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Firstly make sure that some concept of respect, or politeness, is built in and applies to every person making comments. Encourage use of cites; some way of rewarding useful citations might be interesting. (EG, this post is lousy and only gets two upvotes, but the citation is great and gets ten.) Ban out-right some topics; or have very narrow constraints around how they are discussed. Some topics will instantly explode into heated bitter flamewars with no possibility of sharing useful information and no chance of changing people's opinions. They're toxic. Which is a shame, because they are usually the things where people actually need more and better information, and where a carefully arranged discussion could shed some light. Obvious examples of these topics are Palestine/Israel[1], Abortion, Circumcision, etc. (Yes, I know you posted two examples. I guess you have great users, long may that continue.) Your idea about collectively owning a site is perhaps useful, but you'll be in for a rough ride if you need to make changes that your users don't like. Because you've made them co-owners now, and they have a say, and they are entitled, and etc. You do need to find a way to split deterrents for posts that "do not belong here" and posts that "I disagree with". There's some suggestion that, on HN, acceptable posts are being downvoted because they're unpopular. In general, moderation is often awful. You need someone to kill the spam but after that lots of stuff becomes subjective and thus open to arguments. |