The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#431

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

Fnoord wrote: post #293

luckylion wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individuals putting someone on their personal ignore list is different from a moderator deciding to put someone on everybody's ignore list though. Your solution is a bit lacking, I believe. "If it's not popular, it has no merit, because if it had merit it would be popular". There's also no telling whether some unpopular opinion you'd consider without merit today will become popular tomorrow (and, if history teaches u…

Of course there are going to be posts which don't get upvoted enough. Everyone who frequently posts here has witnessed that some good posts don't get many upvotes, whilst other ones which you find less good do get them. The amount of upvotes does not tell us how good your post is; all it does is determine for the reader the order of the posts as it isn't chronological. Why? Because nobody has come up with a better so…

I don't like about the popularity vote-moderation that it tends to become a dictatorship of the majority: if you're outside of the accepted canon, you'll get thrown out. It's effective for creating an a fairly consistent echo chamber, but I don't believe it comes with few casualties. You won't see the casualties, because they are censored.

I'm fine with using a system like that for starters but ultimately let benevolent dictators overrule majority decisions. My biggest problem with your previous post was the implication that whatever isn't popular doesn't have merit. The relation between the two is weak, that's what I wanted to express.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#432

Post by lazyasciiart » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #272

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. I'm not sure I'd agree with this. An appeal is as easy as sending them an email. In my experience they're more than willing to hear you out.

In my experience they aren't.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#433

Post by cowabungacode » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

1000units wrote: post #430

cowabungacode wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "celebrati…

> This happens on both ends of the political spectrum

No, it doesn't. The left is not a racist, hateful group and they do not coordinate and perform mass shootings. This particular problem is not shared equally by both sides.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#434

Post by TheBranca18 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

halfjoking wrote: post #367

repolfx wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well informed in what respect? Who should would be considered well informed? People who study politics professionally, so, journalists? I think the discussions here tend to be far more well informed than most political discussions, most of which amount to essays by people who don't even want you to be well informed. This silly New Yorker article is a good case in point. It lists a whole host of complaints about comme…

I agree. The New Yorker or New York Times dances around topics, giving random human interest tidbits or anecdotes and never gets to the heart of any discussion. It's all fluff. HackerNews comments in general are concise and to the point. Logical, well-reasoned arguments aren't a part of modern politics or journalism so to this writer it seems like some curious fantasy world. Luckily new online media like Young Turks,…

I would agree with you but think your examples are poor. Rogan generally lets his guests just talk about what they want to talk about without questioning them. Ben Shapiro sounds like he knows what he's talking about, but tends to pick debates with college students. Shapiro is full of platitudes, something which you seem to criticize the New York Times and New Yorker about interestingly. All of the people you mention, besides the Young Turks who I don't know anything about, lack self-awareness of their place in the world and the effect of their words on the general populace. I'd also argue that CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc have the same issues.

Also I'm not advocating for cable news, I think for profit news is generally terrible.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#435

Post by lazyasciiart » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #234

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #170

How do you know their names, how do you know there are only 2? One of the problems for me about HN is the secretive nature of moderation.

>One of the problems for me about HN is the secretive nature of moderation. I agree some aspects of moderation here are too opaque. While the mods will mention to users that they're about to be banned, or warn them about their behavior, this can take place enough after the fact that it's unlikely the comment will be read. Also, flags on your account, such as the loss of vouching or flagging privileges, or being slow-…

Shadowbanning relies explicitly on not having the users aware of penalties to their account.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#436

Post by pron » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

nailer wrote: post #219

pron wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever is "right", it wasn't just the media, but also lots of developers, who felt it was a shameful display of misogyny. So it is certainly wrong to claim that the media spun this story a certain way out of the blue. Also, if I didn't think my opinion was correct it wouldn't be my opinion.

The media spun the story in the first place (the reductive 'a woman who took a photo of black hole') because stories of women achieving things generates clicks. The media spun the story in the second place (the incredibly simplistic 'developers hate women') because the media dislikes people arguing with it and because sexism generates clicks.

From my perspective the story is: some people on HN which profess to value knowledge, scholarship and professionalism and "reducing" things for the sake of simplicity, express strong opinions on a matter of which they know little, their behavior mirrors archetypical behavior studied in the literature, and then rage when they're "reduced" based on scholarship they don't know. This is too long, so I'd summarize it as "HN commenters stuck in a bubble of ignorance rage on a topic they know nothing about."

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#437

Post by crispyambulance » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

AcerbicZero wrote: post #407

dhshahsndeisjwn wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, specifically they say: > The most admired arguments are made with data, > but the origins, veracity, and malleability of those data > tend to be ancillary concerns. That's a concern I often share: "the data" can so often be a "winner's history".

The nice thing about having discussions based on fact is that if "the data" is bad, its just another avenue for discussion. That doesn't mean we have to re-hash everything from first principals, and it certainly doesn't mean that compelling rhetoric + poor data might "win", but it sure does help. People can have a productive discussion on the veracity (origins/malleability are not good reasons to ignore data by thems…

    > The nice thing about having discussions based on fact...

Certainly that kind of positivist approach is valuable and warranted for much but not all of the subject-matter on HN. If you're discussing technical subject matter, stuff like the inner workings of regular expressions, programming language features, electronic components, sure, it's all about "the facts".

Things are different, however, in discussions about human affairs, political, inter-personal topics, social movements, historical interpretations, art, design, music, aesthetics, business and other topics in the human experience. These discussions DO EXIST on HN. And NO, sorry, pure facts may not be enough or might be incomplete or out-of-reach for that subject-matter.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#438

Post by 1000units » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

cowabungacode wrote: post #433

1000units wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "celebrati…

> This happens on both ends of the political spectrum No, it doesn't. The left is not a racist, hateful group and they do not coordinate and perform mass shootings. This particular problem is not shared equally by both sides.

A self-proclaimed leftist killed 10 people and injured 27 more in an incident less than a week ago.

You fail to recognize that the "left" is as wide and disconnected as the "right", and they both host dangerous and despicable morons.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#439

Post by simonebrunozzi » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 6:04 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…

I didn't know what "SJW" meant.

Looked it up, it means "social justice warrior", defined by Wikipedia as "a pejorative term for an individual who promotes socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism, as well as identity politics".

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#440

Post by AimForTheBushes » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 6:09 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #423

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…

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.

Also, it's not like you can create an account and downvote. I think that is overlooked as well.