Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#111

Post by otikik » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #100

otikik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take: science has been politicized. As a result people feel like they are entitled to share their (often naive and inexperienced) opinion. Problem is this: science is not democratic. Consensus plays a role, but not everyone getting to the point were you are equipped to peer review others often takes years of effort and study. That’s unavoidable, given that the easy questions have already been answered. A single ……

> I have been on the receiving end of a campaign organized by a somewhat popular forum in order to fill up a direct democracy platform with as many memes and random shit as possible. I'm curious what platform you are referring to here?

Decide Madrid, for the Madrid City Hall:

https://decide.madrid.es/

It was built on Ruby on Rails. There’s an Open Source white label platform generator project called Consul. I came up with that name (it comes from “consulta ciudadana”, not from an ancient Roman politician).

https://consulproject.org/

My last involvement with the project was 6 years ago. My understanding is that the site took a downward dive with regards to code quality after me and other founding members left the project, and with the change in government.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#112

Post by mariusor » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

GameOfFrowns wrote: post #48

mariusor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You call it petty dictatorship, I call it the best moderated subreddit of the whole platform.

Until the day you fail the purity test and have your IP and all accounts permabanned due to a disagreement with a mod in disguise.

There's no purity test in the subreddit except being an acknowledged scientist in the domain the submission is about. Forgive me the snark, but it's like you don't even know what we're talking about.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#113

Post by adbachman » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

rhaksw wrote: post #83

Teever wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the window really that narrow, or do you just happen to fall outside it/identify as having fallen outside of it for personal identity reasons?

It's narrower than you might think. For example, I've recently been paying attention to the trans issue because some are saying that pro-trans groups are equating words with violence [1] [2]. Apparently the pro-trans groups have been saying that only 1% detransition, but there are youth speaking out saying that number is likely far greater [3] [4] [5]. It's hard for me to believe these are made up stories. And, it ap…

It took a long time for you to get around to it, but was the reason your comments keep getting moderated because you show up in every gender / transgender thread dropping links and "just asking questions"?

More important than the content of speech in social media moderation is the behavior. You demonstrate bad behavior here.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#114

Post by mariusor » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #36

mariusor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You call it petty dictatorship, I call it the best moderated subreddit of the whole platform.

You just happen to be lucky enough to be within the very narrow overton window. Or at least a) believe what's being curated for you and b) never cared to look at what's not being said. You should hope that your views (or more accurately, their views) never stray from it and the information that a tiny group of people are controlling is good for the entire population. You could say just use another subreddit. But this…

I find it a little sad that in order to disagree with me you have to be mean about it.

There are plenty of reasons why a subreddit like r/science is fine for people, not just the fact that they have a "very narrow Overton window". Maybe it's because we understand that this particular subreddit does not conform to the usual agora of discussion that reddit is known for and just shows a list of maybe interesting science papers/articles and clarifications on them from people in the domain. I may disagree with some of the ideas put forward but I can be an adult about it and not jump to the conclusion that there's a cabal of "big science" that is trying to brainwash me.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#115

Post by pixl97 » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

tsol wrote: post #71

otikik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take: science has been politicized. As a result people feel like they are entitled to share their (often naive and inexperienced) opinion. Problem is this: science is not democratic. Consensus plays a role, but not everyone getting to the point were you are equipped to peer review others often takes years of effort and study. That’s unavoidable, given that the easy questions have already been answered. A single ……

>Problem is this: science is not democratic. The problem with this; who gets to decide what's right? The institution of science has had this issue before, and decided no one group is capable of always doing that. Hence it is decided using consensus and the scientific method. It's easy to say 'only allow professionals' but there ARE professionals with controversial opinions that will still get mobbed.

Can we agree that hundreds of meme posts and hundreds of "That's what she said" posts are not helpful? You see that behavior on tons of popular subreddits that are less moderated. That the conversation looks like a copy of most of the other threads in the sub because of the low quality recycled posts.

If we did that on HN our posts would be flagged here too. We do need to separate out how much 'garbage' gets filtered from the ideas that are controversial opinions.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#116

Post by mariusor » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #88

andy_ppp wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The community is 95% less competent than the researchers so I think this rule is fine.

The fact that the average community member is a moron doesn't mean that you should delete the posts from the people who are not. I'm sure they get tons of "biology doesn't replicate" posts that should get removed. They also remove posts that are polite, technically correct, and specific, and point out glaring issues in the paper.

