Posted by dang 4/2/2025
Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
Tom Howard is going public as HN moderator today. He has been doing HN moderation work for years 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
When someone makes claims about how they were unfairly treated, but won't let people look at the actual situation, that's sort of a tell. If the mods had actually treated them so badly, you can be sure that it would be pointed to with neon hypertext.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=oldpersonintx https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tomohawk https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=techright75
(There seems to be extreme bias or unfair flagging by users simply because "old Texan" and "techright" are "scary Conservative-sounding usernames", yet you pursue the innocents being reported rather than the botfarms mass-flagging?)
It's all very "Everyone Stalin's sending to the gulags is a criminal, though, so keep your nose down and mind your own business." God sees everything, you know.
I would like to see more discussion on HN around topics that seem unpopular here, and are perhaps politically divisive .. such as : economic inequality, climate change, demographic crunch
Somewhere between the prevailing economic malaise, cynicism and despair ... and tech-bro fan-boi greedy optimism : there might be a middle way where we can use the new technologies of AI to actually improve our lives and create wide wealth generation, and more prosperity for the middle class.
That’s why I turn on the Show Dead setting on HN, and I love that HN has that feature.
Save your upvotes for people positively contributing.
My biggest critique of this site is that the user base and moderation seems very biased with American perspectives to the detriment of the non-American user base and the quality of content as a whole.
I want to see more moderation from people around the world, with less geographic and cultural proximity to the Bay area.