Indeed once you understand that the moderators are helping people with brand management and suggestions at the very least, and the extent to which this occurs is hidden, they lose the ability to claim neutrality and open themselves up to lots of questions about what else they're doing
That's a result of actions taken not some kind of theoretical argument.
> open themselves up to lots of questions about what else they are doing
Is there a name for this pattern?
1. Observe that a human is taking some action to more effectively do their jobs… but in a way that has some risk of being unevenly applied or also self-beneficial.
2. Conclude that this action is itself malfeasance.
3. Conclude that this person merits generalized distrust.
I see this all the time in comments on (for example) youtube. I struggle to see how social cohesion could survive in a world where more people do this: If you lose trust by doing your job well, then its harder to motivate yourself to maintain others’ trust that you’ll do your job.
It depends what you think their job is I guess. I never imagined that forum moderation would include helping brand management for forum users - in fact I'd say those two behaviours are in direct conflict with each other.
If your job is forum moderation and you do that well great. But if the same people use those same accesses to give some forum users help over other forum users without any transparency then there is no illusion of neutral moderation and this whole forum just may be undisclosed pr/ brand management whole people are discussing companies/jobs/tech in a way that might bias others.
I haven't read anything on the site providing brand management to some users. Was that disclosed somewhere? How could you trust any post talking about a new company or having to do with companies in general if some are getting assistance to boost their reception and others aren't?
I think their job is maintaining the health and ambient trust within the social system that is HN -- keeping HN a place people generally want to keep coming back to for thoughtful conversation. Assuming thats reasonably close, lets look at the activities we're talking about:
> As for helping you by editing text, or emailing people when their stuff shows up on HN's front page, I do that frequently for YC founders, non-YC founders, and non-founders.
So there are two categories:
1. Helping clarify each others messages.
2. Letting people know when something is happening that concerns them.
Why do they not disclose this? Suppose you have two friends Alice and Bob. Suppose Alice tells you that about something Bob said which really upset her. Would you:
A. Commiserate with Alice by telling her about something ambiguously untrustworthy that Bob said.
B. Reply to Alice by comparing Bob unfavourably to Frank.
C. Listen empathetically to Alice and then when she's vented, offer another more charitable interpretation of Bob's words.
D. Later, let Bob know that Alice is upset with him and he might want to chat with her.
I bet most folks would advocate options C and D. Yet that is is basically doing "undisclosed pr/brand management" on behalf of Bob. It is pretty much the same as what dang says he does for HN. I don't think HN discloses this for the same reason that they don't disclose a habit of holding doors open for people -- I assume they don't remark on it because it seems unremarkable to them.
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Your words like "neutral", "give some forum users help over other forum users" imply a strict duty to avoid cooperative behaviour in favour of competitive behaviour. I don't think that duty is nearly so strict.
This is probably the crux of the problem, the scenario you're describing is based mostly on assumptions of your own - like 'brand management' (whatever that is) and 'secret'. See for instance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29231229
As with any online thing made mostly of people, there are lot of not entirely obvious things about HN, both good and bad. It's not the Brand Management (whatever that is) Shadow Council you seem convinced it is.
There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires! When Reverend Hale comes, you will proceed to look for signs of witchcraft here.
