I'm noticing that some of the comments are one-worded or just off-topic drivel. Either there should be a stringent culture of down-modding those comments or moderators should actively communicate with those users and discourage that behavior. It's better to set the bar a little high at the beginning than too low since the level of discourse will inevitably decrease as more people join.
In general, we'll moderate comments only for civility. They have up and down arrows, so I expect the community to take care of quality that way. That often seems to be the case here, where a comment will be buried under an avalanche of downvotes.
Exactly. It's kind of annoying to see that omniscient overlords are censoring people's comments -- but the people being censored get the idea that their comments aren't welcome and then they either shape up or go away. HN has stayed pretty readable as the once-enjoyable Reddit has become the biggest cesspool of stupidity I've ever had the misfortune of reading. (Can you guess by my tone that I used to really love Reddit but it's just not good anymore? It makes me sad.)
Matt, most of the stories on NonHackerNews.com could be on HN with no issues. So I don't get it. Why do you want to splinter a community you've helped build and maintain one of the top accounts with? Why name it NonHackerNews and not RandomSocialNews.com or LightlyModeratedSocialDiscussion.com? I don't see what this new site has to do with HN at all (besides you)
This is it. Stupid dotcom bubble has begun again. This time, when a social networking site took off, others will try to make social networking creating a social networking, hence: myspace/facebook/whatever --> ning. digg/reddit --> slinkset.
Slinkset is maybe not an original idea (corank is pretty similar and was around first) but it's a good one and very well-implemented. You don't make money by being original. You make it by being good. Allowing people to start their own sites trivially (not counting some goofy domain issues I had, I think NHN took me 10 minutes or so to set up) is a good idea, and one that has been popular since before the first bubble.
