Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

I was thinking about this in the car and came up with the same thought, that it could just be a comment that no one but the OP (and mods, perhaps) saw. I am definitely guilty of posting some bad comments as far as the HN definition goes. I blame living on USENET in the late '80s and early '90s and the WELL, but the reason is immaterial. The problem is that many times I don't really see the comment as particularly bad, or I haven't thought about how someone else might interpret it, didn't realize how I was being dumb, or I simply forget the tone of the venue I'm in.

When someone points one of these issues out, I often feel bad about it. However, I usually don't edit my comment to remove or reword the offending portion because I think it's rude to the person replying and, oddly enough, those who later read it. Because they've made a good point, if I fix up my post it breaks continuity, possibly makes them sound like an idiot, and feels like I'm trying to cover up my lameness.

If I got a similar note that was private I'd feel free to make the changes without as many of those worries. Especially without concern for how they'd take it as presumably they're looking for me to shape up not score points on my misbehavior. I also think that some people that might say something are loathe to reply publicly in fear of just making it worse.

Of course it could seriously backfire if people used it just to be mean back without fear of the community observing. But it seems like it might be worthy of trying.

Commenting is almost no-friction and there is an immediate psychological reward in getting your voice heard. This makes it extremely easy to knee-jerk. Perhaps you can A) make commenting cost more or B) delay the reward long enough to force a re-evaluation before the comment goes public.

For A you might try making commenting cost karma in certain situations.

For B I've got no ideas. I'm thinking about how I sometimes will write an emotionally charged email and then wait a day before sending it because I know I'm unable to think clearly. Emotions will have cooled by then and the email looks like it was written by a crazy person. There's not any way to force delays on commenting that I can think of since the articles and discussions here move so fast.

First, thank you for acknowledging this as a real problem. The quality of HN is a function of the community. This doesn't just mean who's here - it means who's here, and how they act when they're here. While tweaking the "game variables" on the site may help, I believe it's more important and to the point to reinforce community standards somehow.

When I first discovered HN, I quickly learned by various cues that this is not a place to drop sarcastic, one-line zingers, but rather a place to act as you would in a real-life business setting. The cues included both the example of the dominant commenters, and their chiding of non-conforming commenters. Over time, with the growth of the site, there are proportionally fewer commenters setting a strong example, and more commenters lowering the bar and getting away with it.

We are conditioned to feel that democracy = good, but in online communities I do not believe it is the case. Rather, when there were more "good" commenters, democracy was on your side. The "good" commenters had the power of numbers. Now, increasingly, the unconditioned, lower-quality commenters are beginning to gain the power of numbers. In order to counter this, you must provide the "good" commenters with a some other type of power.

You could hand select a number of members, based on your personal knowledge of their historical comment quality, and how much you think they reflect the HN that we want. Give them the ability to super-downvote. This status does not need to be public. It's not a status-symbol. As a bonus, this could give the exemplary members some small incentive for sticking around, by making them feel like they can do something meaningful to fight for HN, beyond just complaining.

Also, Eliezer has dealt with this problem quite a bit, rather successfully, IMO. Maybe ask him.

The simpler ideas I have are to aggressively kill any snarky or pun-filled comments and raise the downvote karma limit (again...).

A slightly more interesting idea would be to temporarily ban any member that does very anti-guideline things from posting for a little while, coupled with an explanation as to why they were banned. Even an hour-long ban may be effective. The GameFAQs boards do this, and while they have their own problems, not following the guidelines isn't one of them.