The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#411

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #277

blaser-waffle wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heavy startup focus of hackernews (like, it's an incubator's news agitator) + lots of successful tech-types, like FAANG employees with 200K+ salaries. Lots of other commentators I've seen on here are experience pilots, engineers, etc. Maybe not Bill Gates money but certainly on the higher end of the bell-curve when it comes to education and pay. I don't disagree that there is a lot of aspirational talk on here to…

> like FAANG employees with 200K+ salaries. At first I was a little amazed that many negative articles and comments about these companies were being down-voted, just notice the latest article on the status of a pregnant employee at Google, where the discussion's focus was very quickly and conveniently moved from how said employee had been mistreated by Google to how bad it is that Google allows its employees to discu…

Even if this was true, wouldn't it be in the best interests of employees from other FAANG companies to upvote these stories?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#412

Post by OrgNet » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

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…

> their unobtrusive

Not unobtrusive but at least, a lot of the time, they leave a comment to let everyone know that they changed what users posted, when they hide posts, etc. The main problem is when they don't (it feels more like the content is being censored or tailored to their views then).

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#413

Post by yhoiseth » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #242

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)…

I don’t think LessWrong [1] is described as “toxic.”

1: https://www.lesswrong.com

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#414

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

thedaemon wrote: post #269

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…

Unobtrusive is far from what the moderation here is on Hackernews. They literally have to moderate as a regular comment. Thus, being obtrusive and breaking their own rules. You might not have noticed it, but me, being a "bad" member, gets the moderation comments all the time and I definitely find them obtrusive. I'd rather just get downvotes from members, like the site should be, instead of comments from dang.

dang's job is to be obtrusive when you're posting comments that aren't useful…

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#415

Post by 1000units » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

cowabungacode wrote: post #410

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…

> In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is.... a "haven for alt-right", Really? Do you really think that a strength of HN is that it is a haven for the alt-right? This is shocking and extremly scary to me. The alt-right wants me to die. Is this site a haven for those who want to kill off people like me? That's abhorrent. I agree that HN is a haven for the alt-right but I do not think that is a GO…

The "alt-right" is mostly a boogieman for talking heads. One of my personal hobbies is hanging out in politically extreme internet communities (of both polarities) and arguing with people. Groups labeled "white-supremacist" rarely even contain a large number of white people.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#416

Post by johnsea » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

thedaemon wrote: post #269

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…

Unobtrusive is far from what the moderation here is on Hackernews. They literally have to moderate as a regular comment. Thus, being obtrusive and breaking their own rules. You might not have noticed it, but me, being a "bad" member, gets the moderation comments all the time and I definitely find them obtrusive. I'd rather just get downvotes from members, like the site should be, instead of comments from dang.

> being a "bad" member

why don't you strive to be a "good" member? Try autogenic training! (why not?) If you say, "Life is suffering. Life is not happiness. Best you figure that out now." it will influence/overtake you. Try the opposite :-)

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#417

Post by Eiriksmal » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

Deeply impressed by the author's dedication to fleshing out this story. Learning about n-gate's existence, and then tracking down the creator to get his take on Hacker News? Excellent work. N-gate's comments are an excellent summary of the portion of HN's population that gives the website its unique reputation:

>>>The proprietor of N-gate is an engineer who grew up in Palo Alto and now lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he works in high-performance computing. He agreed to exchange e-mails on condition of anonymity. “Almost every post deals with the same topics: these are people who spend their lives trying to identify all the ways they can extract money from others without quite going to jail,” he wrote. “They’re people who are convinced that they are too special for rules, and too smart for education. They don’t regard themselves as inhabiting the world the way other people do; they’re secret royalty, detached from society’s expectations and unfailingly outraged when faced with normal consequences for bad decisions. Society, and especially economics, is a logic puzzle where you just have to find the right set of loopholes to win the game. Rules are made to be slipped past, never stopping to consider why someone might have made those rules to start with. Silicon Valley has an ethics problem, and ‘Hacker’ ‘News’ is where it’s easiest to see.”

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#418

Post by cowabungacode » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

1000units wrote: post #415

cowabungacode wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is.... a "haven for alt-right", Really? Do you really think that a strength of HN is that it is a haven for the alt-right? This is shocking and extremly scary to me. The alt-right wants me to die. Is this site a haven for those who want to kill off people like me? That's abhorrent. I agree that HN is a haven for the alt-right but I do not think that is a GO…

The "alt-right" is mostly a boogieman for talking heads. One of my personal hobbies is hanging out in politically extreme internet communities (of both polarities) and arguing with people. Groups labeled "white-supremacist" rarely even contain a large number of white people.

> The "alt-right" is mostly a boogieman for talking heads.

No, it's not. The alt-right uses anonymous web boards like this one (but not HN to my knowledge) to coordinate and celebrate mass shootings that are directly admitted to be race-focused and white-supremacist-led. (Edit: The alt-right does use HN to spread hate and their "ideology", but I have not seen direct specific calls to violence here)

> Groups labeled "white-supremacist" rarely even contain a large number of white people.

I don't see how this is relevant at all. Being white has nothing to do with being a white supremacist. There are lots of non-white white-supremacists in the world. You're using logical fallacies like whataboutism and appeals to false authority instead of debating anything of substance.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#419

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

resters wrote: post #211

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…

> 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…

> As a share of GDP, surveillance and defense spending has never been higher during peacetime. In other words, it's a bull market and HN is ultimately a beneficiary of the growth of surveillance and defense tech. Hence its interests are overwhelmingly right wing when it comes to suppressing criticism and threats of that tech.

I've seen plenty of criticism of the defense industry here.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#420

Post by ppod » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #221

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 agree. The article makes it sound like logic and humanity are disjointed, and like the most loved arguments people make here are based on impersonal data without considering ethics. I think this place is exactly the opposite. Try a logical argument in a popular reddit thread, or find the humanity in random communities. More often, arguments without focusing on what's logical creates biases and hurts a lot more feel…

Yes, this is the point I was trying to make. The article criticizes the nature of the discussion here, and I think it is fair to say that the criticism is tied to negative stereotypes about engineers. Often this is framed as "punching up", because engineers have a lot of financial potential and business influence, but it ignores the fact that in "middle class" society (most people reading the New Yorker are probably in the top 10% wealth distribution) it is the perceived moral high ground that people seek most, and it is often inherited social, cultural and financial capital which enables people to take positions as journalists or op-ed writers from which they demean the cultural and moral depth of engineering culture.

All this despite the fact that CP Snow's observations about the Two Cultures still hold: it's far easier to find an engineer who will give you an interpretation of Hume than a New Yorker writer who can write fizzbuzz.

The biggest issue I have with the article is a lack of fair comparison. Is there non-tech site with an open commenting system where the discussion is civil, rational, and kind? It seems to me most of them disable comments altogether to forestall the inevitable shitshow.