91–100 of 409 posts
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It would make no sense to ban an IP for only a single session. Shadowbanning can still be rare (for whatever value of rare) when an IP ban is persistent.
If you want to ban some IP, just serve 403 to that IP. Deleting all of the accounts of people who like to order toast and eggs in the morning at the same place is what makes no sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would make no sense to ban an IP for only a single session. Shadowbanning can still be rare (for whatever value of rare) when an IP ban is persistent.
If you want to ban some IP, just serve 403 to that IP. Deleting all of the accounts of people who like to order toast and eggs in the morning at the same place is what makes no sense.
Shadowbans are reversible by users and can be appealed to the mods, assuming you notice it (which, by design, you're not supposed to.) This is supposed to ensure that only accounts which should be banned remained banned.
It's not perfect, but it does make sense - the only real options for banning are by IP and by account, so if you want to prevent a banned user from just making a new account, you have to ban the IP as well. Maybe someone was a troll and got that IP banned, maybe it appears on a blacklist (assuming HN checks that,) who knows? It's not random and arbitrary, though.
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"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"
There’s a difference between a state actor controlling the whole of the public arena and a private individual controlling their own privately-sponsored forum; the latter allows you to crack open a blog and flog whatever opinion you want, and the former does not. I admit there’s some gray area for something like google, which by virtue of its size and role as intermediary has censorship abilities approaching governmen…
In this thread, some people are complaining of moderators downvoting (lowering the rank) of some submissions over others; and at least one person says "let the readers decide". I think that if I wanted a forum/news site where "the readers decide" and ONLY the readers decide, i'd go to Reddit. No thanks, i prefer HN due to the behind-the-scenes 'curation' or choice of content, which so far usually gives very interesti…
The Reddit mods and admins are notoriously censorious. If you want minimal moderation, you would need to go to the anonymous imageboards. The content produced there is better in some ways, worse in many.
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Is this definiton of censorship from Wikipedia incorrect then? "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"
That's not the point. They just don't want to think censorship is an accepted part of their daily lives because censorship often implies oppression. But censorship is part and parcel of almost every forum. The social values of the people who own the forum, as well as incentives behind their operating it, determine what kind of censorship is applied. For example, on YouTube, hate speech [which I know isn't actually a…
Could you elaborate a bit more on this part? I find your post quite insightful and well thought out as a whole (though my sarcasm detectors may be a bit off especially when it comes to the above sentence), but in any case, I'm not sure why you wrote "that's not the point" when everything you say seems to support exactly that point.
If you think of moderation as a tool to shape the flow of discussion in a certain pre-approved way (without, say "malicious" intent, though that can always become debatable from someone's point of view), when does moderation become censorship, or more specifically - at which point are the users allowed to think that the moderation actually became censorship? I mean, who sets the criteria? The moderator?
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.
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"
I think this is a silly comparison. The HN curation isn't done to further some sort of agenda (at least, not at its surface or in some obvious fashion). It's to make sure we have higher quality content, not to sway the users' perspective in favor of some hidden cabal.
Don't get caught up in the comparison to a fascist regime. Plenty of left-wing socially conscious movements use this same tactic. I think everyone does this, usually unconsciously.
And besides, the mods are making a tremendous job of it. I wildly disagree with lots of their decisions, and probably with great part of their general outlook on life, but I really can't fault their taste or professionalism, so thank you, guys.
The one cowardly thing going on here is the doing of users, not of moderators: The sad and unworthy tendency of some to downvote comments to oblivion purely for opinions expressed. Now that is a kind of grassroots censorship which we could do without.
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I'm not complaining. HN is about the best of what we've got. My Napoleon reference was the slobbering nature of the comment, which is so pro-moderation as to lose objectivity.
Something I find frustrating in discussions like this is a tendency for expressions of gratitude or appreciation to often be dismissed as uncritical, as if the only meaningful act of criticism is that of finding faults or flaws. In such an environment it can be very difficult to express reasons why someone likes something or finds benefit in a way that others read as something other than fawning: particularly when yo…
The voting ring detector is in need of a serious upgrade. There are so many cases of vote solicitation by people with meaningful social media following and their posts even make the front page. It's mostly the Product Hunt style "Hey we launched on HN, check us out" which is code for "upvote my post". People have stopped directly linking to the post submission for fear of tripping the voting ring detector, but they e…