I think that posses the credentials to show that are not "morons" can get verified in the subreddit and will not have their comments removed.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#117

Post by rhaksw » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 2:59 PM UTC

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #104

rhaksw wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why bother though? See 18:20 [1] and 19:52 [2] in the talk linked on this post. Nobody will visit r/scienceforall because r/science will remove references to it. Plus, forcing me to set up a group doesn't sound like a solution, it sounds like a shake down. To get an open discussion space I have to moderate it, and then have the social media site threaten removal of my mod powers if I fail to remove something they d…

If nobody will visit your subreddit, then that might be an indication of how it's actually being perceived, and not evidence of some great injustice surrounding "free speech".

No, it's just hard to advertise them. Groups often offshoot specifically because they disagreed with moderators of the previous group. The new group will want to attract users from the old group, but the old group's moderators set up bots to auto-remove any attempts at sharing the new group.

I linked the point in the talk where I discuss this, but I can share an example here too. r/LibertarianUncensored is 2,000 members and stickied this post [1] explaining shadow removals occurring on r/Libertarian which has 500,000 members.

If you bring this up on r/Libertarian your commentary will be removed and you'll either be banned or shadow banned. Both make it impossible for you to share what's going on with users in r/Libertarian. Meanwhile, moderators there publicly deny that anything untoward is happening [2].

Maybe some day r/LibertarianUncensored can overcome its userbase deficit of half a percent, but it's obvious that shadow moderation is helping to maintain r/Libertarian's domination.

Other groups that skew younger, for example r/Overwatch, may already be familiar with Reveddit and thus have a better chance at challenging mod biases [3].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/LibertarianUncensored/comments/uotv...

[2] https://archive.ph/O0GN8

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/ye16uv/this_subr...

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#118

Post by otikik » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 3:00 PM UTC

rhaksw wrote: post #107

otikik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take: science has been politicized. As a result people feel like they are entitled to share their (often naive and inexperienced) opinion. Problem is this: science is not democratic. Consensus plays a role, but not everyone getting to the point were you are equipped to peer review others often takes years of effort and study. That’s unavoidable, given that the easy questions have already been answered. A single ……

Moderation is fine, but what about secret moderation? The issue here is that users are being shown their removed comments as if they are publicly visible . I share my thoughts on the impact at 19:54 [1] in the video linked in this post. > So at that time you have a choice: either you moderate, in order to keep the channel on-topic, or you accept everything, at which point the guys who benefit from science not being a…

If moderation isn’t silent then r/silence becomes “r/hey why has my comment been moderated, this is bullshit”. Same result as not moderating - The conversation about science gets diluted by the noise people lacking the basic skill level make.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#119

Post by mariusor » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

fuckstick wrote: post #32

mariusor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This subreddit has something like 1000+ moderators and they remove any comments that doesn't fit into Reddit's very narrowly defined overton window Or the subreddit has a very strict set of rules for posting top level comments which include: > 3. Non-professional personal anecdotes will be removed > 4. Criticism of published work should assume basic competence of the researchers and reviewers > 5. Comments dismissi…

> Criticism of published work should assume basic competence What this is saying is that even if egregious blunders are made it is against the rules to call that out - how can I point out incompetence if I have to assume competence? I host a medical journal club - statistical incompetence in the life sciences is bountiful. > Comments dismissing established findings I’m sure defining established isn’t difficult to do/…

This particular subreddit is not for actual debates. Everyone in this thread seems to forget about that.

Re: Show HN: Reveddit.com: Improving online discourse with transparent moderation

#120

Post by rhaksw » Sat, Nov 05, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #115

tsol wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Problem is this: science is not democratic. The problem with this; who gets to decide what's right? The institution of science has had this issue before, and decided no one group is capable of always doing that. Hence it is decided using consensus and the scientific method. It's easy to say 'only allow professionals' but there ARE professionals with controversial opinions that will still get mobbed.

Can we agree that hundreds of meme posts and hundreds of "That's what she said" posts are not helpful? You see that behavior on tons of popular subreddits that are less moderated. That the conversation looks like a copy of most of the other threads in the sub because of the low quality recycled posts. If we did that on HN our posts would be flagged here too. We do need to separate out how much 'garbage' gets filtered…

> Can we agree that hundreds of meme posts and hundreds of "That's what she said" posts are not helpful?

The dispute here is secret moderation, not what content gets removed.

If moderation were transparent, users would also be part of the decision making process. Currently they are not part of the process because their removed content is shown to them as if it is publicly possible.