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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#511

Post by evo_9 »

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…

Totally agree, my only wish is the mods would 100% stop editing the original link titles. They should respect the original authors title for starters, and the new title isn’t always better. Whether or not the title is click bait-y, well leave they to the community to decide (aka if the article has merit etc)

It’s also confusing if you've already clicked on it and checked it out - suddenly there is another similar interesting story - oh wait nope it’s the one I already checked out.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#512

Post by hestipod »

astine wrote: post #193
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree with what you're saying. But I'm asking why the person posting believes that the HN community overwhelmingly believes X and their evidence for that. I presume they do have evidence and conclusions and I'd like to know about it.

I think that people tend to perceive HN as overwhelmingly believing whatever the opposite of their opinion is any time there is a significant debate on something. Unless there is overwhelming support for our own position, we feel that we are in a hostile environment.

It's interesting how one or two dissenting views amongst a majority neutral or even supportive results in "This place is now!" I wonder why absolute agreement is required for some people to not feel attacked or marginalized.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#514

Post by hestipod »

dmix wrote: post #50
Mizza wrote: post #16

Shout out to dang! You're doing a great job! Thank you! Strict moderation is the reason HN is the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet. I wish good moderation was a skill that more people learned - would you ever be interested in writing a guide or teaching a class on moderation?

I wouldn’t call it strict at all. He’s actually way more liberal about stuff than most over-bearing Reddit mods who think it’s their job to be editors of their own private newspaper rather than helping only when there’s no other option. This is why dang is so good at what he does as it draws a difficult balance.

I know it's anecdotal and people live their own experience, but in my own experience dang is the only moderator I can recall having a conversation with where it WAS a conversation and not some authoritarian declaration. He even seems to go out of his way in comments to explain his thoughts and I have seen him change his mind and admit things as well. I wasn't aware he was Canadian but it funnily feeds the positive stereotype of politeness in our northern neighbors. Most people in positions of power online seem to be little Joffrey types with take it or leave it attitudes regardless of how you speak to them.

Also add me to the people who didn't know it was "Dan G" for the longest time and loved "dang" as a name.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#515

Post by 18pfsmt »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #77
mieseratte wrote: post #72

I think the HN culture is slowly dying. Reflexive downvoting has become very common as of late, the eternal September is brining in more people steeped in political hivemindedness. That isn’t to say all is lost, but this site feels markedly different from the beginning of the decade.

I would argue that HN culture is evolving within the culture it exists in. I don't recall the beginning of the decade having so many intersections of tech and everyday life. In the beginning of the decade, Google wasn't known to have paid off high level employees for sexual harassment, Facebook wasn't known to have hordes of contractors watching horrible stuff for their job, no one knew the good and bad effects of th…

I remember exactly where I was when I first heard NPR tell listeners they could visit "their FB" or follow them On Twitter in 2010. I got a visceral bad feeling.

In the 90s, the prevailing wisdom was not to disclose personal info on the internet because it was understood that "the IP stack" was designed with maximum liberty and tolerance for all kinds of garbage (with personal tools to filter, and the assumption of personal responsibility). Comparing the dynamics of Usenet vs. FB is quite revealing and brings insight into the discussion about distributed vs. centralized power. We've dumbed everything down to the point of ridiculousness.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#516

Post by dang »

cowabungacode wrote: post #477
wpietri wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" I definitely want to give credit to dang and sctb for making it that way. It could have gone differently. In particular, the no-politics argument is basically a fancy way of saying "nothing that challenges the status quo please". [1] I really appreciate them trying to keep the forum in a state where these discussion can at least happen. I would have left long ago if…

> I would have left long ago if flagging had continued to be used to kill topics. Flagging is frequently used to kill topics still. Climate change articles are still flagged mercilessly, before any discussion starts and without regard for the high-quality of the articles. dang as a moderator has specifically said that articles about Russia hacking elections are penalized prior to any votes or comments starting (edit:…

Climate change is discussed a great deal on HN these days; probably more than any other topic:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...

Any topic this widespread is going to produce many copycat and follow-up articles that add no significant new information, as well as many sensationalized articles that don't provide a basis for substantive discussion. Users tend to flag those. If they didn't, climate change wouldn't simply be the most-discussed topic—it would be practically the only topic on HN.

There are also cases of bad flagging, where a particularly substantive article didn't get the discussion it deserved, but these are not nearly as common as people jumping to the conclusion that a topic is being suppressed when they run across a flagged submission. Checking HN search is an easy way to vet that logic (though not as easy as not vetting it). Frequently it turns out that the story has already had significant attention. If, after checking that, you see a particularly substantive article getting flagged, you are welcome to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. We sometimes turn off flagging in such cases.

Everybody feels that the topic they consider most important is under-discussed on HN. Actually, every important topic is under-discussed on HN, because frontpage space is the scarcest resource we have: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... There's no way around this on a site that exists for curiosity, because curiosity withers under repetition.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#517

Post by segfaultbuserr »

nkurz wrote: post #250
thisabled wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always make a fresh new throwaway account here every time I make a post, and,so, by this post you can deduce yourself. This is a zero-minute account, as all my accounts are. You're welcome.

I wish you wouldn't do that, as I think it's destructive to the community. Certainly things aren't perfect here, but certainly they could become worse. Violating the (difficult to enforce) rule that one maintain an "identity that others can relate to" contributes to making things worse.

I think anonymity per se is not that bad, and I'm pretty sure many regularly create throwaway accounts for harmless discussion on many forums just for privacy reasons (avoid profiling & analysis, big brother, personal attacks, etc), not for posting inflammatory or controversial comments.

Websites like Reddit Profile (https://redditprofile.com/about) and HN Profile (https://hnprofile.com) systematically scans all HN comments and identifies all users' expertise, personal interests, activities and emotions, and allow employers to uncover their E-mails and hire them. And it's just a one-man's startup as a social experiment, larger agencies and corporations have at least many order-of-magnitude higher budgets. And I definitely think not everyone wants that.

The problem, I think, is this type of behavior encourages inappropriate uses and abuses of anonymity.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#519

Post by jessaustin »

everybodyknows wrote: post #314
sgt101 wrote: post #70

"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 ...

I took the final paragraph of TFA as an indication that this is just ironic fun. "Couch alluder", indeed.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#520

Post by viraptor »

mfoy_ wrote: post #504
mushufasa wrote: post #455

I liked this article, though I think it missed the best part of Hacker News. To me, Hacker News can feel like walking through Dumbledore's office -- magical and mind-bending collections of incredible devices, ideas, and oddities. Just yesterday someone posted a comment with links to UI design libraries that I've been subconsciously wishing for in my dreams (humaans, undraw.co), and I used it in a product demo. As a s…

Don't suppose you saved a link to that comment?

Search works pretty well for this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20629871
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