I'm surprised that the quality of HN hasn't fallen as drastically with user growth as much as other sites such as reddit. Thanks to the moderators for keeping HN great.
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
311–320 of 812 posts
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
> both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" both and neither. Partisan discussions, or even any kind of bitching at all ... are outright discouraged. I often step out of line in this regard and don't always agree, but I'm also confident that folk on "the other side" face the same kind of treatment. Though frustrating at times, I respect that it keeps things clean and helps cut out a lot of nonsense, of which…
It's always interesting to see a light-grey thread at the bottom of a page that's full of lucid, not-overly-aggressive political discussion. In one sense it's a shame when thoughtful, evidence-based discussion is discouraged for being off-topic. But I suspect that's ultimately what makes those discussions possible; they're happening between relatively small numbers of discussants, in a space that doesn't draw in peop…
Well, if it is off-topic, it doesn't belong at the top. But if it's thoughful, it should still be readable, so I sometimes upvote comments that deserve downvotes because I think it's been downvoted too much. It's fine if it lingers at the bottom, but if it's still thoughtful, it deserves to be readable.
Actual abuse, trolling, etc deserves to be downvoted into unreadability.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you inquisitive about?
For starters, why did you choose this username? From your comments it seems like you've been here for a while. Why a new account?
Because I like the username. What's wrong with it?
>Why a new account?
Because I wanted the username.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#314"Gackle replied. “We can’t stop that any more than King Canute”—the ancient Swedish king who demonstrated the limits of his power by trying, in an ironic spirit, to command the sea—“could stop the waves."" Canute was King of England, Denmark and Norway. He was not Swedish. I think that The Newyorker is trolling Hacker News by dropping this quote in.
Never ascribe to malice what can be put down to incompetence. The article hasn't even been properly proofread, let alone fact-checked:
>... experiment with and idea ...
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not all places need to support discussion of politics. If you want to discuss the intersection of tech and politics you have many options to go to without bringing that stuff here.
Everything is political. HN generally bans explicitly political opinion pieces, articles with overt political statements and articles primarily covering current political affairs (e.g. articles about something a US politician said). But even what is or isn't "political" in this sense is again down to the unstated biases of the moderators (e.g. what if the US politician said something about a well-known tech company).…
> Everything is political.
This is absolutely not true. The best postings on hacker news are cool technical stuff that doesn't have an ounce of political.
And yes, there are plenty of articles with a political lean but they are really the least interesting ones here because you can read those anywhere else.
I'd much rather read about the guy who built his own video card than what (non-technical) thing Uber is doing this week.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is actually my sole complaint with HN. I love the community and I understand where the moderators are coming from, but I feel that it's important to point out that the position of "keep politics out of $X" is the purest expression of privilege, and in general is an attitude that embraces the status quo, no matter how horrifying it might be for the unprivileged. I'm not saying HN should allow ALL political discus…
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…
Wealthy people actually get less sleep than the poor for obvious reasons: their time is more valuable. They also work more hours and have less “free” time for the same reason.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#317I guess it is a perfect opportunity to thank dang and sctb for their unobtrusive and friendly moderation efforts. The article itself was a bit disappointing because it focused on political issues. In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right", as evidenced by the fact that a comment on a controversial topic can easily float near zero points while rakin…
> both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" both and neither. Partisan discussions, or even any kind of bitching at all ... are outright discouraged. I often step out of line in this regard and don't always agree, but I'm also confident that folk on "the other side" face the same kind of treatment. Though frustrating at times, I respect that it keeps things clean and helps cut out a lot of nonsense, of which…
I LOVE this paragraph. God-damn nails the problems of HN (and other tech-heavy web communities) like nothing else...
> The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—
> hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—
> often 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 message-board intellectualism that might
> once have impressed V.C. observers like Graham has developed into an
> intellectual style all its own. 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, “The Tim Ferriss Show,” and the work of
> Yuval Noah Harari.Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#318Earlier 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…
I don't mind this sort of moderation on community sites like Hacker News. Still, as the error keeps coming up, I will repeat myself (I apologize to people trying to read the whole thread, but this is the main point): For the big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), we need the right to appeal, public auditing, bright line rules, and due process rights.
What about market competition? Won't that work out for the reasonable content? Won't a platform like Tor always allow all content (reasonable and unreasonable) to at least stay available as it is censorship-resistant?
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#319I think it's all our own fault if we ever expected expert political philosophy or scientific debate from a group of people who mostly just, at the end of the day, program websites and phone apps.
A high percentage of IT, software engineering, and professional advice on HN is very valuable, but the percentage of other kinds of commentary that's valuable is much lower. I occasionally also get sucked into the sorts of debates that I just shat on, but most of the time I find myself having to scroll past huge chunks of comment sections because half the sub-threads are pedantic political debates over some term or whatever, nested 10+ levels deep.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#320Very interesting article :-) I had no idea that the community is this large and that there are only two moderators. The article could have explained the other part of the moderation better - the user moderation provided by up and down votes. Bad comments are not only flagged but also tend to be pushed further down the page towards oblivion, while better comments tend to be lifted up towards the top of the page. Anywa…
Ha!
After rigorously reading the article and the commentary here, I found the end of your comment deliciously humorous. Oh, the irony!
Also if the author or any of the moderators read this comment, Hello!