Hacker Remix

Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

1768 points by dang 1 day ago | 457 comments

Hi all,

Tom Howard is going public as HN moderator today. He has been doing HN moderation work for years already and knows the site and its practices inside-out, so the only new thing you'll see is mod comments from Tom showing up in the threads the way mine do. I'm not going anywhere, so you'll have two of us to put up with going forward :)

I've known Tom since he was sctb's and my batchmate back in YC W09. Many of you know him as the kind and thoughtful community member tomhoward (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tomhoward). He's still kind and thoughtful, but he's going to post as tomhow from now on (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tomhow), the same way I switched to dang when I went through this rite of passage years ago.

Below is a bit from Tom about himself. Please join me in welcoming him to this new status which he was crazy enough to say yes to!

---

YC and HN have been a huge part of my life for nearly two decades. I read pg's essay How to Start a Startup in 2005 after my friend (and later, co-founder) Fenn found it on Slashdot, and it opened our eyes as to how to go about building products and companies. I first signed up in late 2007, and since then HN has been the place I come to find interesting news and discussions.

Hacker News gave me a window into the big wide world of technology and startups, that had previously seemed so remote and opaque from where I lived (and still live) in Australia. We were lucky enough to be accepted into the W09 batch of YC, and since then HN has been a place where we could share announcements about the startup, but also where I could share the challenges and struggles I experienced in the startup journey and other aspects of life, particularly to do with health and wellbeing.

From the discussions that have happened about these topics I've ended up making enduring friendships with people all over the world, and have been able to learn many things that have improved my life in profound ways. I love HN's ethos - of being a place people come to engage their curiosity. That's what it's always been for me and what I hope I can help it to be for everyone!

--Tom

tomhow 1 day ago

Many thanks for the warm welcome, everyone.

It’s been a privilege to help support this community and to work alongside dang, who has been a great friend and mentor for many years. It’s a great responsibility, to keep HN a healthy and thriving community, and I’m continually amazed to see all the ways dang puts thought and energy into it.

One final note is that it was never part of the negotiations that I was expected to know or learn Arc, yet somehow in the onboarding process the HN Arc repo has found its way onto my machine, so it feels like the bait and switch is on…

zormino 1 day ago

Thank you for doing what you do! I'm sure it isn't easy keeping this place healthy and thriving, but me and so many others really appreciate the blood, sweat and probably a few literal tears it takes :)

jdthedisciple 21 hours ago

Not to forget — of course — the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that must've went into cushioning the brain from the occasional nervekiller comment, as well as the endo-/perilymph for the overall "mental balance".

frainfreeze 1 day ago

One more welcome from another Tom o/

Nice to hear someone else is looking at Arc now as well! Any chance we might see some issues on anarki resolved now? Perhaps https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/issues/89 would be a good starting point :grin:

Jokes aside, its good to see YC cares about community, and looking forward to seeing your nick in the comments. Good luck

tombert 1 day ago

Indeed, from yet another Tom, glad you're doing what you're doing. HN is the best forum on the internet in no small part due to very active moderation efforts.

simonebrunozzi 1 day ago

Welcome, Tom!

Thanks for your moderation work so far, and welcome as an official moderator. Glad you'll be helping Dang keeping this an awesome community.

wholinator2 15 hours ago

Hi, I'm just some young guy but i wanted to thank you for contributing to what makes this site great. It feels to me like this is one of the last bastions of the true news aggregator/comment media of old and i really appreciate everyone who dedicates time to maintaining it. Thanks <3

tomhow 7 hours ago

Thanks to you! We hope to keep the site great for people of all ages, but keeping it relevant for younger readers is something we particularly think about. You're most welcome to email us and tell us if you ever think of ways we can do better at this.

rurp 1 day ago

Welcome Tom! I want to add to the chorus saying how excellent HN has been for so many years, in large part thanks to the excellent moderation. I dove into forums early on and they have always been one of the favorite and most treasured parts of the internet. It's not an exaggeration to say that HN is one of the best ever. The longevity is commendable, especially in an industry full of fads and flameouts.

Dang and Tom, please keep doing what you're doing.

ddingus 1 day ago

Observation:

How lucky are we that our contributions here warrant two fine moderators?

I just read Tom's brief story on how he arrived here and what it means and felt... I don't really have a quick word for it.

I know I am better for having spent time here.

Oh, I got it! A tiny bit spoiled, but in the best of ways. Yeah, that is what I felt.

How lucky we are indeed. :)

BergAndCo 1 day ago

Do you have showdead enabled to see how many good comments are being unfairly censored? Otherwise this is just survivorship bias talking.

AlexeyBelov 22 hours ago

I have! It's very rare that I see a comment being flagged unfairly. Sometimes it appears as unfair to me, but then I try to look from other angles in case it's just my bias.

Also, don't forget that it's mainly other users who flag, not moderators.

Also also, it's a bit ironic coming from a 3 months old account with already negative karma. I believe HN has a problem with users who create many new accounts and don't bother to understand "what is a good thoughtful comment" and change their behaviour.

dang 21 hours ago

If you see a good comment in the [dead] state, you don't have to complain about it being "unfairly censored" - you can intervene to fix it by vouching for it. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

_Algernon_ 16 hours ago

That requires the user to reach the "small karma threshold". Difficult when the user you replied to has negative karma after several months of HN participation.

dang 14 hours ago

The threshold is 30 karma. Anyone can easily reach that if they want to use HN as intended.

_Algernon_ 16 hours ago

I have had showdead enabled for years and I think I can count the number of dead comments that didn't deserve the status on one hand.

ddingus 12 hours ago

Same.

I turned it on very soon after I setup my account. My own personal tolerance for speech is less aggressive than what we see here on HN. I dislike completely inaccessible history, and basic accountability is why.

Works like the trash does. Want to see how people live? Pick through the trash.

gsf_emergency_2 20 hours ago

I suspect that dang has been barely surviving the (e-)moderation-technology debt (Arc notwithstanding). Good to have a second, antipodal, guy take on the burden!

GVRV 22 hours ago

Congratulations Tom!

Tom (and Fenn) had rockstar status back when I was involved in university CS+Entrepreneurship clubs in Melbourne around 2009/2010 (mostly led by fine students at UniMelb, but I was helping spread the word at Monash) because they were the first(maybe one of the first?) Aussies to be accepted by YC. They always generously gave their time and advice at these student events, even dropped by the SiliconBeach networking meets to share their experiences and turned out to be exceptionally kind human beings in person. Definitely the right choice for moding this community!

tomhow 7 hours ago

I remember those days (and your username) very fondly. Great to see you still here.

We were the first startup to be Australian-based then move to the U.S. for YC.

Omnisio was an all-Australian team from the year before us but they were already residing in the U.S.

The first ever Australian-originated co-founder of a YC-backed company was Jamie Cameron. He co-founded Virtualmin, a commercially-supported fork of Webmin for virtual hosting, which Jamie first released in 1997. It looks like Virtualmin is still active today, which is awesome.

It just so happens that Jamie and Fenn used to sit next to each other in the software development team at Pacific Internet in Melbourne, where we all worked in the early 00s. Jamie's brother, Michael Cameron, was a co-founder of Rome2Rio, which was based at Inspire9 along with us from about 2011-12, and became one of the most successful consumer travel startups out of Australia.