Earlier quoted context omitted.
For sure, but then the followup question is "do I want to spend my time and energy around a bunch of people I think are wrong?'
If they're correct, maybe?
If they're correct, and constantly telling you you're wrong...
Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
211–220 of 498 posts
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are over 1,200 comments on this controversial story alone, with plenty of debate within: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43517833 What more evidence do you need that spirited disagreement is alive and well here?
That seems like a pretty mild controversy to me. How many people could even say whether their water has added fluoride?
What kind of evidence would satisfy you, then?
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Not thriv[ing]" is not the same as being quashed. Minority opinions don't always rise to the popularity or acceptance level of majority opinions, and that's OK.
Let us not use the word "thrive" or "quash" to avoid misunderstandings. To rephrase, I hope that on HN even minority opinions have reasonable rebuttals. Unfortunately what currently happens is people flag minority opinions with no discussion.
"flag" and "downvote" are two different tools with two different purposes.
"downvote" seems more appropriate for for "this is not interesting and should be less prominent".
"flag" seems more appropriate for "this should not be here at all".
By way of an example, on a political story, if you say something merely unpopular, you'll get downvotes and replies; if you say something hateful, you'll (usually) get flagged.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#214> He's still kind and thoughtful, but he's going to post as tomhow from now on
I laughed at this phrasing. Welcome tomhow!
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#215One thing that I appreciate about dang, and PG before him, is their intellectual honesty and strong sense of ethics. On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an investment firm as promotion for their business. But because HN was started by an individual with real values, and has been operated day-to-day by individuals that followed in his tradition, its been capable of unreasonable greatness and r…
I was there since around 2015 and the evolution of that forum and its population/opinion has been very interesting, to say to put it mildly... Remember when the biggest disagreements were about ORM & Frameworks? I miss those days. I didnt even mind the discussion about the ethics of Uber or Airbnb, but now, now it is different, & not for the better.
Been here since 2011 and reading for a few years longer than that. I don't think the site has changed, more that the world has changed (a lot). There isn't that general excitement around consumer tech and programming that there was 15-20 years ago. We've gone from talking about how we need to start teaching coding in schools to how we shouldn't bother because AI will be doing it anyway.
The fun has been sucked out of it all. It wasn't all that long ago that we were excited by simple but fun devices like the iPad Nano and Flip camera. Now we all have phones that can shoot Hollywood films, we can access all art every created on them, and we have watches that can save our lives...and we've got a bit too used to it.
On top of that around here we used to get excited about scrappy startups raising funding and trying to change the world. Unfortunately because a number of those companies went on to dominate the world in negative ways, exploit users and hoard wealth, people have become jaded and scrappy startups are less exciting because we assume they'll eventually do something loathsome 10 years from now.
I'd love more framework debates, excitement, and creativity - but until the wider world is happy and positive again I'm not going to hold my breath.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#216Welcome and courage tomhow.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#217Many thanks for the warm welcome, everyone. It’s been a privilege to help support this community and to work alongside dang, who has been a great friend and mentor for many years. It’s a great responsibility, to keep HN a healthy and thriving community, and I’m continually amazed to see all the ways dang puts thought and energy into it. One final note is that it was never part of the negotiations that I was expected…
One more welcome from another Tom o/
Nice to hear someone else is looking at Arc now as well! Any chance we might see some issues on anarki resolved now? Perhaps https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/issues/89 would be a good starting point :grin:
Jokes aside, its good to see YC cares about community, and looking forward to seeing your nick in the comments. Good luck
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#218Hi, Same Tom Howard from osnews.com ??
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#219In the classic tradition of thinking that “dang” is pronounced “dang” and not “Dan G.” I propose that we read “tomhow” as “Tomh Ow”.
If you torture it a bit, you can make it "tomorrow" said with a weird accent. To mh ow
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#220> He has been doing HN moderation work for years already and knows the site and its practices inside-out, so the only new thing you'll see is mod comments from Tom showing up in the threads the way mine do.
I wonder if there are any other secret moderators.