[kerneloftruth]

HN is like a party in a big room, where there are clusters of people having conversations. People mingle between the groups, dipping into and out of the conversations. There are no "connections" between people, and the site (thank God) doesn't "suggest" or promote anything to you based on some algorithmic analysis of your past expressions.

So long as the site acts only as the big room in which the party happens, it's benign. Once the room becomes an active participant and manipulator it becomes what is now a modern "social networking" site, and should be regarded as poison. At that point, leave for your own sake.

[krapp]

> Once the room becomes an active participant and manipulator it becomes what is now a modern "social networking" site, and should be regarded as poison.

Hacker News is one of the most aggressively moderated forums you'll ever come across, the room is very much an active participant and always has been.

And the entire purpose of the karma system (particularly the censorship of downvoted items) is to suggest and promote some content over others. That HN doesn't use machine learning is just a quibble about complexity.

[kerneloftruth]

You're right -- I failed to mention the indeed biased bouncers. There was a real purge it seems, in fact, over the past few months, as a lot of names are now silent; and, the tone is now much more 'consistent' (echo chamber-ish).

Flagging/purging content is to me more acceptable than manipulation via suggesting/promoting, though, especially if the moderators are members. Maybe making this distinction is hair-splitting, though.

Shadow banning, on the other hand, is a disgusting technique. That seems like more a childish prank than a means of moderation, and only invites negativity (which is what was trying to be avoided, right?).

Overall, it's a pretty reliable source of links to good articles -- and some discussions.

[root_axis]

Shadow banning is a very useful tool for moderation. It is extremely frustrating as a moderator dealing with users that persistently shit up the place and crank out new accounts to continue the abuse as soon as you ban them. Shadowbans greatly relieve the moderation workload in cases like this because the abusive users keep themselves occupied, potentially for weeks. As someone who has previously moderated a large phpbb, I don't lose any sleep over wasting the time of abusive users since they are happy to waste my time as a moderator by deliberately and repeatedly breaking the rules.

[drunkpotato]

Now that you mention it, things have been more pleasant recently!

[kriberg]

I never really thought about it, but your description made me fear some well-meaning persons will "revamp" HN and turn it into something "fresh and modern" and introduce new features that allow us to "engage".

[lupire]

HN doesn't care about engagement. It cares about raising the social status of YCombinator.