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Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

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Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#101

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

arkades wrote: post #43
spash wrote: post #21

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"

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…

This argument is touted around a lot to justify censorship by private parties. Don't be misled - it is censorship. The law doesn't protect this kind of speech, which means they are legally permitted to participate in censorship, but it is censorship all the same. Yours is a common and poor argument for justifying this behavior. There are plenty of things which are both legal and immoral. I would prefer to participate in a transparently moderated community where the rules are clearly defined and aren't selectively enforced. This makes for a better community.

They don't have a legal obligation to behave this way, but that needs to stop being used as an excuse to shut down discussions on how to make the community better.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#102

Post by detaro »

alekratz wrote: post #40
detaro wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It feels like they should have some kind of place where they lay out all of their powers, no? Mentioning it in a few threads or comments scattered across the site isn't exactly a useful way to disseminate this sort of information.

Maybe? I'm honestly not convinced it would change much. In the end a list of things mods could do will always be close to "we can adjust everything and ban everyone, trust us that we'll use it responsibly".

There are things (e.g. changed titles) were I wish their specific action would be visible to avoid confusion (they often leave comments, but not always and they are easy to miss). That'd be more useful than a list entry somewhere "mods can change submission titles".

People often don't seem to know about flags and vouch, these tools for users could be better explained somewhere. (Not that it will stop those crying "moderators censoring $thing!" every time a controversial topic is flagged)

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#103

Post by krapp »

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #100
ploggingdev wrote: post #67

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…

[flagged]

>How else can you ensure the front page placement for links that you are getting paid (or have an interest in) to promote.

You're not supposed to be able to ensure front page placement. Your content is supposed to rise and fall based solely on its merit, as determined by (unpaid and unaffiliated) users and the moderators.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#104

Post by tptacek »

peterwwillis wrote: post #97
alekratz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It isn't silly, it's an exact comparison to Newspeak, which is what the OP was doing. I mean, it's clear as day: the OP didn't even attempt to argue that censorship isn't happening. They just wanted to change the word describing it to make it feel less like oppression and more like helpfulness. Don't get caught up in the comparison to a fascist regime. Plenty of left-wing socially conscious movements use this same ta…

It's censorship in the same sense as Rolling Stone not running your fan-fic on the cover is censorship.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#105

Post by tptacek »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #89
tptacek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like the way this site is edited, stand up an m1.large, hook Rails up to an sqlite database, and build your own. You'll be two generations of technology ahead of HN. The freedom to take other people's private belongings and repurpose them to your own ends is no real kind of freedom at all. But that's ultimately what you're yearning for when you allude to the Empire of Napoleon.

Antirez tried, with lamernews: https://github.com/antirez/lamernews/blob/master/app.rb Diff that vs HN circa 2008: https://github.com/evanrmurphy/SweetScript/blob/master/arc3.... Lamernews seems like just another HN clone, but back when it was launched it was a serious attempt at being a competitor. They probably came closest to pulling away a significant chunk of HN. I started to use it. Then I ran into missing feat…

I'm not saying you'll be as successful as HN. Lobste.rs, which is run carefully by thoughtful people using software which is probably better than HN's, is much less successful. But that's the point.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#106

Post by mnglkhn2 »

krapp wrote: post #103
mnglkhn2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>How else can you ensure the front page placement for links that you are getting paid (or have an interest in) to promote. You're not supposed to be able to ensure front page placement. Your content is supposed to rise and fall based solely on its merit, as determined by (unpaid and unaffiliated) users and the moderators.

Not when the party wanting to ensure it is YC and HN.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#107

Post by [deleted] »

angersock wrote: post #80
tptacek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a longer comment, originally, but cut it back to the single sentence when I realized that by dignifying the argument I was only lending your tossed-off slur more credibility. HN is not moderated so as to be agitprop for YC. Nobody who's talked to Dan for more than a couple minutes, or watched this site discuss the SFBA tech industry, could believe that. The difference between the site post-Dan and pre-Dan ---…

Comments are still rank-penalized and detached, so that's not exactly a thing of the past. I am not arguing dang is doing a bad job--I'm arguing that their job is done with an eye more towards keeping a community in line with YC interests than promoting pure free-speech or hacker culture. That includes things like killing off certain contentious posts, removing grossly off-topic material, and a lot of other frankly d…

[deleted]

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#108

Post by nothrabannosir »

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #100
ploggingdev wrote: post #67

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…

[flagged]

I think people are missing the intended irony in this post.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#109

Post by krapp »

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #106
krapp wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How else can you ensure the front page placement for links that you are getting paid (or have an interest in) to promote. You're not supposed to be able to ensure front page placement. Your content is supposed to rise and fall based solely on its merit, as determined by (unpaid and unaffiliated) users and the moderators.

Not when the party wanting to ensure it is YC and HN.

It should be the same even for YC companies.

Maybe it isn't, but it should be. And it shouldn't matter. Appearing on the front page of a web forum shouldn't be make or break, especially for a YC company.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#110

Post by TACIXAT »

wyager wrote: post #94
flavio81 wrote: post #78

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…

> I think that if I wanted a forum/news site where "the readers decide" and ONLY the readers decide, i'd go to Reddit. 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.

Agree so much. Any voting system is going to create bubbles. Head over to 4chan and you will get to interact with all sorts of different opinions.
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