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Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

drewdevault.com

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Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#201

Post by snerbles »

deadmetheny wrote: post #180
maccard wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The content produced there is better in some ways, worse in many. Could you provide some examples of how the content is better there? I'd be interested, but any time I've ever tried to investigate, I can't get past all the unfettered crap

At least on 4chan, the content is all time-limited, so finding persistent examples isn't really doable. However, the more niche boards are full of quality content for their particular niches, and depending on the culture of the particular board people can be very helpful. I personally appreciate 4chan for generally weighing the value of a particular post on its own merits rather than any sort of user history or whate…

The inflammatory nature of the chans is in and of itself a filter - people that partake in imageboard discussions tend to be more thick-skinned as a result.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#202

Post by tptacek »

ballenf wrote: post #162
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.

> ... until the guidelines and mod tools evolve to actually make them work here. I think the "until" is "until all readers of this site share a single sociological view on controversial issues and/or lose all interest in having their view heard." Asking your moderation tools to solve societal problems or prevent a discussion forum from reflecting a raging societal debate is trying to hide from the problem. > it only…

Case in point.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#203

Post by dsr_ »

oftenbanned wrote: post #49
willvarfar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you have so many accounts in the first place? How many is "a bunch"?

Well only one at a time. Then as each gets banned I make another one. Note that they get banned if I just visit HN from the IP in question no posting required.

... if all of your nyms get banned, it might be that you are consistently behaving in a way that the moderators don't like.

Have you considered, perhaps, changing your behavior?

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#204

Post by cryoshon »

andrewguenther wrote: post #134
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've found moderation on HN to be a bit heavy handed recently. Specifically when it comes to the issue of sexism in SV. No matter the opinion, posts on this seem to get removed shortly after reaching the front page. Question for the mods: Why? It doesn't appear to be a bias towards either side. Is the perception just that people are tied of hearing about it? Why not let the users decide that?

there are many issues where they are heavy handed, notably anything considered remotely "political" which could ostensibly contain most topics that arent strictly "THIS TECH THING X DOES THIS OTHER TECH THING Y IN THIS FRAMEWORK Z, ZOUNDS!"

there's also a substantial amount of favoritism. i won't name names, of course.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#205

Post by tptacek »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #172
tptacek wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can call me out any time you'd like. I think an actual database backend for this site is only a couple years old. Or do we actually have one yet? I know the API has one, but HN doesn't run the API. It's possible this thing is still relying on flat files.

Flat files FTW. Proof that a simple solution can scale. And not just in a "Why the fuck would you subject yourself to this torture?" kind of way, but in a "This actually simplifies everything" way. It's why Arc was so fucking fast: remember how impactful memcached was? Arc had that from day one. Here's how it works. Everything is loaded into memory at startup. You can think of it like a bigass JSON tree. Anytime you…

For what it's worth, the published Arc/HN code is rapidly approaching a full decade out of date.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#206

Post by matt4077 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #167
andrewguenther wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found moderation on HN to be a bit heavy handed recently. Specifically when it comes to the issue of sexism in SV. No matter the opinion, posts on this seem to get removed shortly after reaching the front page. Question for the mods: Why? It doesn't appear to be a bias towards either side. Is the perception just that people are tied of hearing about it? Why not let the users decide that?

The users are deciding. We are flagging these stories because we don't see the value in endless flamewars over the same subject. If you can't get enough of debates about sexism in SV there are lots of other places on the internet for that.

I understand how that is the right policy for HN. But I'm wondering if you consider it possible that you're in a position where you have a responsibility to sometimes surface these topics on HN?

After all, for some of these topics it's exactly the people that won't go looking for them at other places on the internet where they may still make a difference.

To use an example that's slightly less controversial: I think it's important for people working with lots of other people's data to have some fundamental sense of privacy rights. And HN is probably one of the best places to reach those actually in the trenches that are in the position to say 'no' when, for example, the CEO of Yahoo tells them to allow the NSA full access to their users' emails.

Yet that's a topic that quickly turns to politics, so you'd probably have good reasons to wish those discussions happened elsewhere.

Just to be clear: I think the mix of topics overall is mostly fine right now. But just like Facebook or Twitter, I think HN may be in a position where your "editorial responsibility" should be somewhere on your radar. Not because HN is the size of those, but because it caters to a readership that has certain powers far outstripping its size.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#207

Post by KekDemaga »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #188
eropple wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Beautifully put, the solution to sexism isn't more sexism.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#208

Post by tptacek »

angersock wrote: post #181
tptacek wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I spent some time on Lobsters and found the signal/noise content for technical stuff only marginally better than that of HN, and many of the same pathologies were evident, just at a lower volume (because the site sees overall a much lower volume of comments). Moreover, while the variance on technical badness on Lobsters is marginally lower, so is the variance on technical excellence. That, too, is a straightforward consequence of lower volume: the original authors of important software packages are more likely to comment on HN than on Lobsters.

I like Lobsters a lot, and I like a lot about what they do differently than HN, but we shouldn't pretend that it's something it isn't.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#209

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

tptacek wrote: post #200
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flag the trolls, not the articles.

No. That doesn't work.

Sure it does. I think the real issue is that you want to suppress discussion on these topics from people you disagree with, and not all of them qualify as trolls.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#210

Post by tptacek »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #209
tptacek wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. That doesn't work.

Sure it does. I think the real issue is that you want to suppress discussion on these topics from people you disagree with, and not all of them qualify as trolls.

Or, maybe I've spent more time working on this than you have, and rather than covering a secret agenda that you've somehow managed to suss out in a subthread of less than 100 words of my comments, you've instead jumped to a conclusion that you can't possibly back with evidence.
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