[okaleniuk]

There should be a lesson for other communities but, unfortunately, there is none. StackOverflow used to be a fun and welcoming place in 2009. It became a toxic hellhole overtime

There are no obvious flows in the original design, and there were no endemic wrongdoings in the governance either. It just rotted slowly like any other community does. And nobody in the world knows how to keep communities from becoming toxic. There is simply no recipe. And that's why StackOverflow doesn't serve as a lesson either.

[toast0]

> And nobody in the world knows how to keep communities from becoming toxic. There is simply no recipe.

There's a recipe, it's just expensive. Intense moderation, exclude disruptive users, no grand plan for massive growth/inclusion.

StackOverflow did have intense moderation, but it also seemed to want to be a place where anyone could ask a question and that desire for mass inclusion competes with the desire to be moderated/curated and then there's issues.

[cogman10]

Wikipedia is one of the only places I know that seems to have gotten this pretty much perfect.

I think the thing that ultimately made wikipedia work is that moderation actions are done pretty publicly with a heavy focus on citing sources. The problem a lot of these OG Web 2.0 sites have is many of them have focused on keeping moderation discussion and decisions as private as possible.

That, I think, is where SO failed. Someone can mark something as a dup and that's basically the end of discussion. I think that's also where sites like Reddit really struggle. A power tripping mod can destroy a community pretty quickly and they can hide their tracks by deleting comments of criticism.

It's one thing I think HN actually gets pretty right. It's a much smaller userbase, which helps, but also the mods here are both well known and they post the reasons for their actions. There's still some opacity, but the fact that mod decisions are mostly public seems to have worked well here.

[onesandofgrain]

I’d reckon a set of mods with no superiority complex is one step though lol

[kstrauser]

And a vetted set of mods, put in place by the site’s leadership, with the power to overturn martinet decisions.

[zahlman]

You mean, like, the actual moderators, overseeing the actions that people keep attributing to "moderators" who objectively are nothing of the sort?

It's honestly really frustrating to keep reading these takes.

[kstrauser]

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Suppose HN allowed regular users to perform certain moderation actions. I use that and start powertripping and deleting all your posts, for instance. In that scenario, I expect dang would reach out to me pretty quickly and tell me to please stop doing that.

In that case, dang would be part of the "vetted set of mods" I mention with the power to overturn my decisions, because HN is paying him to make sure the site runs in line with its vision, even if that means disagreeing with the "ground-level" moderators.

I'm pretty sure you and I see eye to eye on this, given your other comments on the topic here.

[zahlman]

There are working recipes, but they're pretty much antithetical to growth.

Shirky's "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy" is highly relevant here.

[groundzeros2015]

> there were no endemic wrongdoings in the governance either

Once it became a product there was constant tension between community and management. A 24 year old PM who had never worked in software would come declare a sweeping change and then accuse the community for being toxic uninclusive trolls.

Also Joel violated all rules and norms and used it to promote his personal political platform.

[alistairSH]

And nobody in the world knows how to keep communities from becoming toxic.

Mostly true, but there are exceptions... HN is about as good as I've seen for a publicly accessible forum, but has very active moderation (both from Dang and team and a pretty good vote & flag mechanism).

The other good forums I've seen are all private and/or extremely niche and really only findable via word of mouth. And have very active moderation.

But, yeah, I think you're probably right for any sufficiently large forum. It'll trend to enshittification without very active management.

[cogman10]

Wikipedia is what I'd call out as the next best moderated site out there which is also huge.

I think a large part of that is due to moderation actions being very public and open for discussion on the "talk" page.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> HN is about as good as I've seen for a publicly accessible forum, but has very active moderation

I wonder how much of it is because of good moderation versus having a site that deliberately doesn't appeal to the masses. The layout is purely text (Aside from the small "Y" logo in the top). No embedded images or videos. Comment scores (aside from your own) are hidden, usernames aren't emphasized with bold, and there are no profile pictures, so karma farming is even more pointless (no pun intended) than on reddit. There's no visible score to give the dopamine from the knowledge of others seeing your high score.

In other words, a smaller community is easier to keep clean, and HN's design naturally keeps the community small.

[ronbenton]

>And nobody in the world knows how to keep communities from becoming toxic. There is simply no recipe. And that's why StackOverflow doesn't serve as a lesson either.

I think a well-moderated community can be non-toxic. Lobste.rs is a good if not extreme example: it's kind of a vouch system for the people you refer and there's pretty good moderation to prevent overly mean discussion.

[whstl]

HN itself is way better than people give credit to. The toxicity tends to be very isolated, and divisive topics disappear quickly from the front page.

I find that there's still a subset of users that make it worse than it should be, by making too much noise about "tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage", but that is already against the rules/guidelines.

[groundzeros2015]

So much is removed that it gives a false appearance of consensus and harmony.

[cogman10]

AFAIK, not a lot in HN gets outright removed. A decent amount of stuff will get flagged (and thus becomes invisible) especially when it's anywhere near politics.

But even in those spaces, few things end up actually being flagged even when the flames are burning hot.

[groundzeros2015]

This is not my experience. So many comments are flagged and removed. It’s just popularity.

I think it’s fine they are hidden by default. But unt we can see all removed comments we can’t understand the debate.

[zahlman]

> I think it’s fine they are hidden by default. But unt we can see all removed comments we can’t understand the debate.

Do you have showdead on?

[myvoiceismypass]

/active vs the actual front page here are two very very very different experiences.