I feel the point of PH is not to create a real business in the sense of earning money by selling you a product or service, but rather to establish personal brand equity and influencing power of the management team.
This can be useful for future projects (such as finding funding), to increase their standing in the SV community, and to establish themselves as marquee valley power brokers.
In this sense, it doesn't make much sense to add more transparency and voting control to ordinary users.
This is pure speculation and assumes the worst. So take this with a grain of salt.
This crosses the line into personal attack, which breaks the HN guidelines. You couldn't possibly know such things.
Fair critique is fair game. The OP, for example, made an effort to be fair. But comments like this one, that assume the worst about someone and try to paint them in an ugly light, say more about the commenter.
I've edited my post so that it appears less of a personal attack.
I think my critique is fair, though the delivery could use improvement (hence my edits).
PH is a for-profit company that helps users discover new products, yet controls and hides the process for how voting, submission, etc., work. It's a fair critique to question if the point of PH is to derive value for themselves from establishing themselves as gatekeepers rather than generating value in a more "normal" sense.
Meritocracy, transparency, and fairness are values that are particularly held in high esteem in the valley and here on HN. So I think those who run contrary to this, should be exposed to the harshest of scrutiny.
We need to keep each other honest. RH might construe this as "hating" but I think it's fair game.
I appreciate the edit and your polite response, but (if I may say so personally, as opposed to qua moderator) the thrust of what you're saying still feels uncharitable.
I've met Ryan, and my impression was that he's a true enthusiast—he just loves this stuff. And there's strong objective evidence for it too: someone who was primarily interested in building a rigged system for insider gain would never have been able to get a community going in the first place. Real online communities are rare. It takes a believer to start one.
As for PH now, I don't know any details, but from other experience I can guarantee you that the challenges in getting it right are (a) harder and (b) different than one would imagine. Reading a thread like this about one's baby (which it's possible Ryan may) is a hard experience, but at least if the criticisms are substantive, you can feed them into your efforts to improve. When someone just seems to be saying mean or generically cynical things, though, that sucks.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and view. I appreciate the feedback and your even-handed moderation.
I don't know Ryan, but I've been observing PH for some time now. My opinions and thoughts are from these observations and those of others in the community.
I'm sure Ryan is a good person, with good intentions. Those good intentions stands in stark contrast to how PH works today. There have been other PH critics and from what I've seen RH has not been super open to those criticisms, and in fact, even going so far as to dismiss any critics as "haters" (which I think is a bit of a mislabel since many of his critics are in fact fans that are just opposed to the lack of transparency).
So I think given, its fair to address these failings. Perhaps I can use nicer language, but I trust that Ryan is a mature adult and can take it.
I do see your point about people saying mean things and how that can hurt, but c'mon, life is not fair or kind or nice. And we're not delicate butterflies.
Putting ourselves out there (to be celebrated and vilified) is part of the very nature of entrepreneurship / creation. I see the problems of suicides and mental health in our community (and I've definitely experienced and am still experiencing it first hand), but being overly cautious in our words to not-offend is not a solution to this problem. Somewhat off-topic but related, South Park this season did a great job of making fun of this.
This can be useful for future projects (such as finding funding), to increase their standing in the SV community, and to establish themselves as marquee valley power brokers.
In this sense, it doesn't make much sense to add more transparency and voting control to ordinary users.
This is pure speculation and assumes the worst. So take this with a grain of salt.