To have paid staff manually micro-regulating like this isn't what I call a solution. You're simply prodding the herd with a stick, and your message is virtually drowning amongst the other ones.
You cannot be imperative, top-down to a community and expect that to work.
"For discussion purposes, moving from Beta to RC doesn't make a new topic" <-- kinda trying to convince
"For the purposes of HN threads, there's no difference" <-- almost resorting to authority
That tone and kind of discourse is ... unfortunate.
It's similar to the Wikipedia principle, don't say something is amazing, explain WHY it's amazing. Then you will perhaps convince 10s or 100s of people that will not enforce your rules but perhaps convince other members of the same. I just hope your rule is right :)
In other words, a community cannot be sustained by being regulated by privileged people, poking them here and there. A community needs to regulate itself and their individuals need to grow themselves.
By the way, such a (humble) message would be worthy of being colored in a distinct way to give it more priority.
But given the abysmal lack of development (and also the current state of features, ew) on the HN site, I doubt that such a feature would ever emerge. In fact, the only thing that makes HN worth visiting is its users. The website itself is horrific.
You cannot be imperative, top-down to a community and expect that to work.
"For discussion purposes, moving from Beta to RC doesn't make a new topic" <-- kinda trying to convince
"For the purposes of HN threads, there's no difference" <-- almost resorting to authority
That tone and kind of discourse is ... unfortunate.
It's similar to the Wikipedia principle, don't say something is amazing, explain WHY it's amazing. Then you will perhaps convince 10s or 100s of people that will not enforce your rules but perhaps convince other members of the same. I just hope your rule is right :)
In other words, a community cannot be sustained by being regulated by privileged people, poking them here and there. A community needs to regulate itself and their individuals need to grow themselves.
By the way, such a (humble) message would be worthy of being colored in a distinct way to give it more priority.
But given the abysmal lack of development (and also the current state of features, ew) on the HN site, I doubt that such a feature would ever emerge. In fact, the only thing that makes HN worth visiting is its users. The website itself is horrific.