> The moderation ... has a tendency to privilege toxic opinions stated in measured tones against the pushback they create.
I have noticed this as well.
Furthermore, the moderators definitely have a personal libertarian bent that regularly seeps into selective moderation. I routinely see someone declare an interesting political assertion and then any replies to it that disagree with the principle are shut down as being political, but the parent post is ignored.
Personally I inherently disagree that a forum can really be kept apolitical. Politics is the art of things that matter, the only things that are entirely apolitical are irrelevant and uncontroversial. As soon as you bring money, power, or status into the picture in any respect, someone will turn it into a political issue. I am not saying turn this into a campaign rally but many issues have underlying causes or worldviews that inch into the political domain, it is unavoidable.
> The technology backing HN is still massively inferior in every respect to what Usenet was 30 years ago. I tend to read each thread only once, and then only follow up discussions of my own comments. Following a thread over several days is a near hopeless endeavor. Why doesn't anybody combine the light touch moderation of HN, combined with the tools that a decent newsreader like nn or GNUS could provide?
You've just described a traditional threaded forum. Want to discuss some different aspect of a topic? Start a new thread. And in fact this significantly minimizes the amount of "redundant" conversation where four people are arguing similar things in different comment trees of a topic and you make a similar post multiple times.
Furthermore, a threaded model contributes to a more collaborative discussion. It's not upvoting my viewpoint and downvoting yours, as Reddit-style models inevitably turns into, it's just people discussing something because they want to discuss them. Not that arguments and flamewars don't exist, but when you turn it into a points-scoring game, you get sports-team mentality.
But people like the dopamine rush, so everything has to have upvotes and downvotes and scoring nowadays. It is what people congregate to. Traditional forums still exist and yet here we are, all of us.
(I do kind of agree to your point that having an "inbox" model like newsgroups could allow better discussion than a purely comment-tree based model like reddit or HN, but I'm not entirely sure that allowing the discussion to "branch" arbitrarily much is actually a benefit. You can still follow multiple discussions within a single thread on a regular forum too. However, I am very much of the opinion that "voting" systems inherently turn into "sports teams" and eventually a hivemind. The fact that Usenet and traditional forums aren't "gamified" is a huge plus IMO. The fact that "winning" means the dissenting viewpoint is suppressed is extremely problematic - I browse HN with 'showdead' on for exactly that reason.)
> the moderators definitely have a personal libertarian bent that regularly seeps into selective moderation
This is very much in the eye of the beholder. People's assumptions condition which posts they notice and how strongly they weight them. People with opposite assumptions end up with the opposite picture. (Edit: here's a nice exchange in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22706035). There are endless examples:
You're correct. But there is little doubt something is slowly sliding in the wrong direction.
I would like an ecological model to be used instead of this constant spectrum-y adherence.
In an ecological model you might for instance find yourself cutting back on the majority opinion expressed in reasonable ways - just because it is too popular. Here the moderator is not the butcher but the gardener promoting a variety of interesting flora.
This is the alternative to the 'balance hypothesis' I believe to be the primary culprit and a failed model.
I have noticed this as well.
Furthermore, the moderators definitely have a personal libertarian bent that regularly seeps into selective moderation. I routinely see someone declare an interesting political assertion and then any replies to it that disagree with the principle are shut down as being political, but the parent post is ignored.
Personally I inherently disagree that a forum can really be kept apolitical. Politics is the art of things that matter, the only things that are entirely apolitical are irrelevant and uncontroversial. As soon as you bring money, power, or status into the picture in any respect, someone will turn it into a political issue. I am not saying turn this into a campaign rally but many issues have underlying causes or worldviews that inch into the political domain, it is unavoidable.
> The technology backing HN is still massively inferior in every respect to what Usenet was 30 years ago. I tend to read each thread only once, and then only follow up discussions of my own comments. Following a thread over several days is a near hopeless endeavor. Why doesn't anybody combine the light touch moderation of HN, combined with the tools that a decent newsreader like nn or GNUS could provide?
You've just described a traditional threaded forum. Want to discuss some different aspect of a topic? Start a new thread. And in fact this significantly minimizes the amount of "redundant" conversation where four people are arguing similar things in different comment trees of a topic and you make a similar post multiple times.
Furthermore, a threaded model contributes to a more collaborative discussion. It's not upvoting my viewpoint and downvoting yours, as Reddit-style models inevitably turns into, it's just people discussing something because they want to discuss them. Not that arguments and flamewars don't exist, but when you turn it into a points-scoring game, you get sports-team mentality.
But people like the dopamine rush, so everything has to have upvotes and downvotes and scoring nowadays. It is what people congregate to. Traditional forums still exist and yet here we are, all of us.
(I do kind of agree to your point that having an "inbox" model like newsgroups could allow better discussion than a purely comment-tree based model like reddit or HN, but I'm not entirely sure that allowing the discussion to "branch" arbitrarily much is actually a benefit. You can still follow multiple discussions within a single thread on a regular forum too. However, I am very much of the opinion that "voting" systems inherently turn into "sports teams" and eventually a hivemind. The fact that Usenet and traditional forums aren't "gamified" is a huge plus IMO. The fact that "winning" means the dissenting viewpoint is suppressed is extremely problematic - I browse HN with 'showdead' on for exactly that reason.)