a) A large community.
b) Unpaid moderators who include people and cliques who feel self-worth in gatekeeping and other forms of "power".
It's always been this way in most fora; the more success, the larger the community, with a corresponding increase in inappropriate moderation.
See also, Wikipedia, Reddit, everywhere else of this ilk.
HN's acclaimed moderation - apart from being in a much smaller community, doesn't fit that model at all; perhaps it's not scalable though.
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang
a) A large community.
b) Unpaid moderators who include people and cliques who feel self-worth in gatekeeping and other forms of "power".
It's always been this way in most fora; the more success, the larger the community, with a corresponding increase in inappropriate moderation.
See also, Wikipedia, Reddit, everywhere else of this ilk.
HN's acclaimed moderation - apart from being in a much smaller community, doesn't fit that model at all; perhaps it's not scalable though.