Welcome tomhow. I really appreciate the HN community and the efforts from the moderation team at helping to shape it into what it has become.
Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
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Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#442Many 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…
All hail our new, most favourite overlord from the British Commonwealth on days ending in "y"!
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#443> 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.
We're all secret moderators except you.
I thought we were all bots?
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#444One 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…
> On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an investment firm as promotion for their business. I think it's at least as plausible that this is part of the magic that makes it good. HN is sufficiently "on the margin" that they don't have to do things like placate advertisers with their moderation policies. The mods like dang, tomhow and pg mostly care about HN as users rather than owners. > It woul…
> I think it's at least as plausible that this is part of the magic that makes it good. HN is sufficiently "on the margin" that they don't have to do things like placate advertisers with their moderation policies. The mods like dang, tomhow and pg mostly care about HN as users rather than owners.
I agreed, and would say its stronger than that. Running HN well is great for Y Combinators reputation, and its focused on a relevant audience. I am sure that has to be very good for them.
> Once there's a non-profit behind it the non-profit has a mission of its own.
Absolutely. It happens a lot.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#445> He and Gackle have discussed diversifying their team, and adding a third moderator who is non-white, non-male, and, Bell joked, “non-balding.” Gackle clarified: “We've talked to each other about that. But we wouldn't make it a requirement.”
Without any negativity on Tom, whom I'm sure is excellent, I suspect you failed on this one @dang.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#446How does such a large famous forum get by with 1 computer and 2 mods. Theres no spam here. No fighting. How odd for the internet in 2025 XD
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#447Many 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…
All hail our new, most favourite overlord from the British Commonwealth on days ending in "y"!
I, for one, welcome our new overlord Tom.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#448One 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…
> On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an investment firm as promotion for their business. I think it's at least as plausible that this is part of the magic that makes it good. HN is sufficiently "on the margin" that they don't have to do things like placate advertisers with their moderation policies. The mods like dang, tomhow and pg mostly care about HN as users rather than owners. > It woul…
Over the years I've become quite jaded on non-profits personally. As they tend to appeal to the people who want to pursue an ideology rather than follow the goals of the non-profit. Which usually are at odds.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#449Many 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…
Please rewrite HN as an SPA using the most bleeding edge alpha JavaScript frameworks you can find.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#450Many 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 final note is that it was never part of the negotiations that I was expected to know or learn Arc, yet somehow in the onboarding process the HN Arc repo has found its way onto my machine, so it feels like the bait and switch is on…
I would love it if you could get the current HN code base into a state that it could be open sourced
I understand the desire to keep certain aspects “secret sauce” to prevent abuse, but surely that could be addressed with some kind of plugin mechanism and then just don’t open source those plugins