The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#291

Post by repolfx » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #140

ppod wrote: post #135

>The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, It's a good article overall, but it would be nice, just for once, to read something in a mainstream "arts and culture" outlet that wasn't absolutely dripping with fear and contempt for anything related to tech culture.

I didn't read anything dripping fear and contempt for tech culture in the article, much less the excerpt you quoted. It seems accurate to me.

I think the way it describes discussions here could be described as "dripping fear and contempt", slightly poetic though that wording is.

Consider these quotes (I posted some above too):

A recent comment thread ... yielded a response likening journalism and propaganda

users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to undermine the weight of her contributions

The site’s now characteristic tone ... masks a deeper recklessness

Ill-advised citations proliferate; thought experiments abound; humane arguments are dismissed as emotional or irrational.

Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify broad moral positions. The most admired arguments are made with data, but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data tend to be ancillary concerns.

(the last part of this quote seems to contradict the other accusations, but we can't check what she means by the veracity of data being an ancillary concern because ironically she provides no data)

Hacker News readers who visit the site to learn how engineers and entrepreneurs talk, and what they talk about, can find themselves immersed in conversations that resemble the output of duelling Markov bots trained on libertarian economics blogs

In the span of just one paragraph the journalist has:

- Dehumanized us (we sound like bots)

- Cast us as a weird outgroup (learn how they talk)

- Dismissed logic and thought experiments as legitimate

- Argued we aren't interested in "humane" arguments

- Accused the community of ignoring the truth of data

- Called us reckless

If you really think all that stuff is accurate, why post here at all?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#292

Post by billfruit » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #140

ppod wrote: post #135

>The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, It's a good article overall, but it would be nice, just for once, to read something in a mainstream "arts and culture" outlet that wasn't absolutely dripping with fear and contempt for anything related to tech culture.

I didn't read anything dripping fear and contempt for tech culture in the article, much less the excerpt you quoted. It seems accurate to me.

Yes but it does have a tone like the authour is treating HN as the ”other”, and trying to view it from outside with some bemusement.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#293

Post by Fnoord » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #275

Fnoord wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While Hacker News is great at protecting the community from disruptive individuals, it tends to fall down when protecting unpopular individuals against the community turned mob. Isn't every community -barring a few wild west's- like that? One Usenet, someone with an unpopular opinion would end up in people's kill file. On IRC, someone with an unpopular opinion would end up on people's ignore or would get kicked off…

Individuals putting someone on their personal ignore list is different from a moderator deciding to put someone on everybody's ignore list though. Your solution is a bit lacking, I believe. "If it's not popular, it has no merit, because if it had merit it would be popular". There's also no telling whether some unpopular opinion you'd consider without merit today will become popular tomorrow (and, if history teaches u…

Of course there are going to be posts which don't get upvoted enough. Everyone who frequently posts here has witnessed that some good posts don't get many upvotes, whilst other ones which you find less good do get them. The amount of upvotes does not tell us how good your post is; all it does is determine for the reader the order of the posts as it isn't chronological. Why? Because nobody has come up with a better solution.

My reasoning (solution) is a rule of thumb, not a law. Every group of people has a blind spot. There is no perfect solution; however I believe the solution as presented is the one with the least casualties. If you know a better one, I'm all ears.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#294

Post by mieseratte » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #83

mieseratte wrote: post #72

I think the HN culture is slowly dying. Reflexive downvoting has become very common as of late, the eternal September is brining in more people steeped in political hivemindedness. That isn’t to say all is lost, but this site feels markedly different from the beginning of the decade.

How do you know that downvoting is "reflexive" - certainly any time I've been downvoted it was, on reflection, fairly well justified.

> certainly any time I've been downvoted it was, on reflection, fairly well justified.

Typically when I find my statements are downvoted it is because I had a quip that could reasonably be construed as negative, combative, etc. I tend to edit and remove those bits.

When I find things to be "reflexively" (probably the wrong word) downvoted, it is in regards to simple questions. Simple example, there was an article regarding Manning's confinement yesterday. One top-level comment asked "Why is this not cruel" to which I asked the opposite, "How is it cruel?" - simple as can be. I watched that one go down to fairly negative, then bounce back up, settling on a score of 0. I don't care about the score itself so much as what that delta represents.

Perhaps I'm just too narrow minded, but I fail to come up with a reason to downvote a simple question asking for perspective that doesn't involve me reading some kind of intent. One of the core tenets of this site is to assume good faith, assume the most charitable viewpoint. When I say that I believe HN culture is dying, it is this that I am talking about. There seems to be less and less good faith discussion as time goes on.

As always, I'd love for an alternative perspective that I'm (probably) missing here.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#295

Post by 52-6F-62 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

TailgateShrub wrote: post #121

Skipping from thread to thread felt a bit like arriving at a party where half the room was sipping non-alcoholic shrubs and the other half had spent the afternoon tailgating in a stadium parking lot. This kind of vibe is why I read HN.

I think it was much in the tone you described—at least that's how I read it.

As for myself, I like that I can—on different days, or times of day—one of either camp!

