The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#701

Post by lucb1e » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

astrange wrote: post #636

yhoiseth wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think LessWrong [1] is described as “toxic.” 1: https://www.lesswrong.com

The "rationalist community" are pretty obviously a cult. They live in group houses, use logic to convince their partners to be polyamorous, have a religious obsession with superintelligence, stuff like that. Although I can't find the story I know I read a woman's experiences with sexual abuse and Yudkowsky's BDSM habits there sometime in the last year. Actually I believe she posted it then committed suicide; people o…

I don't like singling out bad stories about one person on a larger website that is part of a larger philosophy. And more generally, you seem to think very badly of those people that try to improve the world in their way. That's more than can be said about the vast majority of other communities.

This is probably a hammer and nail thing, but having just heard a podcast about disinformation campaigns (https://samharris.org/podcasts/145-information-war/), your comment shares some traits. The podcast discusses that one of the main things "they" (those behind disinformation campaigns) do is putting groups up against each other in various ways, highlighting the differences rather than the similarities. Regardless of whether you're actively trying to do that (I would assume not, you're probably unaware of the effect this type of comment has), this is exactly the type of comment that creates an us vs them environment and highlights the very, very worst stories of what you perceive to be the other side. It's one of the least constructive things you can do online.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#702

Post by celticmusic » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #50

Mizza wrote: post #16

Shout out to dang! You're doing a great job! Thank you! Strict moderation is the reason HN is the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet. I wish good moderation was a skill that more people learned - would you ever be interested in writing a guide or teaching a class on moderation?

I wouldn’t call it strict at all. He’s actually way more liberal about stuff than most over-bearing Reddit mods who think it’s their job to be editors of their own private newspaper rather than helping only when there’s no other option. This is why dang is so good at what he does as it draws a difficult balance.

no, you just don't fall into the cracks that dang dislikes. I've seen him go after people who aren't causing problems because he doesn't like what they're saying. I've seen it multiple times actually.

His go to is to call it conspiracy regardless of what's actually being said.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#703

Post by celticmusic » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

rubidium wrote: post #148

ekianjo wrote: 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…

No, it really does make a difference. I've got a close friend who's been involved in many discussion forums, both as user and mod. His experience is mods are the critical link that prevent the community from descending to ugly chaos. The community helps... but someone needs to be doing some policing to limit the effect of the bad actors or the community starts to get pissed off/wander off/degrade into pettiness.

all mods believe they're the critical link. That conceit is why the mods on reddit started making subreddits private for a day in protest.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#704

Post by celticmusic » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

cmroanirgo wrote: post #619

dang wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did I do that?

Ironically, the source of said admonishment wasn't forthcoming, by GP... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19984428 > Ok, but "got any sources for that?" is a rather unsubstantive contribution, and then going on tilt about getting downvoted breaks the site guidelines outright. Would you mind raising the signal/noise ratio of what you post here? It seems the attempt to correct a low "signal / noise ratio", in this…

I'm not sure what you mean, the link you posted showed itself to be 100% accurate with the claim.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#705

Post by lucb1e » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

slang800 wrote: post #591

catacombs wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not up to The New Yorker to give praise to moderators or owners. That's inserting bias. It's up to the readers (us) to determine whether the moderators are doing a good job.

> That's inserting bias. Are you implying that this article was trying to be bias-free? The author spent entire paragraphs just cherry-picking "toxic" things that have been said on HN to make discussion here look bad.

That's a very good description of what I mind about the article. Cherry-picking "toxic" things, that's exactly it.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#706

Post by celticmusic » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #57

Mizza wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by "suspicious." I'm part of a ton of other forums and communities, and over time almost all of them have devolved into complete and utter dogshit, just an endless stream of memes and screenshots of Twitter posts. The communities that remain successful either have total strict moderation or a "shitposts" section where all of the garbage ends up, but even then the quarantine zone ends up suc…

> I don't know what you mean by "suspicious." I mean that, maybe you should distrust your own judgement that "HN is the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet". Perhaps other places have environments that you don't like but other people feel that they are "the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet". > I'm part of a ton of other forums and communities, and over time almost all…

What you're saying is 100% true. I personally dislike HN moderation because it stifles discussion in a big way.

A perfect example is the other poster who basically got called to task by dang for asking for sources to a claim. Dang characterized it as "unsubstantive" and lowering the signal to noise ratio.

For myself, a reasonable discussion is one which it's expected to be asked to cite sources. A community in which not doing so gets you called out.

Discourse on HN is too touchy feely, people are generally afraid to challenge others in a straightforward manner, so they end up using a lot of words to do so. It's like being in that meeting where the manager is using flowery language to extol the virtues of the company, when in reality everyone is there for reasons that don't involve the company itself.

I just kind of tolerate it, but in no way, shape, or form, do I view the discourse on HN as generally being honest or useful.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#707

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#708

Post by edubs25 » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #698

One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not limited to Silicon Valley. For instance, the person who has the highest karma is in Brazil. Very few of the people I have met on Hacker News are in the Valley and San Francisco, but I have met people from North Carolina, Philadelphia, Portugal, India, Singapore, ... If you're interested in both technology and business and you've had enough of th…

>One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not limited to Silicon Valley.

I thought the article was pretty clear that Hacker News user base is predominantly North America and Europe, not just the valley?

I don't have any data to back this up, but based on the sources that are posted and gain traction in the community, I suspect majority NA & Europe is accurate. But that's just an observation based on my personal experiences that different regions of the world view information sources differently in terms of reputation and trust.

Has HN or anyone else ever tried to aggregate stats on content sources or user location data?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#709

Post by edpichler » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

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…

> he author's focus on the controversial political parts of HN seems to me like going to a music festival and commenting on the food trucks.

Excellent, lol. A very good way to describe it.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#710

Post by piketty » Fri, Aug 09, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

I loved this article. I'm a software engineer in Chicago and I had stayed away from HN, not knowing that there might be a humanist angle to the site that would be appealing to someone like me.