Analysis: Should Hacker News Ban "I asked $AI, and it said" Replies in Guidelines?
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Summary
The article discusses whether Hacker News should ban replies that begin with "I asked $AI, and it said" in its guidelines. The author argues against adding this specific prohibition, explaining that HN's moderation approach relies on a combination of written guidelines and moderator discretion (akin to 'case law' rather than exhaustive 'statutes'). The core argument is that overly detailed guidelines become unreadable and less effective, and that the current balance struck by HN's founder Dan over many years works well. The piece emphasizes that not all rules need to be explicitly written down, and that community norms and moderator judgment can effectively handle edge cases like AI-generated replies.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledThe rules are written; they're just not all in that one document.
The balance HN strikes here is something Dan has worked out over a very long time.
First, the guidelines get too large, and then nobody reads them all, which makes the guideline document less useful.
Better to keep the guidelines page reduced down to a core of things, especially if those things can be extrapolated to most of the rest of the rules you care about.
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