Comment by AnthonyMouse
3 years ago
HN is a good example of where the moderation works to a large extent, but it has trade offs that can be extremely problematic.
For example, politically charged discourse is suppressed. That's going to result in a higher level of civility, but now you have a large community of people with an impaired ability to affect the political process.
"If I can't be politically charged on HN, I won't be politically charged anywhere"
Politically-charged or at least on the wrong side of the line. HN does tend to discourage a lot of low effort flamebait which is generally for the good. But even politely-made minority arguments can easily be downvoted as well.