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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#381

Post by Raphmedia »

ohaideredevs wrote: post #373
dunkelheit wrote: post #147

I 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…

Don't know sctb, but I have had run-ins with dang on multiple occasions where he asked me to stop arguing when I felt I wasn't being hostile. Nonetheless, it's always in a very moderate tone of doing his job, rather than trying to express power, and I respect that. (Nor am I implying that I didn't take the arguments too far, in some cases I did) The real proof that they do their job though is that I can still occasio…

Same here. Dang has sent me such warnings before and it's always with such politeness that you end up feeling like an uneducated fool. HN has some of the best moderation that I have seen in a while. I have been a moderator for a large website in early 2000's and I can only admire them. This is no easy task.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#382

Post by chippy »

Fnoord wrote: post #202

> Gackle is drawn to healing workshops; Bell, to Indian philosophy. They seem, at times, to be applying old, humanist techniques to a culture obsessed with the future. I wouldn't have guessed that. What's next though is even more interesting: > “Something that’s deeply interesting, I think, to both of us,” Gackle said, “is the way in which one can arrive at a nonviolent reaction to somebody by having greater awarenes…

This also caught my eye and it would be something I'd like to read about and discuss here too!

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#384

Post by mises »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #118
azangru wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN's prevailing attitude (e.g. cloudflare-shouldnt-ban- ). Funny, I thought HN's prevailing attitude in the case of the recent ban of 8chan was, hell yeah, good riddance to those reprehensible twats. (Which, personally, annoyed me, because I believe that even the deplored should have a space for communication.)

Could you clarify why you thought this? What evidence do you have that supports this? The big thread shows that the top comment agrees that 8chan should be left alone. [0] and the comment chain shows that there seems to be something like a significant minority against 8chan, but it doesn’t appear to be a prevailing majority. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395

I'd approach it from a different point of view (Cloudflare can choose with whom it does business), but still got the same general idea. Interestingly enough, some of the highest-voted posts aren't always the "prevailing opinion" - some times. Lots of comments get ranked highly because others recognize they are cogent and support them. They may disagree, and so comment, but might still vote in favor if the argument is well-reasoned. I do this personally, when I can.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#386

Post by jasim »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #68

This article does seem to get at the essence of HN, appreciative of dang and sctb's humanity while not ignoring the problems. Personally, I would actually consider it an excellent demonstration of the fallibility of one of HN's favourite tropes, Gell-Mann amnesia. If there's one critique that I believe is paramount it's that HN has, due to its readership, an ethical obligation that goes beyond making discussions all…

The political discussions that make their way into HN are very US-centric and that excludes me and countless others who actively participate here. A lot of such discussions are not real enough to me - they are problems of a much more privileged world. If we were to have truly political discussions, we'll need to include all the other countries of the world, which none of us would want. There are other places where political conversations are dime a dozen, but no other place like HN for technology, and things that "gratify one's intellectual curiosity".

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#387

Post by pvaldes »

meowface wrote: post #319

I 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 d…

> It's all our own fault if we ever expected expert political philosophy or scientific debate from a group of people who mostly just program websites and phone apps.

To be fair, we can expect some diversity among several millions of readers from many different countries, points of view and experience in different fields.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#388

Post by jacquesm »

coldtea wrote: post #290
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…

> There are people who build hospitals and there are people who stand around talking about who should build hospitals. And the latter are even more important, especially if we don't use a contrived example of the hospital and naively assume "more is better", but extend it to other things people can build where building them is controversial and/or more is not necessarily better. (And even for hospitals, there's the q…

Having a hospital is one thing, staffing it and getting it equipped quite another.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#389

Post by notathing »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #352
crispyambulance wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 na…

That paragraph is a smug, flowery dismissal of the kind of evidence-based discussion that happens on HN. It's passive aggressively accusing HN commenters of wrongthink and of abusing unreliable tools like "data" and "logic" to counter "humane arguments" (read: emotional arguments). It basically dismisses the role of data in debate by suggesting that it is malleable or selective--we've all probably encountered this ty…

> when you embrace a brand of anti-intellectualism which believes that all data is fake/flawed and reality is subjective.

That's not wrong though. Reality is a social construct.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#390

Post by aswanson »

Bartweiss wrote: post #251
rusk wrote: post #178

Earlier 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…

I think there's truth in this. Political commentary is like a magnetar for the less informed; it self selects for increasingly degenerate discussion.
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