Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

[dang]

Hi all,

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

[tomhow]

Many thanks for the warm welcome, everyone.

It’s been a privilege to help support this community and to work alongside dang, who has been a great friend and mentor for many years. It’s a great responsibility, to keep HN a healthy and thriving community, and I’m continually amazed to see all the ways dang puts thought and energy into it.

One final note is that it was never part of the negotiations that I was expected to know or learn Arc, yet somehow in the onboarding process the HN Arc repo has found its way onto my machine, so it feels like the bait and switch is on…

[zormino]

Thank you for doing what you do! I'm sure it isn't easy keeping this place healthy and thriving, but me and so many others really appreciate the blood, sweat and probably a few literal tears it takes :)

[frainfreeze]

One more welcome from another Tom o/

Nice to hear someone else is looking at Arc now as well! Any chance we might see some issues on anarki resolved now? Perhaps https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/issues/89 would be a good starting point :grin:

Jokes aside, its good to see YC cares about community, and looking forward to seeing your nick in the comments. Good luck

[simonebrunozzi]

Welcome, Tom!

Thanks for your moderation work so far, and welcome as an official moderator. Glad you'll be helping Dang keeping this an awesome community.

[wholinator2]

Hi, I'm just some young guy but i wanted to thank you for contributing to what makes this site great. It feels to me like this is one of the last bastions of the true news aggregator/comment media of old and i really appreciate everyone who dedicates time to maintaining it. Thanks <3

[dmit]

Welcome! And also I am so sorry

[Rodeoclash]

Tom, what a small world. Seems just like yesterday we were at Inspire 9 together!

[appleaday1]

Welcome tom, as a fellow moderator its not easy haha, I am sure its easier than Reddit.

[QuantumGood]

Thanks in advance, Tom. Never a better time for more smart work in this area.

[kragen]

Best wishes! Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

[cantrecallmypwd]

All hail our new, most favourite overlord from the British Commonwealth on days ending in "y"!

[OzzyB]

Thank you for taking up the mantle!

[skissane]

> One final note is that it was never part of the negotiations that I was expected to know or learn Arc, yet somehow in the onboarding process the HN Arc repo has found its way onto my machine, so it feels like the bait and switch is on…

I would love it if you could get the current HN code base into a state that it could be open sourced

I understand the desire to keep certain aspects “secret sauce” to prevent abuse, but surely that could be addressed with some kind of plugin mechanism and then just don’t open source those plugins

[oseph]

Congrats Tom!

[insin]

Welcome, Tomho W

[adamdennis]

Welcome Tom!

[BUFU]

Welcome!

[gadders]

Please rewrite HN as an SPA using the most bleeding edge alpha JavaScript frameworks you can find.

[facile3232]

Welcome! Good luck for a hard job.

[rurp]

Welcome Tom! I want to add to the chorus saying how excellent HN has been for so many years, in large part thanks to the excellent moderation. I dove into forums early on and they have always been one of the favorite and most treasured parts of the internet. It's not an exaggeration to say that HN is one of the best ever. The longevity is commendable, especially in an industry full of fads and flameouts.

Dang and Tom, please keep doing what you're doing.

[ddingus]

Observation:

How lucky are we that our contributions here warrant two fine moderators?

I just read Tom's brief story on how he arrived here and what it means and felt... I don't really have a quick word for it.

I know I am better for having spent time here.

Oh, I got it! A tiny bit spoiled, but in the best of ways. Yeah, that is what I felt.

How lucky we are indeed. :)

[palmotea]

> He has been doing HN moderation work for years already 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 wonder if there are any other secret moderators.

[GVRV]

Congratulations Tom!

Tom (and Fenn) had rockstar status back when I was involved in university CS+Entrepreneurship clubs in Melbourne around 2009/2010 (mostly led by fine students at UniMelb, but I was helping spread the word at Monash) because they were the first(maybe one of the first?) Aussies to be accepted by YC. They always generously gave their time and advice at these student events, even dropped by the SiliconBeach networking meets to share their experiences and turned out to be exceptionally kind human beings in person. Definitely the right choice for moding this community!

[tomhow]

I remember those days (and your username) very fondly. Great to see you still here.

We were the first startup to be Australian-based then move to the U.S. for YC.

Omnisio was an all-Australian team from the year before us but they were already residing in the U.S.

