> why? who cares? do you not know how to skim and skip irrelevant text?
Ignoring inflammatory content can be more taxing to people than you pretend, and moderators and flagging are too slow to act. It's not the end of the world, but it's annoying enough that I would consider alternative services.
A forum is nothing without its users, and a forum that puts its users first shouldn't irritate its users with off-putting content without good reason.
> you could think of any number of ways to vet comments.
Alright, I was just checking whether you had any new ideas, and it seems that you do not.
> you're wrong that there are fewer submissions to arxiv
HN receives at least twice as many submissions per month, and an order of magnitude more comments. This makes the arXiv a very poor analogy for HN.
> you're also wrong that it's moderated
From [0] (see also, [1]):
> All submissions are subject to a moderation process that verifies material is appropriate and topical. Material that contains offensive language, non-scientific content, or is plagiarized may be removed.
Looks a lot like they have moderation to me.
> i also don't understand how heavy moderation is a counterpoint
If you already heavily filter by quality, then the order in which posts are presented obviously becomes much less important.
> yc is one of the most successful vcs in the world - they can't afford moderators?
HN does have an excellent moderation team. They just aren't anywhere near as stringent as the arXiv, on quality, on politeness, or on any number of other characteristics.
If HN was as heavily moderated as the arXiv, then they wouldn't need a voting system either. It'd be a much colder place, though, which is probably why they don't do that.
[0]: https://arxiv.org/help/submit
[1]: https://arxiv.org/help/moderation