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I understand, and lament, that the world is so polarised these days. There's a limit to what we in this little corner of the web can do to correct such powerful global macro trends, but we'll continue to try our best.

If you see things that are unfairly flagged, you can email us and we'll look at them. As long as comments/submissions are within the guidelines, we'll restore them.

We want HN to be a place where people can discuss contentious topics. This is a major reason why I've moved into an expanded role here. I think HN has been, and can continue to be, one of the better places on the internet for discussing contentious topics.

The thing to remember is the guiding principle of HN is curiosity. This place is not meant to be for ideological battle, or for trying to win arguments. It's for conversations where we can learn from each other about things we're curious about.

I've always liked to learn about the opposing side of whatever position I hold. That's why I've found HN to be so valuable, and I want it to be a place people to come to for that reason for many years into the future.


How effective are vouches in this regard?

I'll do that reasonably frequently on both posts and comments, though I'm not sure how effective that is.

One sec, let's look at the endpoint ... First page (30 entries) for each shows, at this writing:

- 13 dead of 30 vouched, submissions.

- 26 dead of 30 vouched, comments.

The endpoints for the uninitiated:

  Posts:  https://news.ycombinator.com/vouched?id=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE
  Comments:  https://news.ycombinator.com/vouched?id=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE&kind=comment
I'll also admit that at times that's a protest vote against mod interactions as well.

(The URLs are only visible to the owner of the UID, and I presume, moderators as well.)


Sincere thanks to you too, Scott.

Many 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 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…


Thank you for doing what you do! I'm sure it isn't easy keeping this place healthy and thriving, but me and so many others really appreciate the blood, sweat and probably a few literal tears it takes :)

Congrats Tom!

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


Indeed, from yet another Tom, glad you're doing what you're doing. HN is the best forum on the internet in no small part due to very active moderation efforts.

Welcome, Tom!

Thanks for your moderation work so far, and welcome as an official moderator. Glad you'll be helping Dang keeping this an awesome community.


Welcome! And also I am so sorry

Best wishes! Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

Welcome tom, as a fellow moderator its not easy haha, I am sure its easier than Reddit.

Thanks in advance, Tom. Never a better time for more smart work in this area.

Thank you for taking up the mantle!

Tom, what a small world. Seems just like yesterday we were at Inspire 9 together!

Welcome! Good luck for a hard job.

Welcome, Tomho W

Welcome!

Welcome Tom!

Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

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