301–310 of 812 posts
Has anyone ever seen an online community (with more than a handful of users) that focuses on more than cute puppy pictures and that is not described as "toxic" by "critics"? I'd say that HN does a great job at avoiding that. The article is titled "moderating hacker news" but fails to describe just how good a job the moderators and owners are doing. The moderators for moderation, and the owners for (as I perceive it)…
Has anyone ever seen an online community (with more than a handful of users) that focuses on more than cute puppy pictures and that is not described as "toxic" by "critics"? I'd say that HN does a great job at avoiding that. The article is titled "moderating hacker news" but fails to describe just how good a job the moderators and owners are doing. The moderators for moderation, and the owners for (as I perceive it)…
On Reddit, there are several immensely moderated subs with persistent high quality, and millions of subscribers, notably /r/AskScience and /r/AskHistorians (though also numerous others).
Smaller subreddits are relatively easy to maintain at quality, though sustaining engagement is hard (much of the Reddit dynamic actively works against this). Keeping large subs sane is exceptionally difficult. Getting "defaulted" (being added to the list of default-subscribed subreddits) was long seen as the kiss of death for smaller, quality, subreddits.
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Something can be both an expression of privilege and a very good idea. Example: The advice to get at least 8 hours of sleep at a regular time each night. This reflects: - the economic privilege of not needing to do irregular shift work - not having a chronic disease which interrupts sleep - not being a parent - having a regular place to sleep at all. However, it is still a good idea for one’s physical and mental heal…
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…
For example, here’s the front page from a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-07-07
I’m on mobile so I’m only skimming, but if you sorted that day list by upvotes, the 4th most upvoted story would be the one about a new African trade coalition (450+ upvotes). There’s also a 200+ upvoted submission about FBI/ICE having access to state driver license photos. And a bunch of other sub-100 upvoted threads that are political, or aren’t explicitly tech — e.g. forest kindergarten, FCC and robocallers, the Durian King. And this doesn’t account for the tech articles in which politics are prominently discussed, e.g. anything to do with the Boeing 737 MAX.
Seems like a solid mix to me, even as at least a third of the tech-focused submissions don’t interest me (e.g. Lisp and RaptorJIT). There’s enough political content for that day that if I wanted to read only non-tech HN threads, I’d have my fill.
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If there's one privilege that I will never feel guilty about taking advantage of, it's the ability to listen to and engage in discussions with folks smarter than I am with the overloaded concept of political belief removed.
Imagine how much better the experience of listening and engaging in discussions with those who are qualified as not simply smarter than you, but who have different lived experience, values, and/or models for ordering the Universe?
You can't argue with results. The comments on this site are superb. I probably read the comments 3x more than I read the base articles. Take a look at the comments on MSNBC, Fox News, or even the Washington Post. It's shrill emotional blather.
Has anyone ever seen an online community (with more than a handful of users) that focuses on more than cute puppy pictures and that is not described as "toxic" by "critics"? I'd say that HN does a great job at avoiding that. The article is titled "moderating hacker news" but fails to describe just how good a job the moderators and owners are doing. The moderators for moderation, and the owners for (as I perceive it)…
It's not up to The New Yorker to give praise to moderators or owners. That's inserting bias. It's up to the readers (us) to determine whether the moderators are doing a good job.
I'd encountered one such newly-launched site, heralded as "a kinder, gentler Reddit" in 2016. Not only did the site itself collapse and fail a year later, but it failed, in the extreme, to live up to its promise, in part through the user community (always a confounding factor) but also through exceedingly poor moderation both by volunteer user mods and the site's paid staff and management.
I'll note: I was largely in agreement with the site's stated principles and politics, and still found myself very much on the dark side of it. Contrast with HN where I consider myself frequently contrarian and yet reasonably well tolerated.
In writing on the experience I called out the contrast with HN specifically. In part:
The really striking thing for me is that a bastion of one representation of what Internet critics, erm, criticise, HN, is proving much more effective at accomplishing and embodying the goals which Imzy, a "kinder, gentler" place, has set out to achieve.
... with a longer discussion of the things that seem to work particularly well. See:
https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imz...
I disagree with dang and sctb on occaision. I am disappointed that there are topics that HN doesn't seem able to discuss (and have called these out). I've been admonished a few times.
But on balance, the site works, and rewards time spent on it. And credit must go to dang and sctb.
Thanks, guys.
>Strict moderation I don't consider the moderation on this site to be strict at all? It's tone police more than it is content police. HN continually lets comments and statements go completely unquestioned, and in some cases actively supports view points, that are objectively wrong in the most vanilla fashion all because it was said in the correct manner.
And what's your point? You'd prefer the site take the more active role required to moderate based on content – which ostensibly includes opinions, and not just objective facts – rather than enforcing general civility?
No, the point was that bad content continually and consistently gets through moderation and community enforcement BECAUSE of the value of tone over content and sometimes this content is extremely hostile. It absolutely has nothing to do with civility. Civility and "tone" are not intertwined.
You can be completely uncivil without an aggressive or strident tone.
Moderation sets precedent. Moderator action typically only comes about when the community is offended in some way. Flagged posts never get corrected or vouched for despite the effort put into them if they go against a particular tone in the conversation or ideological perspective.
Some of these were even presented in the article as examples.
>rather than enforcing general civility?
This forum isn't civil. It's distilled.
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> Strict moderation is the reason HN is the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet. Don't you find it a bit suspicious that the forum you happen to like is "the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet"?
I don't know what you mean by "suspicious." I'm part of a ton of other forums and communities, and over time almost all of them have devolved into complete and utter dogshit, just an endless stream of memes and screenshots of Twitter posts. The communities that remain successful either have total strict moderation or a "shitposts" section where all of the garbage ends up, but even then the quarantine zone ends up suc…