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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#551
I loved this article and just want to thank Dan and Scott for all that they do. I appreciate how moderating a forum like HN leads to deep introspection about what triggers us. "This seemingly trivial stuff, about people getting mad at other people on the Internet, is actually tied to this much deeper and more fascinating process of what goes on between people and what goes on in oneself."

It's too easy to judge quickly (i.e. never reading but criticizing an article based on its title) and misunderstand strangers on the Internet. I admire the extreme patience that our HN mods have in helping us to judge less quickly and respond more thoughtfully to one another here. It's no doubt a challenging, emotionally taxing, and never-ending job, but y'all are doing it and doing it well. Thank you.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#552
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I like the username. What's wrong with it? >Why a new account? Because I wanted the username.

> What's wrong with it? Well, it's certainly going to cause many people to discount your opinion because they presume you have an racist agenda. It looks like a username consciously chosen to create offense while being plausibly deniable. Please be cautious of causing harm to a community for sake of social commentary. Needlessly creating offense is a negative, but maybe you can figure out how to use the dissonance to…

your username is pretty clearly a sexist reference too, isn't it? Don't deny it, you've already offended me.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#553

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. Yep. After eight years on the site I finally had a comment removed, and my response to dang to discuss it was completely ignored. Made me feel dumb for even trying.

Where did you request that?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#554
>The most ideologically motivated or extreme posts and comments on Hacker News—an interview piece from Quillette titled “Understanding Victimhood Culture”; a link to a video of James Damore and Jordan Peterson in conversation; one user telling another that all Jewish people should relocate to Israel—tend to get flagged by the community or the site’s anti-abuse systems, many of which Bell and Gackle have written themselves...

>When stories that focus on structural barriers faced by women in the workplace, or on diversity in tech, or on race or masculinity—stories, admittedly, that are more intriguing to me, a person interested in the humanities, than stories on technical topics—hit the front page, users often flag them, presumably for being off topic, so fast that hardly any comments accrue.

These are features, not bugs, and testaments to the quality moderation. All over the internet these topics are discussed, ad nauseam, and they're some of the most divisive issues in modern day discourse. Even the author can't seem to represent her political opponents fairly.

Without removing these topics, these ideological wars will irrevocably divide the community, sending one segment away in deep frustration. If we'd like to unify society, it's far more important to have spaces which don't immediately polarize along these lines.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#555
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> certainly any time I've been downvoted it was, on reflection, fairly well justified. Typically when I find my statements are downvoted it is because I had a quip that could reasonably be construed as negative, combative, etc. I tend to edit and remove those bits. When I find things to be "reflexively" (probably the wrong word) downvoted, it is in regards to simple questions. Simple example, there was an article reg…

It might be a feature of HN believing that HN is becoming more combative and snarky. Hence, simple questions like "How is it cruel?" are more often read like a quick snarky comment instead of like a simple honest question. In other words, perhaps the perception of a drop in HN quality makes people more likely to reflexively assume bad faith.

Assumption of bad faith is a feature of nihilism, which is what I see as gaining a foothold on HN. "For the lulz" is nihilistic.

"They're nihilists, Donny."

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

I'm a bad member according to some users who down vote me. I do strive to be a "useful" member and post what I think is conversation. Some disagree and down vote. I like to be "devil's advocate in life". Does that make me wrong? No, it's helpful to have arguments and converse. Life is great. Not sure why you think I'm depressed. If you are pulling an old comment of mine, it was context based not my life philosophy. :)

PS My original comment here is being downvoted into oblivion. One of my points is made by this gesture.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#557

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 when hot-button issues intersect with technology, the HN readership is in a position of power, and shouldn't routinely be spared the anguish of being reminded of their responsibility. Which is exactly how we end up with endless articles and 'discussions' of boeing 737s on 'hacker' 'news' by people who think they are pilots and aircraft designers (hint: they are none of those). I would bet the vast majority of p…

I really dislike this gatekeeping. Threads on aviation in particular seem to draw people with a phenomenal amount of knowledge. Even if they're not professional pilots/plane designers, just very well-read amateurs, why is their information less valuable? Encountering people with insane amounts of niche knowledge is one of my favourite aspects of this site.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#558
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Strict moderation is the reason HN is the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet Not at all. It's rather the community that makes it a reasonable discussion space. Most people here understand that this is not Reddit and that proper answers are needed when you interact with other members. Of course moderation is useful and necessary in certain cases, but it's certainly far from being the key fact…

I agree and want to put /. as an example. In the 2000's I used to visit /. as much as I visit hn now. At that time there were plenty of great comments and sometimes even people like John Carmack posted there. Sure there was GNAA spam and similar, but the mod system took care of that. Nowadays the mod system remains but the community has moved on and although the stories are good, there is no intellectual discussion.…

what's happening here is reddit-style comments have been slowly but steadily creeping in. I dont blame the mods directly, but indirectly they should have just capped membership once the tone lost its tech edge and comments began to drift to "me too!/relevant username/orange man bad/etc" about 30-40% (by my estimation) of HN comments are what reddit comments were a few years ago. The only way to fix that is to throttle membership.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#559
post #530

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…

In defense of the article, what you are talking about is a different story more "finding the Internet and programming" that isn't really unique to Hacker News. It can surely be used that way, and people likely do, but you can also find those things by searching for "top programming books" (or hanging around twitter, quora, medium or other sites). They did sort of talk about that with the early motivations for Hacker…

I don't see HN as an intro course to programming, but more of like that older kid on the block who you notice is listening to bob dylan, and then you try again, you start to get past that nasally voice, really listening to the lyrics this time, and now you're turned on to a whole world of good music.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#560
post #386

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 po…

Hear, hear. The job of HN is not to discuss every topic worth discussing. It is to discuss those topics (intelligently) which few (if any) other places on the internet have discussion of by an informed group.
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