[noduerme]

Name one that's apolitical, anonymous, and personally moderated post by post? Some reddit subs might fit the bill, or some car enthusiast forums or something where wide-ranging conversations are banned. But this is a hard, hard thing to mod. I don't think we have anything else like it these days. That's why I'm actually here.

[xiphias2]

r/science is not that bad, well moderated...I know it because I was banned there quite fast for not being scientific enough :)

Though the psychology part of r/science is too much, much less scientific and more biased to a political view

[noduerme]

A life of banning and being banned makes you who you are today. It's called civilization. And of course, when you get your first lesson you yell about other people having bent a rule or two; then later bending some rules is something you earn as a privilege. I was an angry child in the 80s ;)

[peoplefromibiza]

> Name one that's apolitical, anonymous, and personally moderated post by post?

There are literally millions of forums out there.

On any topic.

Even simply statistically speaking, there's a ton like that.

[noduerme]

There are a few I'm in that really moderate. One is for owners of old Datsuns. One is for pedal steel guitar players ($5 per year, just to keep out the junk). That's okay if you're running a PHP forum with a couple thousand users, a few dozen concurrents at most. Modding this thing as one or a few people? That's a whole 'nother animal.

[peoplefromibiza]

> Modding this thing as one or a few people? That's a whole 'nother animal

But does this make HN truly unique?

I don't think it does.

If the OP said "among the forums I'm in HN is the only one that ..." I'd have nothing to object.

[noduerme]

To me it's the one thing that truly does. I've been here ten years and I think the moderation is the unsung reason it's survived and manages to keep going. It's actually not obvious at all how personal and deep the moderation is until you get on the wrong side of it. If you've never been banned, it's like the invisible protocol that keeps communication flowing smoothly; you don't ask what that protocol is if it doesn't break down. It's quite subtle, at times almost sublime in that it's capable of weighing humanity against dread/mob/internet. So in my observation over many years, I think that is definitely what has made this site unique.

[falseanon3000]

That's rich, HN blocks all posts from VPN and flags all new account posts which are hidden until approved. Like this one.

[fragmede]

off the top of my head: metafilter.com, lobste.rs, something awful,

[glenstein]

I think tildes, and the main instance of Lemmy count as well.

[Banana699]

metafilter is anything but apolitical, they literally ban differences of opinion.