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Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

drewdevault.com

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Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#181

Post by angersock »

tptacek wrote: post #105
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on what you consider successful. If the metric is raw numbers and impressions, HN is definitely the winner. If the metric is signal-to-noise for technical content, Lobsters is probably ahead. If the metric is user count, HN wins. If the metric is moderation transparency, Lobsters wins.

Just depends what you're looking for.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#182

Post by observation »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #76
aaron-lebo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN's cool but it's just one forum among a million others. The moderation is good though sometimes arbitrary. That's a lot easier for users to accept when they know why they are getting positively/negatively moderated, which is a good reason for more openness. But at the end of the day it's a forum, the moderators have the final say, that's the contract you agree to in using it.

If Dan and Scott were kings, they would be fucking epic. Best monarchs ever. It's hard to think of anyone who cares more about fairness, but clever enough to decide for themselves. And they're usually right. I think I can count on one hand the number of mistakes they've made that even remotely mattered. And from a strategic standpoint, that number is effectively zero. There are probably a bunch of people behind the s…

I'd rate Dan and Scott highly as rulers, and I've been banned before.

I have some qualms about some systematic things, but it's a broad philosophical dispute and not the running of HN. In governance - there is no way to 'win' anyway.

I wish every leader had to be a forum moderator of very different groups of people, but we seem to select for whatever the opposite of that is no matter the political predilection.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#183

Post by ionised »

joering2 wrote: post #159
ionised wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You really have one email account? No, I have 5, but I only have one HN account. Why would I need more? I was thinking more that he might have been identified as being the same person posting from multiple accounts, and activating some kind of spam/abuse protection.

> Why would I need more? For same reason you have multiple email addresses no?

I have multiple email address for different purposes. I don't need multiple HN accounts for different purposes.

Others might but I can't think why off the top of my head. The only time I've seen an obvious alternate account is the throw-away accounts opened just to troll/spam the site.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#184

Post by root_axis »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #168
root_axis wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if all moral perspectives are valid then you should not use morality as the foundation of your argument.

Well, I'm not presenting an objective argument. I am presenting a subjective opinion.

All arguments are subjective so I'm not sure what that statement is supposed to convey except maybe "I am not concerned with the persuasiveness of my argument".

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#185

Post by spash »

peterwwillis wrote: post #137
spash wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"By helping users to understand the error of their ways and have a chance to redeem themselves" 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 th…

I was trying to convey that they weren't disagreeing with you about it being censorship, they were disagreeing of whether it was wrong or not depending on context. My reply was probably a bit disjointed. A moderator is supposed to be an arbitrator or mediator. Moderation becomes censorship when they start enforcing policies to get users to align with their values rather than simply bringing people to an accord. Users…

> Users are allowed to think it's censorship once they lose their value or become a liability.

To someone who happened to live under a de facto Soviet occupation (not de jure, after all it was just a "requested friendly intervention with the noble intent of suppressing the rising nation-wide anti-people criminal elements, that just kind of somehow happened to last for a few decades"), this kind of wording (and the associated themes) sound indeed very familiar.

But it's interesting to see how many HN users don't see this as troubling at all, at least judging by the dozen (-s?) of downvotes that my original comment earned me since posting, not even mentioning how quickly other people that somehow dared to draw a parallel between censorship and the other, friendly kind of censorship got quickly downvoted into white five minutes from posting.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#186

Post by AnimalMuppet »

andrewguenther wrote: post #154
wvenable wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huge flame wars get a lot of upvotes and lots of comments -- but it's essentially the forum equivalent of candy. If you want your forum to have some nutritional value than you can't let the candy topics run rampant no matter how much people seem to want them.

I think that makes sense. But how much is too much? Say you have a very high post volume on one side of an issue, so you start moderating more heavily. Do you allow posts through representing the other side? Is that "fair"?

The issue isn't really the one-sided-ness of the comments, or the volume of the comments. The issue is the quality of the comments.

Even on a hot-button topic, there are quality comments made, by both sides. Those are worth reading, no matter which side you take on the issue. And then there are the "You're so stupid, how could you think something so idiotic, I hope you die in a fire" comments. Those comments don't add much except noise. If you want the quality comments to be visible among the noise, you need to weed out the noise comments. You need this more on hot-button topics, because they attract more noise comments.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#187

Post by bg12321312we »

tptacek wrote: post #145
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I would argue that it's different. CNN has a limited amount of time to fill and doesn't accept user submissions. HN has neither constraint, and gives users voting rights over some of the success of each post.

So, you've decided that one organization's private constraints are important and another's aren't.

CNN does not strive to promote an appearance of being open to anyone.

"Hacker" "News" does.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#188

Post by pbhjpbhj »

eropple wrote: post #156
tptacek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people who are deeply concerned about sexism in this industry also flag those stories, because it only takes 2-3 misogynist trolls to create a 300-comment shitshow out of them. There are still kinds of threads that this site simply can't do well, and it's better we not pretend we can until the guidelines and mod tools evolve to actually make them work here.

And, to underline, we have a lot more than 2-3 misogynist trolls in these parts. Reflexive rich-white-dude defensiveness is perhaps HN's greatest challenge.

And you long for the day when it's your particular brand of racism and sexism that wins?

Seriously, can you stop with the "white men are all racist and sexist and are priveleged so my racism and sexism towards them doesn't count", please.

Do you not think your sort of attitude contributes heavily; that is, some people shouldn't be allowed to comment because of their race/sex.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#189

Post by joering2 »

ionised wrote: post #183
joering2 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would I need more? For same reason you have multiple email addresses no?

I have multiple email address for different purposes. I don't need multiple HN accounts for different purposes. Others might but I can't think why off the top of my head. The only time I've seen an obvious alternate account is the throw-away accounts opened just to troll/spam the site.

One example would be is that you might work for a company and have their point of view expressed on HN all the time; meanwhile you want to have your own account personal one that regardless if you continue working for said company or not, you still continue to use. Sort of like TV anchors have their own private twitter hints and then they have their work ones too.
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