Moderation has been a feature of complaint across every web forum (and many non-web forums) I've ever been a part of.
See, for example, the comments here (and even there) about StackExchange; 4chan; suicidegirls (NSFW) "spring cleaning"; the HUGE amount of meta / drama on Wikipedia (ANI alone is gigabytes of guff stretching over years about moderating that community. The holy books of millennia old religions are smaller than ANI. International trade argrements are smaller than ANI.)
But this meta bike-shedding has also been a feature of older systems. It's frequently created flame wars on Usenet - leading to various trolling groups sporging Usenet feeds. It's a feature of mailing lists.
I don't know what the average[1] age of HN is, but here's a result from a Usenet search for results before 1990 - before a lot of HN would have been born.
(Also, Google, please give me a shorter URL option to cut n paste. Don't make me have to learn what your URLs are doing; don't expect me to use a nasty URL shortener (which are blocked on many boards)).
Here's a mildly interesting message discussing some of the problems of moderating Usenet:
I'm not part of the 4chan nor suicidegirls communities, and the meta in wikipedia is not forum-style moderation. The places I've been that have moderation issues don't have people wondering why they've been hit. I'm not saying that other forums don't have issues, but that there is a constant sussurus about the problems of moderation here that I don't have in other places. No insight and no accountability = bad moderation practices.
Case in point: my parent comment is currently downmodded. Thanks to that downmodder for marking against my personal experience. But I have no way to find out why I've been affected, only that some random person somewhere in the world doesn't like what I said for some unknown reason, and my words are literally diminished in the eyes of others because I have (at least) one single dissenter.
Since I started here, I've noticed that people on HN have been complaining about the moderation more consistently than on any other web community I've been involved with, with the exception of Wikipedia (as you point out, but it's not the same flavour of moderation I mean)
I had down voted you (and thereby might be the person whom you are referring to who did so) as you are making an anecdotal statement that is sufficiently far-fetched as to be ludicrous. Now, in your follow-up, you seem to be lumping me (the person who downmodded you) into the category of "moderators", which is technically fine but then useless: I am another member of this site, just like you; the mechanisms here are then no different than they are on almost any other system that ha peer moderation. If you are using Slashdot, reddit, Digg, DISQUS... virtually any modern forum solution, there is a downvote feature, and it works virtually the same way. Yet, now your new comment (which I also "downmodded") seems to be ignorant of this mechanisms on all of these sites, disregards the list of sites procided by DanBC, and continues to not list any other sites thaw here moderation was not a common topic; you seriously just look like you've never used any other websites at this point.
No different from other peer moderation? And you downmod me? Using your first example, Slashdot, there is exactly the thing I am talking about: a reason for the mod. You seem to be more ignorant of the topic than you accuse me of being.
Similarly, you say I disregard a list of sites when I mention three of the four in my response about my personal experience being part of web communities (and seriously, 'as good as 4chan' is hardly an argument for content quality, particularly on a site where the users pride themselves on intellect and quality).
The reasons on Slashdot are both coarse (no detail: just a few adjectives; on the negative side, we have flame air, troll, offtopic, redundant, and overrated... I am not even certain which one I would have picked for "poster is arguing an anecdote without even providing his single datapoint), transient (when I spent years on Slashdot, and maybe currently still, you could only see one of these adjectives, even if a bunch of people downvoted you), and anonymous (your decisions could be meta-moderated, but the meta-moderation did not disclose who you were).
Your issues with not knowing who downvoted you for what reasons seem nearly identical to Slashdot, then (modulo I guess being marked "troll" when you were really downvoted for something more readily corrected). You had previously mad it clear that you cared deeply about the moderators being anonymous, and boy if Slashdot didn't maintain that.
Regardless: you have still, to this point, not stated even a single other web community you were a part of, only that they existed. The conversation becomes interesting an useful when you can point at actual examples (as it has now for Slashdot).
To look at this from another analogy, imagine it you claimed that you had never seen a bank that charged fees. Someone else responds saying they had never seen a bank that didn't charge fees and then lists ten banks that charge fees. You then respond with simply "I don't agree those are banks" but don't provide a list of banks that don't charge fees. I fail to see how you can claim you are then being helpful in that conversation.
Okay, I make a clear distinction between community up / down voting, and owner moderation. I should have been clearer.
Don't worry about the down votes. They are frustrating, but anyone on HN knows that you occasionally get a random down vote. By themselves they're usually meaningless. Yes, people should really either engage in the debate and not down vote, or not engage, and down vote, and explain if needed. (Personally, reasons for down voting should be restricted to "this comment does not belong here; it adds nothing to the discussion".)
I think there's general agreement about voting on HN - up vote things that are well written, even if you disagree. Don't down vote just because you disagree. Down vote things that add nothing to the discussion. Flag spam or other blatantly harmful stuff.
But all of that is separate from the issue of trusted people within HN locking threads, deleting threads, deleting posts, changing titles, banning users, etc.
> No insight and no accountability = bad moderation practices.
I honestly truly disagree with this. Strongly.
It's really simple to say "Here are a list of rules. Don't break them or we mod your posts". But when Bob starts skirting the rules there can be huge flamewars. Bob says he clearly wasn't breaking any rules, mods say he was, other people jump in saying that he wasn't and the mod is dumb and has made a bunch of similar stupid decisions, then other people jump in and say that maybe Bob was a bit close but he does so much good that we can make an exception for him, then other people leap in and say it's a stupid rule anyway. Meanwhile, this thread is getting so much attention that the real stuff of the forum is being ignored. New users are not interested in that stuff. The thread creates an unpleasant atmosphere which is noticed by other people. Now whenever Bob replies to someone who's a mod there's suspicion that Bob is just flame-baiting.
Anyway, I'm doing what I hate, so I apologies to everyone on HN. I'm setting my noprocrast settings for 48 hours. This is my lost post on this thread!
Yeah, my mistake. The word 'moderation' to me means more the forum-style stuff (given also the terms up/downmod), what moderation in the OP meant was what I consider 'editing', probably due to growing up with a publisher for a mother.
Moderation has been a feature of complaint across every web forum (and many non-web forums) I've ever been a part of.
See, for example, the comments here (and even there) about StackExchange; 4chan; suicidegirls (NSFW) "spring cleaning"; the HUGE amount of meta / drama on Wikipedia (ANI alone is gigabytes of guff stretching over years about moderating that community. The holy books of millennia old religions are smaller than ANI. International trade argrements are smaller than ANI.)
But this meta bike-shedding has also been a feature of older systems. It's frequently created flame wars on Usenet - leading to various trolling groups sporging Usenet feeds. It's a feature of mailing lists.
I don't know what the average[1] age of HN is, but here's a result from a Usenet search for results before 1990 - before a lot of HN would have been born.
(https://groups.google.com/groups/search?safe=off&q=moder...)
(Also, Google, please give me a shorter URL option to cut n paste. Don't make me have to learn what your URLs are doing; don't expect me to use a nasty URL shortener (which are blocked on many boards)).
Here's a mildly interesting message discussing some of the problems of moderating Usenet:
(https://groups.google.com/group/mod.comp-soc/msg/ee189feb225...)