I think that many times, many of us have a post all typed up...then we reconsider how well it adds value to the conversation, and close the tab, thus not posting something of lower value, that we would normally be <i>just fine</i> posting elsewhere.<p>That act of self-censorship (or just plain quality control) is a big part of it, in my opinion.<p>I only actually post less than half of the time these days. I'd nuke this one too, but then I do want to make the point, so here goes.
Lots of behind the scenes work by dang & Company, assisted by community members pointing out accounts, sites and comments that are or that seem problematic, assisted by a bunch of automation. Agreed that it works surprisingly well, especially given the scale.
Other than the outstanding moderators, I think that there are a lot of contributors on here who appreciate the focus and don’t want to see another failed forum. I really enjoy this haven of good sense and intellectually stimulating content.
I have (and still am) part of many toxic communities where I get my dose of dopamine with various forms of trolling and indecent behavior.<p>But I also crave intellectual discussion and learning, since I am passionate about programming and social science. I have witnessed the spiral of many communities into low-grade discussion, moderation abuse and eventual death, so I feel responsible for maintaining the quality and health of this forum. Many times I have misbehaved, I was given a gentle warning instead of a straight-up ban, which made me feel like the moderators care about the users, which led me to be less motivated about causing chaos.<p>It's really similar to eating a burger vs. eating a nice home cooked meal with a salad, I go to 4chan when I crave the "burger" and I come here for the steak and salad.
There is spam, you just have to set <i>showdead</i> to "yes" in your settings and look at /newest.<p>Most of the spam is worthless filler akin to a Youtube video showing how to install an adblocker. Sometimes it's the same quality that you might find in your email's spam folder.
HN is the last bastion of good reading on the internet not populated by ads . Please never ever have ads. I wish for a world where technology and the internet has not been taken over by ads. Thank you for all the great work you guys do.
There is pretty severe rate-limiting. I've never tried to figure out the exact rates, and it's possible they vary per-user based on some opaque historical factors, but whatever they are, they're low. Try to post 40 articles in a row and it won't let you. Combine that with the fact that new accounts can't submit anything, and that takes care of a lot of low-hanging fruit with respect to spam prevention.<p>But it isn't 100% spam free. It's just free of the really obvious things usually plaguing blogs with no filters on comments offering Viagra and work-from-home MLM schemes. But a whole lot of content is submitted that pretends to be more or less objective analysis of some tech problem but is really a thinly-veiled ad for a service solving that problem, or criticism of something posted by a competitor. And CEOs/founders are constantly out there shilling for their own crap in comments as answers to user queries. That kind of thing tends to get downvoted and/or flagged quickly, but it's still there.
Because it is still tied to the original purpose of the site. Being an offshoot of ycombinator means the focus never shifts and it doesn't have to follow trends, it just is a place to talk about tech and tech startups.<p>It doesn't have to update the ui to stay popular with young people, it doesn't need to have a crisis moment or pivot to a new idea. It can't be replaced by a tech alternative as it's not in competition with other forums for eyeballs and income.<p>It's not really run like a business, I guess.