Samsung chair imprisoned and 24 others found guilty in union-busting case

You are making a shallow, angry, generic, and therefore boring low-threshold indignation against the commenters.

Dang is the moderator of hacker news.

I know this.

Interesting that he needs to pass judgement on a site where users can vote on comments.

Consider this low-fi analogy:

Voting on posts and comments is like passing laws in a direct democracy.

Moderation is like a semi-permanent judiciary that can override laws passed by the electorate.

Moderation exists to override the short-term will of the electorate when it conflicts with the long-term central values of the community.

Or maybe this kind of self righteous stuff just isn't necessary at all.

You could try building your own community and moderate it yourself, if you don't like what dang is doing.

Or maybe, an easier option could be taking some time to carefully consider what exactly you consider to be self righteous so that a discussion can be had about it. More specificity in complaints typically yields a better response.

dang does a great job of moderating this forum, but to analogize him as having had built this community is a bit extreme, methinks.

>More specificity in complaints typically yields a better response.

well that's exactly why people are complaining about dangs' comment. it's basically a very generic "everything here is low quality. do better." statement with little direction as to what must be corrected.

With no direction on how to improve, but with confirmation that what they're doing is wrong, people tend to get worse.

Pointing to the rules, and then calling discussion 'shallow' isn't my idea of moderation. It's a critique. Not one I disagree with necessarily, but one that I believe is nearly pointless from a moderation standpoint. It teaches nothing, gives no example of positive behaviour, and discourages people from discourse all together -- how are they to know if what they post is worth while? Should they risk reprimand to try and be thoughtful? Maybe not.

'Do better.' as life-coaching advice has never worked.

We need 'Do better X because Y is bad.', complete with examples, rather than aloof judgements.

"Low-threshold indignation makes for shallow, angry, generic, and therefore boring discussion"

That's not "do better". That's an explicit condemnation of the behavior being criticized, and an explanation of why it's being criticized.

It's been shown time and again that anonymous and unmoderated forums consistently devolve to radicalized echo chambers. I'm glad that's not what hn is.

Users routinely upvote flamebait, indignation and snark. That is a flaw of the voting system. Going by upvotes alone would, unfortunately, make HN go down in flames. I say "unfortunately" because it would be so much less work.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I wouldn't have said my comment was indignant (though I did say "lame"), but sure, shallow and generic it was—and off-topic too. For all that, moderation comments are needed here. They are out-of-band feedback signals which help the system regulate itself. Without them, the site would melt down into a hot core of indignation and fluff. We have a lot of experience with this, as does anyone who's been around the block on the internet.

If it helps at all, such comments are even more tedious to write than they are to read: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....