The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#2> On any given day, its top links might include a Medium post about technical hiring
Isn't it quite ironic to see the article suggesting that HN top link might include Medium post. I've usually read not-so-positive feedback about Medium posts. Isn't it the case?
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#3“In April, when a story about Katie Bouman, an M.I.T. researcher who helped develop a technology that captured the first photo of a black hole, rose to the front page, users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to undermine the weight of her contributions.”
This is an odd statement as it implies the purpose was to undermine. Reading code and critiquing isn’t meant to “undermine” but to identify truth and constantly look for better ways.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#4Curious to know why this post has a "unvote" option. I don't recall seeing that before. Is there a link that explains what it does?
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#5Curious to know why this post has a "unvote" option. I don't recall seeing that before. Is there a link that explains what it does?
Maybe you clicked upvote before coming to the comments?
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#6Curious to know why this post has a "unvote" option. I don't recall seeing that before. Is there a link that explains what it does?
It’s not this story, it’s a global feature on both comments and stories which serves as a “undo” for fat fingering the upvote button. Before this feature you’d often see comments along the likes of “sorry, I accidentally downvoted you while trying to upvote.”
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#7“In April, when a story about Katie Bouman, an M.I.T. researcher who helped develop a technology that captured the first photo of a black hole, rose to the front page, users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to undermine the weight of her contributions.” This is an odd statement as it implies the purpose was to undermine. Reading code and critiquing isn’t meant to “undermine” but to identify truth and co…
...and here we go again.
What was, or at least felt, obvious was that there was a double standard being applied. Not just in the sense that such a witch hunt would be unlikely to happen to a man being lauded. But also that if there's one point that Hacker News could probably agree on it's that lines-of-code is a bad metric for evaluating programmers, let alone scientists.
There was also the pervasive sense of being on the side of the rest of the team, even though highlighting their contribution was the first thing Katie Bouman did. And at least Andrew Chael, who did write the plurality of the code in the GitHub repo, did come out strongly in favor of her and was horrified of the hate she got. Quote:
"So apparently some (I hope very few) people online are using the fact that I am the primary developer of the eht-imaging software library to launch awful and sexist attacks on my colleague and friend Katie Bouman. Stop."
(https://twitter.com/thisgreyspirit/status/111651854496183091...)
It's curious that, at least in my subjective impression, the tech community has a far larger problem with women than any of the other groups that have traditionally suffered discrimination: racism and especially homophobia really are extremely rare, at least overtly. But the uglyness Katie Bouman, or Ellen Pao, or Marissa Meyers brought out seems to be alive and well.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#8It's a very interesting take to put a face on people who we only know for short acronyms and interaction which usually happen when things are not going smooth.
It's easy to think moderation might be too active (or not active enough) though it's not us sitting on their seats.
(Though I agree with the critique that the site is "too orange" and I'm all too happy to use the available customization option)
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#9Curious to know why this post has a "unvote" option. I don't recall seeing that before. Is there a link that explains what it does?
It’s not this story, it’s a global feature on both comments and stories which serves as a “undo” for fat fingering the upvote button. Before this feature you’d often see comments along the likes of “sorry, I accidentally downvoted you while trying to upvote.”
Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#10“In April, when a story about Katie Bouman, an M.I.T. researcher who helped develop a technology that captured the first photo of a black hole, rose to the front page, users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to undermine the weight of her contributions.” This is an odd statement as it implies the purpose was to undermine. Reading code and critiquing isn’t meant to “undermine” but to identify truth and co…
Code critique has a time and a place: a PR (or equivalent) where you were solicited or it is your role to comment.
Outside of it it's just mostly unwelcome noise. If you have a suggestion then do the PR and get your code reviewed in the same way.