The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#421

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

craftyguy wrote: post #370

cmroanirgo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article, quoting @dang: ≥ What does seem to work better is personal interaction, over and over and over again, with individual users. That, case by case by case, seems to move the needle. But it’s very slow.” I think the guidelines are a great way of encouraging us all to be more thoughtful to others comments, and have noticed a difference in the way I might comment HN. Often I kill my comment before I actua…

> I think the guidelines are a great way of encouraging us all to be more thoughtful to others comments, and have noticed a difference in the way I might comment HN. The guidelines are somewhat of a joke, and are only followed (even by mods) when it is convenient to do so. For example, I've been repremanded in the past by our supreme leader dang for posting comments like "do you have a source for that?", because he a…

"do you have a source for that?", especially when phrased that way, is a statement made in bad faith, because it indicates that you believe that there's a chance the statement is unsourced (as opposed to "can you please cite this?").

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#422

Post by HNLurker2 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

HNLurker2 wrote: post #199

>Every single time poll restrictions have been proposed, it’s been for racist causes,” wrote one user, in response to a commenter with the username rokosbasilisk , who... This is why I don't read hacker news, unexpectedly you will get an existential nightmare. (Lucky for those who never heard of LessWrong )

Rokosbasilisk is what I mean. I suggest not googling that, down voters go ahead

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#423

Post by derefr » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

rusk wrote: post #178

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…

> 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…

Indeed, that “hovering near zero” voting effect is just-as-often because the folks around here will downvote arguments they agree with, just because they don’t like seeing such things on HN. Which I find lovely, personally.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#424

Post by resters » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #419

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…

> 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.

Mostly focused on the old, incumbent firms like Halliburton.

Google is the Halliburton of information, Facebook is the Halliburton of surveillance.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#425

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #172

vonmoltke wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember how you got the upvote/downvoted signal? We're you just polling the API and looking at the score?

I looked at my overall karma once per minute and keeping a running total in a text file as well as the increase/decrease from the last file. For comments I went to https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dsfyu404ed and whatever URL the "more" link was, found every comment of mine that was Pages were grabbed with wget and all the parsing was done with the standards linux/bash utilities

FYI, Hacker News has an API: https://github.com/HackerNews/API

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#426

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

FussyZeus wrote: post #201

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…

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…

> I'm not saying HN should allow ALL political discussion, but when technological issues inevitably and undeniably involve politics, either by influencing or being influenced, it seems a little cowardly that the general attitude of HN is "just don't discuss it" when the it in that case is core to the issue at hand, even if it happens to be political.

HN allows (and frequently features) political discussion in those contexts, so while I agree that it would be a problem if your description was accurate, I can't agree that the description is accurate.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#427

Post by yters » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

My account gets the 'posting too fast ban' more than I'd like, but cannot say it is always unearned. My runin with the mods is always cordial. I will say HN is more open minded than most forums these days. Good job mods.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#428

Post by CompanionCuuube » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #378

cloakandswagger wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data is the best tool we have. It can be cherry-picked and tainted for sure, but I'd much prefer debates be governed by that instead of whose argument is the most "humane"/morally superior

> prefer debates be governed by [cherry-picked data] instead of whose argument is the most "humane" To be overly generous, that's a false dichotomy. There's a time and place for humane arguments and, in the absence of complete "data" (whatever THAT means), that may be all you have. At the end of the day, we're all emotional creatures and this often justifiably dominates considerations of human affairs. Not everything…

> There's a time and place for humane arguments and, in the absence of complete "data" (whatever THAT means), that may be all you have.

I'm trying to be charitable here, but it's difficult not to conclude that you're setting up the data as never being sufficient e.g. "whatever THAT means" in order to support humane arguments over data based arguments.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#429

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

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,…

> Hacker News moderation is not appealable, not auditable, does not have bright line rules, and there are no due process rights. It simply does not respect individual rights.

As far as I'm aware, dang and sctb are fairly reasonable if you email them, and you can see what they're doing by just clicking on their account history.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#430

Post by 1000units » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

cowabungacode wrote: post #418

1000units wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "…

> No, it's not. The alt-right used 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.

This happens equally on both ends of the political spectrum, and I would not entwine "coordinate" and "celebrate" so closely. If you have any real exposure to these communities you recognize any "celebration" as a performative stunt by losers (for lack of a better term) who have few other outlets for asserting self-worth. I've never witnessed a crime being publicly coordinated online.

> Being white has nothing to do with being a white supremacist. There are lots of non-white white-supremacists in the world.

Do you take it all these people are uncommonly virtuous martyrs? Authentic mental handicaps totally lacking self-awareness and logical consistency? I'm genuinely curious what you think the story is here, because I've always found this observation interesting.