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Moderators should in no way be able to bury posts or even nudge them downwards. This is a cowardly way to try to control discussion. If it isn't explicitly against the site rules, let the readers decide.
> We downweight posts in response to things that go against the site guidelines, such as when a submission is unsubstantive, baity or sensational.
So, this is what's happening already.
"Censorship by moderators" How about: "Curation by moderators"
"Censorship by Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China" How about: "Curation by Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Purpose of HN is ultimately agitprop for YC. It makes sense that curation of posts occurs--this only confuses people that buy too much into the "hacker" ethos.
This is silly.
Please elaborate before being so dismissive--you know, like we used to do on old HN.
"Censorship by moderators" How about: "Curation by moderators"
"Censorship by Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China" How about: "Curation by Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China"
Unless you have examples where it has been the case, that's an unfair comparison.
Moderators should in no way be able to bury posts or even nudge them downwards. This is a cowardly way to try to control discussion. If it isn't explicitly against the site rules, let the readers decide.
As user base grows, all platforms suffer from mean reversion or "Eternal September" where quality of the content reverses towards low quality issues. If you want to keep up the quality you need editorial staff. Call them curators, editors or moderators if you want.
What I would like to happen is HN editing being transparent. Show buried or nudged content differently so that those who submit can adapt.
Another HN tool moderators use that isn't mentioned in the post is the second-chance pool, where moderators will rescue a post which did not receive many upvotes and give it placement on the front page for a bit of time.
Where is this documented? Not trying to be snippy - I have no idea what powers the moderators have in this realm. Maybe HN could benefit from some lobste.rs-esque moderation transparency.
Moderators should in no way be able to bury posts or even nudge them downwards. This is a cowardly way to try to control discussion. If it isn't explicitly against the site rules, let the readers decide.
From Dans explanation in the post: > We downweight posts in response to things that go against the site guidelines, such as when a submission is unsubstantive, baity or sensational. So, this is what's happening already.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Censorship by Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China" How about: "Curation by Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China"
HN is not a government or a political party, it's a privately run link aggregator.
"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information that may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions"
While I agree that this would be a great idea, it's laughable in that, as a service run by Y Combinator, it's always going to be for startup hucksters primarily and for the rest of the tech industry and Internet at large secondarily.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where is this documented? Not trying to be snippy - I have no idea what powers the moderators have in this realm. Maybe HN could benefit from some lobste.rs-esque moderation transparency.
The mods mentioned it a few times when they started doing it ("In case you wonder why this suddenly has a different timestamp/was resubmitted, ..."). AFAIR there have been variants, e. g. asking people to resubmit vs resetting the timestamp on an existing submission. It seems intentional that individual moderation tools are explained occasionally, but there is no up-to-date list of all of them.