I would agree that HN is far too big for moderation alone to save it, though I hadn't quite put that together when I wrote my first post.
I think pg's original guidelines managed to capture enough of a cultural ideal that much of the original culture has been preserved organically by the users themselves (though I'm not qualified to speak to the culture of the early years, or how much it has changed since then).
You and the other mod(s?) have done a great job of being a guiding hand, and of understanding that it's too big for anything other than a loose guiding hand to be relevant, from a moderation perspective. You can remove things that shouldn't be discussed, show egregious repeat offenders the door, and encourage people to behave well and be restrained (in large part by example).
Twitter is so much vaster, and grew so fast, that even a guiding hand and good founding culture could not hope to save it. I suspect the way its design encourages rapid-fire back-and-forth also really hurts the nature of interaction on the site.
I would agree that HN is far too big for moderation alone to save it, though I hadn't quite put that together when I wrote my first post.
I think pg's original guidelines managed to capture enough of a cultural ideal that much of the original culture has been preserved organically by the users themselves (though I'm not qualified to speak to the culture of the early years, or how much it has changed since then).
You and the other mod(s?) have done a great job of being a guiding hand, and of understanding that it's too big for anything other than a loose guiding hand to be relevant, from a moderation perspective. You can remove things that shouldn't be discussed, show egregious repeat offenders the door, and encourage people to behave well and be restrained (in large part by example).
Twitter is so much vaster, and grew so fast, that even a guiding hand and good founding culture could not hope to save it. I suspect the way its design encourages rapid-fire back-and-forth also really hurts the nature of interaction on the site.