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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#661

Post by dunkelheit »

manfredo wrote: post #566
dmix wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Thanks. You've captured my intention very well.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#662

Post by dang »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #432
elliekelly wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm not sure I'd agree with this. An appeal is as easy as sending them an email. In my experience they're more than willing to hear you out.

In my experience they aren't.

What was your experience? I haven't been able to find where we interacted with you.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#663

Post by kashyapc »

[Forgive if I've missed this in the deservedly KM-long thread; I didn't find any in a couple of rushed `grep`s.]

On the "sheer quantity of it is so overwhelming":

Not that I didn't already guess the workload would be staggering, given the gargantuan flow of comments and submissions ... still, I find the above somewhat disquieting—for the long-term health of both the moderators.

I realize that some long-time members of this community assist dang & sctb in helping moderate. Regardless, I hope they can have a slightly larger "official" team to spread the unstoppable stream of workload. Not merely for the sake of quantity, but to have fewer occurrences of having your psychological buttons get stress-tested. (I'm sure they know this, and consider this topic from time-to-time, as mentioned in the article.)

                - - -
Also happy to have learnt some background and interests of the human moderators.

Thanks for the fine work, folks.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#664

Post by meheleventyone »

tomp wrote: post #259
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clarify why you thought this? What evidence do you have that supports this? The big thread shows that the top comment agrees that 8chan should be left alone. [0] and the comment chain shows that there seems to be something like a significant minority against 8chan, but it doesn’t appear to be a prevailing majority. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395

The current top comment. IIRC it was fluctuating wildly while it was on the front page. After it's gone, comments can get reshuffled, because some people might keep replying/reading/up&downvoting (arguably those with more of a "vested interest" - likely those that disagree with the original article)

The ordering is also not just by score. Newer comments get some time at the top as well and then decay to what I assume is their scored position.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#665

Post by dang »

peterwwillis wrote: post #216

Are the moderators interested in automating their jobs at all? I really don't understand why the site continues to have no means to help people communicate better, other than a couple dudes that manually respond to people over and over all day. From a technologist perspective it seems archaic.

How can we automate our jobs?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#666

Post by dang »

thwythwy wrote: post #499

This reads like a mediocre college admissions essay full of breathless, overdramatic characterizations of minor, anodyne exchanges. I had to stop reading when a two word response from a user gave the author "a small rush of triumph." The tone and word choice is just nauseating. Examples abound: > "Commenters . . . . bickered about the word 'soul.'" > "Conversation spiralled, with users making arguments about Cartesia…

One has tatts.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#667

Post by dang »

nailer wrote: post #22

dang / sctb: do you get alerts when we mention your usernames? You always seem to respond relatively quickly.

No, we don't. I used to have client-side software that would highlight specific regexes in comment text, but it stopped working one of the times that we rewrote the client-side Lisp that we used (Parenscript -> Lumen -> Arc) and I haven't gotten around to getting it working again.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#668

Post by dang »

pjc50 wrote: post #32
nailer wrote: post #22

dang / sctb: do you get alerts when we mention your usernames? You always seem to respond relatively quickly.

I wouldn't be surprised if they got a continuous feed of all comments. The volume is just about possible to keep up with.

There exists a public feed of all comments (just click on 'comments' in top bar), but we don't monitor the site that way. It's far too much. We basically read the threads spottily like anyone else, plus rely on moderation lists, such as what has been flagged by users.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#669

Post by User23 »

peterwwillis wrote: post #216

Are the moderators interested in automating their jobs at all? I really don't understand why the site continues to have no means to help people communicate better, other than a couple dudes that manually respond to people over and over all day. From a technologist perspective it seems archaic.

Human interaction will never be archaic.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#670

Post by Fnoord »

romaaeterna wrote: post #496
Fnoord wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't like about the popularity vote-moderation that it tends to become a dictatorship of the majority: if you're outside of the accepted canon, you'll get thrown out. It's effective for creating an a fairly consistent echo chamber, but I don't believe it comes with few casualties. You won't see the casualties, because they are censored. First of all, I'm someone who at times reads a lot of the discussions, and I…

> Censorship, in my eyes, can only be enacted by a government. Why do you say that? I would think that it could be enacted by any group powerful enough to suppress speech in some way. It was the Church that made the Index librorum prohibitorum. And that was in an era where it was especially week compared to the absolute governments of the time.

Good example. I read up on it, and on reflection my view on the common definition of censorship was too narrow. Not sure about the legal one, still, but it'd differ per jurisdiction. I guess the reasoning was that, in the end, only a government can enforce it.
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