Item — HN Reader

>And nobody in the world knows how to keep communities from becoming toxic. There is simply no recipe. And that's why StackOverflow doesn't serve as a lesson either.

I think a well-moderated community can be non-toxic. Lobste.rs is a good if not extreme example: it's kind of a vouch system for the people you refer and there's pretty good moderation to prevent overly mean discussion.

1 comments

HN itself is way better than people give credit to. The toxicity tends to be very isolated, and divisive topics disappear quickly from the front page.

I find that there's still a subset of users that make it worse than it should be, by making too much noise about "tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage", but that is already against the rules/guidelines.

So much is removed that it gives a false appearance of consensus and harmony.

AFAIK, not a lot in HN gets outright removed. A decent amount of stuff will get flagged (and thus becomes invisible) especially when it's anywhere near politics.

But even in those spaces, few things end up actually being flagged even when the flames are burning hot.

This is not my experience. So many comments are flagged and removed. It’s just popularity.

I think it’s fine they are hidden by default. But unt we can see all removed comments we can’t understand the debate.

> I think it’s fine they are hidden by default. But unt we can see all removed comments we can’t understand the debate.

Do you have showdead on?

Yes. It’s not enough and I’m confused why.

Then how do you know that more comments are being removed?

/active vs the actual front page here are two very very very different experiences.