeply about this place shows how special it is. I think that as long as there are people like dang and you around, HN or its spirit will find a way.

> 1: how are hosting costs paid for?

This site is literally owned and operated by billionaires. Sam Altman could fund it with the change under his couch cushions.

>2: how many people need to get hit by a bus to bring it down?

Certainly more than one. Dang isn't even the only moderator.

>If Dan G got hit by a bus I know for a fact there is nobody who could replace him.

See point 2.

>When I imagine hacker news shutting down I can only think of the massive implications it would have for my life and I imagine feeling scared because it’s like a part of me is gone. It would be a massive thing and I’m not sure everyone like me realizes it.

This is just an internet forum. Most people are just here to waste time, and in the grand scheme of things, even within the tech industry, it isn't that important. The degree of emotional dependency and instability you're displaying here is unhealthy.

I can't reply to the rest of your replies due to karma bombing, but I wanted to point out : Many beautiful things are fleeting, and many of those beauties exist exactly due to their ephemeral transient nature.

I've never thought of HN as one of those 'beautiful and fragile' things, especially after over a decade -- maybe I will once it's gone -- I simply want to point out that some of the world's most beautiful things are in-fact 'precarious and transient' , and that makes them no less spectacular.

Happy holidays, everyone.

> This isn’t the fucking Disney channel, there’s no rule where I have to be jolly.

This made me laugh out loud, thanks for that. I wonder what rules your posts were breaking for it to be flagged?

It's true, there isn't a rule to be jolly, and I think you raise good points about the bus factor. What would happen if dang went away? Is there any universe where we can solve this bus factor such that it's decentralized or its capability grows naturally to another person?

For what it's worth, my last question might as well be rhetorical because Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. still hasn't solved moderation at scale, despite the vast pool of resources.