The "force" is actually one or two people. It's hard to prove and impossible to change. No one will believe you, either.

Could you make your accusation more clearly? Are you saying it's 'dang' and 'pg'? One or two regular users abusing the flagging system? Or a couple dark and shadowy figures who have no public presence?

I don't mean to make accusations or invent "shadowy figures". HN has a very small number of moderators and their actions are not transparent, that's all.

Thanks for clarifying. I think part of my confusion was that HN only has one moderator at this point. Also, I'd probably say "not always obvious" rather than "not transparent". While there is no public record of moderation, at least for me Dan has been excellent about answering questions when asked.

I think you've misinterpreted my tone. I was not trying to tell you how to speak, but rather how I view the issue. You are welcome to share your own view.

If it works..

There are a billion forums with less stringent moderation. Moderation is a very large part that makes HN good and not so game-able like most sites

I’m sure the HN codebase has some secret creed to make lisp more popular

The code is written in Lisp, but it doesn't know that and has no way (edit: that I know of) to expand its empire.

Yes, HN is a moderated/curated site and always has been. Here's 10 years' worth of me explaining that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

What people maybe don't realize is how many constraints there are on HN's system. There aren't many degrees of freedom for us to change things that wouldn't lead to a massively different site, and most of those outcomes would be worse, because most of them would be closer to internet default.

It's easy imagine "HN, but without the things that I personally find annoying". But try to generalize that for a moment and the problem quickly becomes intractable.