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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#561

Post by krapp »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #558
xtracto wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 throttl…

Why do opinions like yours always seem to come from accounts less than a year old?

Unless you're presenting yourself and your own comment history as an example of the problem... in which case, the opportunity is always there to try a bit harder.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#562

Post by JudgeWapner »

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.

it's reddit-ization of the comments. Reddit -> facebook. HN -> reddit

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#563

Post by dredmorbius »

jsperson wrote: post #306
dredmorbius wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how much better the experience of listening and engaging in discussions with those who are qualified as not simply smarter than you, but who have different lived experience, values, and/or models for ordering the Universe?

Your implication seems to be that we don't have that - I disagree. HN is full of folks with different backgrounds. One particular category of topics is moderated - politics. There's massive inclusion of different lived experiences etc. In other forums I've found political discussions to be particularly irrational. The topic is just so fundamentally emotional that folks lose objectivity. You can't argue with results.…

My intent was to convey that intelligence or brilliance, alone, are not sufficient.

Breadth of experience and background matter. And if sufficiently broad, will cross boundaries of endowment or empowerment, and hence enter into political realms.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#564

Post by JudgeWapner »

krapp wrote: post #561
JudgeWapner wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 throttl…

Why do opinions like yours always seem to come from accounts less than a year old? Unless you're presenting yourself and your own comment history as an example of the problem... in which case, the opportunity is always there to try a bit harder.

Absolutey irrelevant to my point. Why do so many of your comments in your post history denigrate women and minorities?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#566

Post by manfredo »

dmix wrote: post #547
manfredo wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read this comment as tribalistic. At it's most cynical, it's pointing out that HN manages to capture a pretty broad range of perspectives despite people's tribalistic tendencies.

This assumes that's a helpful dichotomy, which implies categorizing people into such groups, which every indication I've seen those labels are overly broad, highly inaccurate, or used whenever convenient to imply some guilt-by-association. To me they only work to be dismissive of people regardless of the merit or quality of their points and splits everything down ideological lines, which naturally pushes people to pr…

I interpreted the use of labels as partly poking fun at how trigger happy many people are with applying those labels. Actual alt right and "sjw cesspool" comments get flagged and dead. Me I felt that the comment meant to communicate that divisive issues that elicit these labels (but don't actually warrant them, hence the quotes around both) are permitted on HN and that is something positive.

> HN should work towards having thoughtful discussions and providing useful contributions. It shouldn't be about tolerating particular political views or not. That shouldn't be the mod's job.

I agree and I'm confident the previous commenter would as well. The only piece of nuanced disagreement I have is about the involvement of moderators. I agree that ultimately it's the users that need to do work towards providing useful and thoughtful discussion, but moderators do have a crucial role is fostering and maintaining that kind of culture.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#567

Post by krapp »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #564
krapp wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do opinions like yours always seem to come from accounts less than a year old? Unless you're presenting yourself and your own comment history as an example of the problem... in which case, the opportunity is always there to try a bit harder.

Absolutey irrelevant to my point. Why do so many of your comments in your post history denigrate women and minorities?

>Absolutey irrelevant to my point.

It isn't, because unless you've been lurking for years or have an alt account, you're just being an elitist poser. People have been complaining about HN "turning into Reddit" for so long that it used to be listed in the guidelines as a common, semi-noob delusion.

>Why do so many of your comments in your post history denigrate women and minorities?

Point them out to me, please. I'm usually defending women and minorities here, and often getting downvoted for the effort.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#568

Post by mysterydip »

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…

Agreed on the fractal tree. My favorite part is clicking on the comments of an article whose subject I have some experience in, and finding new areas of it I didn't know about before. I can't count how many rabbit holes I've fallen down following links to downloads, videos, and code repositories.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#569

Post by lordgrenville »

repolfx wrote: post #267
07d046 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My complaint about political topics is that the views expressed just aren't very well informed. Comments are typically what smart engineers would write, but there is very rarely any expertise in the topic like there would be in a discussion about compilers.

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…

Although I broadly agree with your point, a quick run through Beautiful Soup revealed ten links to HN comments - some of them heavily downvoted. (It's possible that they were added after your comment, though.)

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#570

Post by wpietri »

SquareWheel wrote: post #466
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…

This user seems to be conflating skepticism with denialism. These two groups would take completely different positions on the issues listed (eg. climate change).

When you say "this user" you're talking about Dr Ichikawa, the professor of philosophy? Who specializes in the very topic you're attempting to correct them on? I can't tell if you're serious or if this is just some sort of Poe's Law attempt to satirize the behavior he's pointing out.
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