Initial conditions, both over the lifetime of a post, and of a reader's encounter with a post, both have a huge impact on discussion direction. Much of HN's moderation seems to operate with this in mind.
Clickbait titles are de-baited. Indirect links are disintermediated. Divergent distracting comments are downweighted.
Much of my own interaction with the HN mod team (ask dang, I email fairly frequently, probably a few times a week) are with regard to link or title issues.
I'll also occasionally try to steer a discussion back on track with a top-level comment I hope more directly addresses the post than many early takes do. This isn't always successful, but I've been surprised several times where my own late-in-the discussion comment ends up highly-placed in the thread. One key is to really fight back against expressing frustration (the comments are usually born from an excess of that), and just lay out a strong case for an alternative take on what seems significant.
I actually did express that frustration out loud in this thread ... and dang commented on the initial-conditions aspect:
Clickbait titles are de-baited. Indirect links are disintermediated. Divergent distracting comments are downweighted.
Much of my own interaction with the HN mod team (ask dang, I email fairly frequently, probably a few times a week) are with regard to link or title issues.
I'll also occasionally try to steer a discussion back on track with a top-level comment I hope more directly addresses the post than many early takes do. This isn't always successful, but I've been surprised several times where my own late-in-the discussion comment ends up highly-placed in the thread. One key is to really fight back against expressing frustration (the comments are usually born from an excess of that), and just lay out a strong case for an alternative take on what seems significant.
I actually did express that frustration out loud in this thread ... and dang commented on the initial-conditions aspect:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26824383