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#296

Post by hos234 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

FussyZeus wrote: post #194

hos234 wrote: post #163

Discussion in todays world is highly over rated. There are people who build hospitals and there are people who stand around talking about who should build hospitals. The former group in any population in any country is very small. The latter group is very large and thanks to the current architecture of the internet have gotten so over amplified that they think they actually matter. Their resumes don't have any actual…

The idea that the 'doers' are the only ones that matter, and that drawing attention to issues is mere posturing for social standing is a bad-faith critique of many people who act with good intentions. Yes, there are always those seeking to attach their names to worthy causes for their own gains. However people have taken that legitimate critique and amplified it to the degree that "If you aren't fixing the problem, y…

I should have phrased that better. Didn't mean only doers matter. People who bring attention to things matter. But there is a line above which discussion does not matter. And I think news/social media and internet forums push things way over that line to the point where people are recognizing all the jibber jabber going on isn't translating to outcomes.

In the context of the linked article, HN for example could easily shut down 2 days a week and Planet Earth will continue to spin. And maybe the mods(and the addicted readers) will get a break from what appears to be a thankless energy draining job.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#297

Post by radcon » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

rimliu wrote: post #195

romaaeterna wrote: post #164

Hacker News is a well-moderated community, but it's illustrative to see where Hacker News fails at moderation. While Hacker News is great at protecting the community from disruptive individuals, it tends to fall down when protecting unpopular individuals against the community turned mob. I support Hacker News moderating itself however it chooses. However, if we are looking at it as a moderation model for large, open,…

You've just voiced the thing I dislike most about the HN. And I do not fully agree with "Gackle and Bell, by contrast, practice a personal, focussed, and slow approach to moderation". The faceless "we" they love so much does not appear very personal to me. Disclaimer: I have an axe to grind having my account with 9k+ karma and dating back to 2009 banned for whatever. Despite that I am trying my best to look at the si…

Agreed, HN's lack of transparency is slowly killing it. You can see the discussions becoming more one-dimensional every day.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#298

Post by tomatotomato37 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #281

resters wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But as this article shows, abdicating the responsibility by keeping the topics sterile is similarly suspect, in the sense of fiddling while Rome burns. I believe a willingness to confront the ugly sides of technology with some courage of conviction would eventually be recognised, even if it may occasionally involve a bit of a mess. Absolutely true. The failure of mods (and even pg?) to recognize this is the single…

A mature HN reader skilled in technology, is least likely to undergo an emotional/identity-driven flight of fancy about political issues pertaining to technology Heh, except for anything programming language related, what the best web framework to use is, whether end-to-end encryption actually works or is just security theatre, etc. There are lots of technical topics that people attach their identity to and would loo…

Emotionally heated technical discussions are perfectly fine though since they are so inconsequential; at the end of the day no one is going to be ostracized or violently attacked someone over their shit choice of spaces over tabs.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#299

Post by SolaceQuantum » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #271

FussyZeus wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as I said, it shouldn't be ALWAYS allowed, otherwise you have that sect of people who bring up the politics inherent in anything, and while it's true and important, it's not what HN is about or should be about. BUT, and this is a big but here, there are a small number of discussions on HN where it can be argued that the politics involved in an issue are more important than the technology. Or, that the technolog…

Like 1st day of month are the hiring threads... what about on the 15th we have a very focused political debate - and no other threads are allowed to have it. I definitely agree that tech lately is so intertwined with politics.

What happens if on the 16th Bloomberg announces that all organizers of the protests at Google have left or been fired?

What happens if on the 17th, during a big ML conference, a prominent computer vision scientist was able to conclusively prove that x% of current facial datasets are majority white male and that this results in y% increase of false positive rates when identifying nonwhites as criminals?

What happens if on the 19th there is a report delivered by a special UN comissioned research group that issues that global warming has destroyed coral reefs in a way such that they will never recover?

What happens if on the 25th it is definitively revealed through a security report that voting machines were actively hacked to detect if the voter was registered female and made them vote for $party?

What happens if on the 1st Reuters publishes a investigative piece that explores how Microsoft has been delivering accurate censorship algorithms to China and the specific people behind it?

What happens if on the 12th a NIH paper is published unveiling definitive brain architecture differences between male, female, and nonbinary brains due to an innovative computer vision collaboration in MIT?

What happens if on the 14th a scientist who happens to be an assigned-female-at-birth nonbinary latin american publishes the definitive proof that P != NP? Also, this researcher takes 'they' pronouns, so commentors can either use "she" or "they" and both are political statements? (Or is it inappropriate to talk about the researcher and their/her work to discover this at all?)

That is to say- in the article, it was discovered that "what is political debate" turned out to itself be a political debate, because some things are obviously political, and other things are political just by existing and referring to it.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#300

Post by mieseratte » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #77

mieseratte wrote: post #72

I think the HN culture is slowly dying. Reflexive downvoting has become very common as of late, the eternal September is brining in more people steeped in political hivemindedness. That isn’t to say all is lost, but this site feels markedly different from the beginning of the decade.

I would argue that HN culture is evolving within the culture it exists in. I don't recall the beginning of the decade having so many intersections of tech and everyday life. In the beginning of the decade, Google wasn't known to have paid off high level employees for sexual harassment, Facebook wasn't known to have hordes of contractors watching horrible stuff for their job, no one knew the good and bad effects of th…

My problem doesn't come from topics but the discourse one finds in the threads themselves.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys intellectual curiosity, which is what the site exists for.

Perhaps I'm just an old man yelling about "back in the day," but on these axis I feel HN is trending downward.