Reddit used to be amazing. Before that slashdot. But both have become meme generators and in jokes. I guess if this site attracts more people then it too will fall to crappy comments and poor quality stuff voted to the front page.
Slashdot didn't seem to be run by morons, the stories were filtered by editors the user moderation was complex and nuanced yet it still succumbed to the lowest common denominator.
Yes, that's one possible natural progression of a site that becomes popular; although in the meantime, Slashdot gave us a decade or more of valid insights.
Maybe the fate of all online communities is to die of popularity, or die by its users abandoning the site and it devolving into a clique of a few unconditional regulars; the key is to make good use of them while they last.
I've been reading and posting to Slashdot for about 15 years and I haven't noticed any obvious change in the quality of discussions in that time. You say "it succumbed to the LCD" but that's pretty subjective. My own experience suggests it's pretty similar to how it always was.
The biggest drops in Slashdot quality have been due to botched rollouts of badly implemented features not changes in the commenters.
Reddit can still be amazing, just stay away from the default subreddits. The more mainstream a subreddit is, the worst it gets over time. Some of them refuse to be set as a default for that very reason.
Although, they have started down the path of censoring stuff they don't like and promoting stuff they do like, so it'll likely start withering away as people start finding alternatives.
How is HN any different than any other places? What's "right" about it?
It's just the general audience here is different but the technical details about commenting are exactly the same. You bring the mainstream audience here and you will end up with Reddit.
Attracting the right audience is a big part of making a good comment system...
Technical solutions are not enough by themselves to solve social problems. However, the threaded system, user moderation, and aggressive reputation enforcement are useful tools for keeping a healthy environment with a controlled volume of regular readers.
I'm not saying that this site could survive going mainstream - but right now it's an example of working user-generated commentary.
But the thing is, of course, that you are framing your answer to not include the original case. In my book that is just a non-answer.
You even started out with "a funny" saying "look at this site you're reading". You didn't care if it fitted the case, you just wanted to say something clever. Very Reddit-like (and I do like Reddit).
But in what we could call an open environment where people do not care about their reputation - such as Vice - what can you do?
> You are framing your answer to not include the original case
That's your interpretation. I interpreted the original claim by erdojo that "User-generated commentary can be done right" as a general assertion that there are ways to achieve meaningful conversation, just like the one we're having now.
> In what we could call an open environment where people do not care about their reputation - such as Vice - what can you do?
Now you are framing the answer. If you want to know how to build a good comment system, my answer is "don't create an open environment where people do not care about their reputation".
If you find this to be a non-answer, maybe it's because I didn't reply to what you thought was the question - but that question had not been made explicit, so there was leeway in how to address it.
It's not even the general audience. It's the subject matter, which is carefully selected.
HN is the best place on the internet for discussing a specific kind of subject, mainy technical matters, programming and the like. But post anything half-way political, and the comments look no better or more informed than anywhere else on the web. Which is why the moderation doesn't allow it.
It's so very different. Most comment sections don't have peer-moderation. Those that do (e.g. the Guardian) tend to not really penalise comments - in fact, the Guardian doesn't even have a 'downvote' concept. Even genuine rivals to HN (reddit, slashdot) tend to be much less strict on quality of comments. HN will punish you if you write too many comments that don't get strongly upvoted, and it's that kind of approach that helps to guarantee productive commentary.
