FWIW, I think if there’s any community that can meaningfully ensure discussion from all sides can occur without irrevocably degrading the level of quality / emphasis on seeking truth within that discourse, it’s HN.
I would be careful though, as the culture of thoughtful inquiry that HN has managed to cultivate in these past few years, could easily end up being destroyed and end up going the way of Reddit.
The only reason it hasn’t, at least in my opinion, is because of the largely technical/engineering focused user base that HN caters to. There’s only a limited number of us in the world though, and if moderation from your side doesn’t keep up, it’s pretty much inevitable that the site will get overrun as it becomes more and more mainstream.
The #1 way for us all to be careful is to follow the guideline against insinuating astroturfing or bad faith in comments, and to encourage other community members to follow it. I hope the users who have been reading my posts about this (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for plenty more) will start doing more such encouragement. Because you're right: we can't keep up. Only the community can.
Have you considered hiring more people to work specifically on data analytics, fraud detection, etc. for HN?
This is a pretty valuable place, and I would hate to see it fall because of a lack of resources/support. I’m not sure how Paul Graham or YC in general views it, but surely there’s enough inherent value in the existence of something like Hacker News even from a purely business standpoint to support having more funds allocated or it?
I would be careful though, as the culture of thoughtful inquiry that HN has managed to cultivate in these past few years, could easily end up being destroyed and end up going the way of Reddit.
The only reason it hasn’t, at least in my opinion, is because of the largely technical/engineering focused user base that HN caters to. There’s only a limited number of us in the world though, and if moderation from your side doesn’t keep up, it’s pretty much inevitable that the site will get overrun as it becomes more and more mainstream.