[tsally]

Can't you just have the YC alumni ban or temp ban people from HN when they post nasty comments? Seems like you accomplish two goals: (1) You don't have to read nasty comments about your writing and (2) you help slow the decline of HN. If it's a site wide policy and someone other than you is doing it, you'll probably be able to avoid accusations of censorship.

Of course, that only works if the comment falls into the obviously nasty category. I suspect the comments that annoy you the most fall into the subtlety nasty category.

[pg]

Actually what I've been thinking of doing is have the users do that, by flagging comments for incivility. I haven't decided yet exactly what to do, but I'm ready to try something, because it is a sitewide problem. As we get more users, I'm seeing more comments that are nasty or fluff (or both).

[cookiecaper]

I think that's a great idea. Most sites don't go nearly far enough to maintain decorum or civility, in my opinion. Acerbic discourse makes the communities inaccessible and scary, and usually results in site-wide bullying by the holders of the majority viewpoint.

I strongly encourage strict civility enforcement. I'm looking forward to its implementation, especially since so few places do it. Reddit constantly ostracizes and mocks its users whose beliefs may differ from its mainstream users; for instance, if you look at /r/christianity, many threads are eventually invaded by /r/atheist, and they upvote comments like "There is no god so don't worry about it", and downvote all of the serious responses that a peruser of /r/christianity would want to see. They leave abusive comments on the responses by Christians. The place is brimming with hostility for alternate viewpoints.

I see this kind of thing creeping into HN, too. I've noticed recently a large increase in the number of unworthily downvoted comments, and end up upvoting these to increase their scores though I otherwise wouldn't have done so. It seems to me that people here are beginning to fall into the same thought process that seems to eventually take over every "social news" site, where users with differing beliefs or opinions, no matter how articulately or thought-provokingly expressed, are oppressed by the tyranny of the mob.

So, please, I implore you to keep incivility off of HN to whatever extent possible. Strict moderation is key, imo. Let the naysayers say on; do what's needed to preserve the utility and pleasantness of the community. There are plenty of places online for the abuser and flamer to find refuge; let HN be a beacon of intelligence, helpfulness, and civility. It's especially needed among tech/programming communities.

[tsally]

Excellent. This should help, although unfortunately such a system is only as good as the average quality of the user-base.

That's why I advocate selecting a group of trusted users to do it instead. Its non trivial to select this group correctly, but I think the end result is more effective. Over time you can expand this group based on the users that have the highest percentage of civil comments. Once you get the ball rolling, the group simply scales as the site gets larger.

[marltod]

On Digg I have noticed that the top rated comments are pretty good. There are a few top comments that are obvious rebuttals to trolls but the original troll comments are not in the top comments. I would rather not see the troll or the rebuttal comment, but I still want people to get credit for calling out the troll.