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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

newyorker.com

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#641

Post by tomcam »

laurex wrote: post #588

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…

Also, I often find it that it is better to skip right to the commentary because it is often so much better than the length article.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#642

Post by kingkawn »

I think that the censorship of viciousness rather than content is a reasonable compromise. I have engaged in a wide range of political and ethical debates on hn, and the few times the mods have shown interest has only been if I am beefing too hard with someone. The exercise of power is not to be superior, but to give the forum a sense of shape so that people can relate to it more readily. I think given the scale of the site they are doing good work.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#643

Post by tomcam »

billfruit wrote: post #283

Strange that the article seems to hinge mostly on moderation, rather than any of the other things that make HN a great resource. To me the great difference of HN over anything else has been the expectation on commentors to write something thoughtfull and well argued, and it's discouragement of frivolous commentary. The mainstream media seems hungup on the concept of moderation when discussing online communities, and…

> I think the moderation framework is only a minor part of what make these communities work.

With all due respect, it feels to me that you have never had the experience of running an online community at scale. I believe the moderation for this site is the only thing that keeps it from deteriorating into complete chaos and toxicity.

I am also amazed that the two moderators have managed to hang on for so long. It seems to me like the archetypal burnout job.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#644

Post by SquareWheel »

wpietri wrote: post #631
SquareWheel wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The skeptical movement subscribes to critical thinking, empiricism, and applying the scientific model to find answers. To say that skeptics don't believe in climate change is very untrue. This is contrasted to denialism which denies claims out of hand. This is not based on scientific data, but gut feeling or motivated reasoning. Dr. Ichikawa is thus describing denialism in his tweets. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

You seem to be confusing the skeptical movement, which is indeed a specific group of people, with skepticism, which exists before and outside of that movement.

Perhaps the meaning has changed, but at the very least that is how the word is used today. As an example /r/skeptic is a large community of people that self-identify as skeptics.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#645

Post by tomcam »

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,…

I agree with everything you say. But… This site is moderated by two people and has 5 million guests. When you look at it from that perspective, I think the only conclusion you can come to is that they are doing a remarkably good job.

I say this as a person who feels that his political opinions have been treated with disrespect by the site’s community and its moderators. I fervently believe that the moderators are doing their best to be impartial. And I also see people on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me who have the exact same complaints. When I look at it that way, I realize I literally can’t ask for more from the mods.

As far as your making the distinction with platform companies and back bone companies, I think you have it completely right. I detest racist shit on the Internet, but ultimately no good can come from driving it underground. I think it’s much better for us to be able to see and come in time. Plus, my political affiliation, which is the same as Abraham Lincoln‘s, is considered by many of the powers that be to be inherently racist.

When the platform companies start trying to decide who’s wrong and who’s right, they are forced to use extra-constitutional means. Not good.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#646

Post by notSupplied »

noobermin wrote: post #628
ckris wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be clear, I'm aware of the device your talking about. They did that for sure for dang and sctb's character to highlight how they in particular buck the stereotype but throughout the piece the author makes it clear their focus was essentially on the fringe of comments that occur on this site and how they fit into a larger narrative about silicon valley culture. I provided the quote because it is specific evidence t…

One thing that surprises me is that HN is in fact, full of humanities. The non-technical topics are just as rich and interesting as the purely technical ones. To paint the opposite as this article did makes me think that the world really just wants nerds to be exactly as their prejudices imagined.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#647

Post by tomcam »

interfixus wrote: post #55

Although being - sometimes wildly - at odds with many of the leanings, assumptions, and perceived biases underlying the generality of HN, and often not sharing editorial viewpoints as expressed by dang and sctb, I am consistently in awe and absolutely drooling fanboy adulation over the quality of the moderation and everything else which keep - miraculously - this site running, healthy, useful, and mostly spam-free. F…

Hell to the yes on your first point. I’m in the same boat.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#649

Post by benjaminbrodie »

whiteopinions wrote: post #115

>Strict moderation I don't consider the moderation on this site to be strict at all? It's tone police more than it is content police. HN continually lets comments and statements go completely unquestioned, and in some cases actively supports view points, that are objectively wrong in the most vanilla fashion all because it was said in the correct manner.

This is a good point. Many people on this website have learnt to "dog-whistle" as an adaptation strategy. It doesn't change the substance.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#650

Post by kbenson »

azangru wrote: post #108
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…

> HN's prevailing attitude (e.g. cloudflare-shouldnt-ban- ). Funny, I thought HN's prevailing attitude in the case of the recent ban of 8chan was, hell yeah, good riddance to those reprehensible twats. (Which, personally, annoyed me, because I believe that even the deplored should have a space for communication.)

You'll probably find with some digging that the "prevailing" attitude depends on time of day, changes completely from similar submissions from one day to the next, and might start out one way in a story only to wildly shift after a certain amount of time or comments.

This is likely for any of the following (non-exhaustive) reasons:

-Different prevailing opinions of people in different parts of the country/world combines with common participation times.

-How likely the title is to attract a specific ideology (or both).

-How long or dense the article is combined with when it hits the front page, as it may get passed around some subgroups informally prior to that point.

-The lag time between early comments and quick agreements and the group of comments that come later in response to those comments with deeper thinking of the topic and/or substantive facts or anecdotes that crystalize opinions on the subject.

Just think, how many times have you read comments about how "all the comments here seem negative, but..." only to count only 3-4 negative comments out of almost a hundred by the time you're reading them? That's because the nature of the discussion changed over time or as people decided it was worth posting that positive comment they hadn't thought worthwhile. It's fairly common.

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