> And I'm speaking as someone with a lot of anti-authoritarian tendencies. I'm not shy at all about speaking my mind and I struggle with finding a way to feign respect for authority apparatuses that are not legitimate, like HN moderation. If I feel this apprehension and backlash, I can only imagine that more timid readers feel it to a much more damaging degree.
(I'm preemptively sorry if I end up delving into the realm of armchair psychology here)
Is it possible that, if you know you tend to look for authoritarian themes in the artifacts you interact with, that maybe part of your perception is the result of false positives magnified by the emotional impact of the administrative action?
There's always some subjective elements to imposing community rules as a moderator -- that's common in every community, ever. What would be less expected is malice in those actions.
I would agree if it was just me. But Googling around for some of the stuff that's happened, like with Michael O. Church, some blog posts about alleged anti-semitism in HN moderator actions, I think it's hardly just me.
I also don't think that bad moderator actions are common either. Most users probably don't even notice it. It's arguable that this makes it even worse, since it's harder to get the community to care about healthy community-approved policies if they are only protecting a handful of people who are sometimes outside of the HN group-think.
(I'm preemptively sorry if I end up delving into the realm of armchair psychology here)
Is it possible that, if you know you tend to look for authoritarian themes in the artifacts you interact with, that maybe part of your perception is the result of false positives magnified by the emotional impact of the administrative action?
There's always some subjective elements to imposing community rules as a moderator -- that's common in every community, ever. What would be less expected is malice in those actions.