alt Hacker NewsThat's true, but maybe there should be a meta section of the site where these topics can be openly discussed?
While I appreciate dang's perspective[1], and agree that most of these are baseless accusations, I also think that it's inevitable that a site with seemingly zero bot-mitigation techniques, where accounts and comments can be easily automated, doesn't have some or, I would wager _a lot_, of bot activity.
I would definitely appreciate some transparency here. E.g. are there any automated or manual bot detection and prevention techniques in place? If so, can these accounts and their comments be flagged as such?
Replies
There are a few horsemen of the online community apocalypse,
1) Politics 2) Religion 3) Meta
Fundamentally - Productive discussion is problem solving. A high signal to noise ratio community is almost always boring, see r/Badeconomics for example.
Politics, religion are low barrier to entry topics, and always result in flame wars, that then proceed to drag all other behavior down.
Meta is similar: To have a high signal community, with a large user base, you filter out thousands of accounts and comments, regularly. Meta spaces inevitably become the gathering point for these accounts and users, and their sheer volume ends up making public refutations and evidence sharing impossible.
As a result, meta becomes impossible to engage with at the level it was envisioned.
In my experience, all meta areas become staging grounds to target or harass moderation. HN is unique in the level of communication from Dang.
We're not going to have a meta section for reasons I've explained in the past:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22649383 (March 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24902628 (Oct 2020)
I've responded to your other point here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41713361