stanley_choad

I agree that comment sites require moderation, but HN makes every appearance of being community-moderated. The voting system is supposed to take care of the signal-to-noise ratio, and I think it does a pretty good job.

The moderation actions I am talking about, however, are unilateral (you can't even ask why), magical (you don't know it is happening), persistent (the account posts dead comments for a period of time, perhaps infinite), and arbitrary (the comments are not necessarily undesirable or contrary to the HN culture). These traits are bothersome to me, and to at least a few others. I think it warrants a discussion.

A very good question. The same thing happened a little over a week ago, when a moderator deep-sixed all submissions of a particular thirtyseven signals post (sorry, I am avoiding regex bait now).

In fact, it appears that my account which attempted to post the aforementioned story is crippled, which is to say that all comments posted thereafter are auto-killed, yet do not appear so when I am logged in.

Another good question: does it bother anyone else that superuser-level moderation occurs in secret without any public recourse or justification?