HACKER Q&A
📣 catvsdog

How does Hacker News moderation work?


Being a Groupme admin of a .. group. I had trouble even maintaining the discussion topic related to the group's purpose. I can only imagine how hard it might be doing here, are there tips to maintaining good online communities? How does HN do it this well?


  👤 yesenadam Accepted Answer ✓
Reading dang's comments for an hour or two - maybe start following threads from https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang - will give you some idea! I think I've learnt more from him than anyone on this site, and a large fraction of the awesome, super-impressive, inspiring comments I've read on here have been his. A lot of them explain his thinking, principles, aims, practices etc, some at great length.

👤 formerkrogemp
I think the source was almost entirely written by that guy Paul Graham. The user "dang" is on this site basically 28/7. The guidelines are often waved at new users. Discussions die after a few hours. This 'community' has changed a lot in the last 12 years, so I don't know how well they're doing. Eternal September is something.

👤 really_relay
The New Yorker wrote a great article on the process. [0]

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...