The first ever Australian-originated co-founder of a YC-backed company was Jamie Cameron. He co-founded Virtualmin, a commercially-supported fork of Webmin for virtual hosting, which Jamie first released in 1997. It looks like Virtualmin is still active today, which is awesome.

It just so happens that Jamie and Fenn used to sit next to each other in the software development team at Pacific Internet in Melbourne, where we all worked in the early 00s. Jamie's brother, Michael Cameron, was a co-founder of Rome2Rio, which was based at Inspire9 along with us from about 2011-12, and became one of the most successful consumer travel startups out of Australia.

[codetrotter]

In the classic tradition of thinking that “dang” is pronounced “dang” and not “Dan G.” I propose that we read “tomhow” as “Tomh Ow”.

[DistractionRect]

If you torture it a bit, you can make it "tomorrow" said with a weird accent. To mh ow

[mkoubaa]

Towhom it may concern,

I prefer the dyslexic pronunciation of towhom.

[joenot443]

Has Dan ever commented on whether the "dang" pronunciation was intentional? I too, was under the impression he just liked the twanginess of the word.

I have people call me Joenot - in reality, this username was chosen decades ago by my mother, pairing Joe (my name) and Not(tawa) - my tiny hometown.

Sometimes I wish I'd chosen better but like many names, once it's out there, it tends to stick.

[gameshot911]

> dang” is pronounced “dang” and not “Dan G.”

WAIT WHAT?!?

[youainti]

I think tom(a)how would work too.

[raphman]

Welcome, Tom! Y'all are making HN a place that I still love to visit every day. I find it awesome how dang et al. not only manage to keep spammers and trolls in check but also actively improve discussions by merging threads and asking people to behave.

[koolba]

Would it be possible to give him a new username for this role like “darn”?

Then we can continue confusing the beginnings of comments that appeal to authority as interjections.

[keepamovin]

That's a great introduction and a great opening from Tom. HN gets a second public moderator is a good sign. You would have to be crazy to agree to this but I guess brave, too!

It's always a site that's had dinner party vibes even tho it's so big. Weird! But the focus on curiosity and healthy is important.

I'm sure the features of HN are already extremely well thought out and precisely balanced, but I guess this is as good a time as any to throw out a feature idea: you know how you can favorite stories and comments? I want to favorite users, too. Maybe privately. Because it's like a bookmark thing where I can come back and see what interesting ones are doing. Just makes sense to internalize it as a list rather than externalize it into a browser bookmark list, I think. But then again, maybe a private list or yet another list would be too much!

[isoprophlex]

Welcome, and thanks for striving to keep hn the bastion of intellectual curiosity that it's been in the ~9 years since I joined. I get tremendous value out of this website, and I'm very grateful for the effort you all are putting in to keep it stable.

[sctb]

Welcome, Tom! Sometimes I can't believe how good we have it here. Thank you both very much.

[tomhow]

Sincere thanks to you too, Scott.

[hakaneskici]

Congrats Tom!

Thanks dang and other mods for protecting this sacred corner of the web for so long. You're the guardians of the best no-BS tech news community. It is truly an under-appreciated effort.

Best wishes.

[scrapcode]

I've (mostly quietly) enjoyed the "vibe" of HN for well over a decade now. It's certainly a major contribution to maintaining enjoyment in the crazy world of tech. Thank you for your contributions to this community which remains so special to an entire industry.

[noleary]

Welcome, Tom! Thanks for supporting this community for so long. Your work is much appreciated!

[somelamer567]

As somebody who's seen communities come and go over the last couple of decades, I cannot praise Hacker News highly enough. And we can thank the moderators for that. HN is like an oasis for me: polite, sane, and informative, and your values and principles really shine through, especially below the fold.

Thanks for keeping the standards so high here!

[interestica]

> He's still kind and thoughtful, but he's going to post as tomhow from now on

I laughed at this phrasing. Welcome tomhow!

[edgineer]

Great! Look forward to not noticing anything in particular changing around here. Seriously appreciate this site.

[layer8]

I always wondered how HN manages to do moderation 24/7 around the clock. Australia makes sense.

[wanderer42]

Welcome Tom! And thanks Dang for tirelessly looking after the community. HN is one of the last few sane places on the internet :)

[aberoham]

May we please have another mod based within GMT to round out this follow-the-sun pattern that's slowly rising