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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#581

Post by Waterluvian »

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…

HN is filled with Silicon valley nonsense, tropes, and hot garbage. But the things you describe are why I keep coming back. There's always something new to learn.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#582

Post by stefantalpalaru »

saagarjha wrote: post #414
thedaemon wrote: post #269

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.

dang's job is to be obtrusive when you're posting comments that aren't useful…

> dang's job is to be obtrusive when you're posting comments that aren't useful…

I thought it's to be obtrusive when a friend in need is threatening suicide. This "dang" guy must be a big proponent of Social Darwinism.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#583

Post by ckris »

mushufasa wrote: post #559
ckris wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. I should clarify that I didn't mean "lmgtfy". There are five to ten books that covers things most programmers won't learn by practicing and therefor will uncover most of the mystery experienced by self-taught programmers. There is no need to listening really hard to the lyrics when you can learn how to play. You just need to go and read material that actually covers how to design programs, rather than are about "learning programming". And you will literally find those books about algorithms, design patterns, workflow, refactoring and whatever else by searching for "top programming books". Or in discussion on most platforms. I don't think it is as esoteric as you think.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#584

Post by dredmorbius »

astrofinch wrote: post #577
dredmorbius wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metafilter certainly comes to mind. Though I believe it's well below HN in scale. On Reddit, there are several immensely moderated subs with persistent high quality, and millions of subscribers, notably /r/AskScience and /r/AskHistorians (though also numerous others). Smaller subreddits are relatively easy to maintain at quality, though sustaining engagement is hard (much of the Reddit dynamic actively works against…

I've seen some extremely toxic political discussion on metafilter.

Are they commonplace, moreso than most / many other sites, and is MF otherwise restricted to cat pics?

Or are many discussions on MF generally constructive and productive?

My experience, dipping into it (I'm not a member/regular) is the latter. Backed by some quantitative/qualitative research:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#585

Post by sutro »

Waterluvian wrote: post #581
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…

HN is filled with Silicon valley nonsense, tropes, and hot garbage. But the things you describe are why I keep coming back. There's always something new to learn.

If I ever start another blog, would you mind if I titled it Nonsense, Tropes, and Hot Garbage?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#587

Post by oska »

Thorrez wrote: post #66

>Then my eyes moved down the thread, where a third user had left a new comment. It read: “King Canute was supposed to stop the tide, you couch alluder.” It seems to me that comment is a joke. Playfully nitpicking word choice while putting in a bit of banter. But the article seems to be taking the comment as a serious argument/insult.

Yes, it's an obvious joke. "You couch alluder" is the wink.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#588

Post by laurex »

I admit that when I joined Hacker News, I viewed it to some extent as an anthropology experiment, since discussions I encountered reflected some of the issues cited in the article, specifically that some discussions seemed to reflect a myopia that suggested participants were likely rarely exposed to people outside their bubble, and often a lack of respect for views that were outside that paradigm. However, I've seen discussions become more tempered, and a great influence from Dan and Scott as moderators (thank you!). At this point, I do read and contribute to Hacker News in lieu of most other social media, though sometimes I still read comments that feel arrogant or dismissive of outside views, especially when topics that are cultural enter the picture. My general approach is to just ignore them and move on to more productive discussions, and sometimes to feel like it might be time for a break for me, though I'm not sure there are any online communities I think do a much better job of having civil discourse.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#589

Post by ckris »

noobermin wrote: post #580
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…

This comment is a very measured critique of the article but one need not be so kind. I imagine you may not be doing it our of mere politeness, I get the sense some comments are bending over backwards as a means to not play into the perspective in this article. I won't be so kind: the author imputed every bias they have about a community they know nothing about and played on stereotypes from the beginning and didn't e…

It is a pretty common way to setup these stories, to play into stereotypes to disarm the reader (basically acknowledging their fears) and open them up to something else. It just isn't written for this audience or from its perspective.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#590

Post by dang »

SquareWheel wrote: post #578
dang wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you request that?

In response to your removal message.

Ah, you must be talking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20258509. I don't remember that post, and it's possible I didn't see it. I try to read all the replies, but miss a few, especially when they are posted later. If you want to be sure we see something, the only way is to email hn@ycombinator.com.

It's also possible that I saw it and was too exhausted to look back through all the flagged comments in the thread, identify which ones were explaining how AMP works, and see if they had been flagged correctly. That takes a ton of energy, which is not always available when the rest of the site is clamoring for attention and in varying degrees of onfireness. One thing you can do to increase the odds of getting a specific response is to include specific links to the post(s) you're worried about—that makes it an order of magnitude easier. I certainly appreciate your intention to defend fellow users who are being mistreated.

But I think if I had seen your comment I would have replied at least to say that I believe you that your intention wasn't to downvote-bait.

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