Comment by Mz

Here are two rules that I took from a quality forum I once belonged to which have their merits:

  1) Speak from firsthand personal experience.
  2) Or cite your sources.
  (3) or both)

My view is that you really should not be aiming to put certain individuals on a pedestal. You should be aiming to foster an environment with a high level of quality of conversation. If you put too much emphasis on specific members, that only makes it more likely that it will kill your site when they leave. Having the right rules, practices and culture in place is harder to do but more resilient. I don't care how idealistic, humble and/or brilliant any individual is, when some place starts catering overly much to that person's ego, it gets to the point where no one can disagree with them without all hell breaking loose. This is not a good way to foster good conversation and at some point it will start driving away good people.

Even on Hacker News, the most highly voted comments tend to come over and over from the same people. I have no reason whatsoever to believe that those individuals are simply always brilliant every time they open their mouth. I have every reason to believe that the karma system encourages members to jump on the bandwagon and upvote certain people simply for being those people. Having been the person on the pedestal, I think there is a serious downside to being on that pedestal and I actively seek to avoid being placed there. The only thing I have found that works well and consistently as an antidote to being consistently attacked is to deflect public praise. The one and only thing I know for sure is that the more some people heaped public praise upon me, the more other people felt the need to kick the crap out of me, prove I did not know everything, and try desperately to bring me down a notch. Conversely, not publicly thanking people for saying nice things about me, turning a deaf ear to it, and actively asserting that I don't have all the answers has dramatically reduced the degree to which I end up on the receiving end of ugly assaults.

(I cringe when I see other people having public praise heaped upon them. The fall is highly likely to come sooner or later and most people don't really know how to deal effectively when their adoring fans suddenly turn into a rabid lynch mob, a la how Britney Spears seemed to just get crazier and crazier the more desperately she tried to get back her status as America's Darling.)