PG: The biggest source of stress for me at YC was running HN

I honestly think the only solution is for individuals to recuse themselves from those networks (I say on one of those networks), lower the trust they place in digital information, etc. It's become clear that the downward spiral is intrinsic to the medium itself (or possibly just the scale). I don't believe that any amount of technology, or product-rethinking, or UX will change that. We just weren't meant to interact this way. My only hope is that people eventually get disenchanted or burned-out enough that they simply stop engaging.

I replied to the original tweet too ("what would you do if you were Jack Dorsey?"). I said I'd shut the whole thing down.

Sadly, the level headed people recuse themselves which only adds to the toxicity.

Actually what happens is the level headed people on one side of an issue divide recuse themselves, leaving a "seemingly level-headed consensus echo chamber" behind. IMHO, that's worse. This account exists largely to counter exactly that trend. It's important (to me) that newcomers to the site don't get the idea that "hackers" are all fringe libertarians on every non-technical subject.

This site may feel like a "consensus echo chamber" but in reality it is nothing remotely close to that. I think you may be running into the notice-dislike bias: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Since you report noticing fringe libertarians, we can be sure that you dislike fringe libertarianism. We can also be sure that they have just the opposite picture of HN, since everyone crafts their picture in the image of what they dislike, without realizing that they're doing that. It just feels like an objective picture. I can list dozens of examples of this, but I'll restrain myself for once and spare you.

Unfortunately, these extremely contradictory subjective images of HN seem to be a consequence of its structure, being non-siloed: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... This creates a paradox where precisely because the site is less divisive it feels more divisive—in the sense that it feels to people like it is dominated by their enemies, whoever their enemies may be. That's extremely bad for community, and I don't know what to do about it, other than post a version of this comment every time it comes up.

Thanks for caring about level-headeness, in any case.

>That's extremely bad for community, and I don't know what to do about it

If I were to start a site for online discussion, I would probably not even try to foster a sense of community in the participants.

Although is quite unhealthy for most people not to belong to a community, the human need for belonging is not so pressing that the average person cannot afford to participate a few hours a week on a site that has no hope of ever providing belongingness.

One advantage of having a T/V distinction in a language is that one can set the tone of a site by the address used, informal for "chummy aligned community" (belonging over contributing) and formal for "respectful diverse community" (contributing over belonging). Fortunately english has a formal "you" which we could use to demonstrate that this site is a community of inquiry among diverse opinions, not a community of like-minded folk. Unfortunately english no longer has the informal "thou"[1] so that signal is worth exactly zero bits.

[1] Don't thee thou me, thee thou thissen, and 'ow tha likes thee thouing.

Also, in the old days, T/V was asymmetric. If A V'd B, B T'd A. These days we use symmetric address, so either A and B T each other or they V each other. (if A are a business advertising, the choice of V or T implicitly segments their market. Some businesses wimp out and advertise in english to avoid making any decision.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction

As a German speaker, I can assure you that T/V doesn't necessarily say something about the level of politeness or respect in a discussion. I have witnessed newspaper comment sections or Facebook threads where people would V each other but still say very rude things.