[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.