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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#741

Post by belisarius48 »

dang wrote: post #502
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News doesn't simply arrange comments by the number of upvotes they receive, it also considers the karma of the commenters and the freshness of the comments. Also, when submissions aged and comments settled, the current top comment would always get a lot of upvotes due to its position, and lock them "in place" by the strong positive feedback. So I doubt if reading the top comments is a very objective method for…

> it also considers the karma of the commenters Karma doesn't affect ranking on HN. This comes up often enough that I wonder where the idea came from. Do other forums work this way?

/.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#742

Post by belisarius48 »

candu wrote: post #246
azangru wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

I've seen both opinions, and many more nuanced variants thereof, argued in a well-reasoned, persuasive manner here on HN. Adding my voice to the "good riddance" side of the aisle: thanks to what freedom of speech, association, etc. actually mean in the legal / constitutional context, said twats are guaranteed a space for communication - the real world! They can stand on a corner or picket their local City Hall and sp…

Hateful voices are identified by passionate assertion. The passionate asserters arrogate to themselves the power to bound the conversation and otherize dissenters.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#743

Post by celticmusic »

dang wrote: post #732
celticmusic wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The issue in that case was more the added bit about downvotes, which broke the site guidelines.

The claim of the other poster was accurate. The question of whether you were being fair or not doesn't change that.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#745

Post by jcranberry »

astine wrote: post #193
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree with what you're saying. But I'm asking why the person posting believes that the HN community overwhelmingly believes X and their evidence for that. I presume they do have evidence and conclusions and I'd like to know about it.

I think that people tend to perceive HN as overwhelmingly believing whatever the opposite of their opinion is any time there is a significant debate on something. Unless there is overwhelming support for our own position, we feel that we are in a hostile environment.

Is it reasonable to say that it is a hostile environment? I don't it takes too many vocally hostile people to create an environment that is hostile.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#746

Post by celticmusic »

dang wrote: post #736
celticmusic wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where did I do this? When I get something wrong, I'm happy to admit it and correct it. At the same time, people make all sorts of claims about horrid things we supposedly did, and most of those leave out important information. Either way, if you're going to make claims like this, you should supply links so readers can make up their own minds.

In the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19984428

you state that asking for sources is, and I quote: "a rather unsubstantive contribution".

You are now telling me I should be citing a source.

If I were being snarky I would ask if you would mind raising your signal/noise ratio as you did with the other poster.

I mean, which is it? Is asking to source the claim unsubstantive or not? Is it only unsubstantive if there's a claim against you personally?

As for allowing others to make up their mind, that would be what the poster in the other thread was presumably trying to do, and you shut him down. And that's really the point.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#747

Post by ufmace »

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.)

Pardon me for stating a related opinion here - I tend to like to let my thoughts on these things churn around for a few days before expressing opinions rather than scream immediately about the obvious side.

Something that bothers me about this whole trend of "deplatform everyone whose opinion I don't like" - once some person or group is near-universally deplatformed, they become sort of a boogeyman. You can attribute any position you want to them, and they have no way to confirm or deny that they believe that. You can accuse anybody of secretly agreeing with them or being one of them, and there's no good way to refute it. You can claim that they're secretly everywhere and all-present, and there's no data to confirm or deny that. It feels kind of like a 1984 2-minutes-hate thing where you're expected to scream outrage at something that you can't prove even exists in a meaningful way.

If we expand this thought, we get that even the most outrageously extreme opinions should be allowed to exist and operate openly. If only so that there is a real source that anybody can go to in order to see what they really do and do not believe, in their own words. So they can have an authoritative way to be for or against a person or thing or policy. So anybody can create a estimate of how big and influential they really are, based on objective data.

Going further, certain people in power like to have a voiceless boogeyman that they can use to scare everybody with. What better way to get everyone running around in fear, and getting them to get off of their butts and pull that voting lever for your side, or else those scary boogeymen might get them?

Note that this could apply equally well to a number of different things that have been treated this way over the years, including communism, nazi-ism, Islamic terrorism, white supremacy, etc.

Do I seriously believe this and want to go with it? I'm not completely sure right now. I'd like to let it churn around some more and see if anything else comes out.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#748

Post by noobermin »

ckris wrote: post #679
noobermin wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I provided the quote because it is specific evidence the author approached the writing with this perspective towards the site, and should one be totally surprised it is the dominant narrative throughout? At least partly that is about being topical for their audience. What I am trying to point out is that just because it is written from a different perspective or for a different audience doesn't mean that it is wron…

I do not mind particularly if someone writes something from a different perspective, and I don't think I would have minded if that were so. The problem I have is that different perspective appears to be due to negativity bias, to be more explicit than my first comment. I say that because the bad bits (like sexist, racist comments) you point out are given more emphasis whereas in reality they are a fringe of the comments that occur and are, as I said, generally dead, meaning they aren't at all representative. That said, I don't know how their audience being different (New Yorker readers?) plays into that, you should seek to best inform your audience whoever they are, not potentially mislead them with a biased sample of a community.

Finally, I agree with your last sentences. sctb and dang are painted in the best possible light throughout apart from the paragraph of the author's expectations. I perhaps was much too mild with my praise at the end of my comment; I did find those parts important and interesting; I don't think I've ever heard of a moderator invoking actual philosophy in their methods of dealing with users. I still believe even if that was the conclusion of the article (the gallant mods fighting the hordes of tech bro sexists), the premise is still flawed because of what I've addressed above, the sexists, racists, etc are a minority contingent, just like there are in most of the popular forums on the internet.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#749

Post by pluma »

wvenable wrote: post #315
pluma wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is political. HN generally bans explicitly political opinion pieces, articles with overt political statements and articles primarily covering current political affairs (e.g. articles about something a US politician said). But even what is or isn't "political" in this sense is again down to the unstated biases of the moderators (e.g. what if the US politician said something about a well-known tech company).…

> Everything is political. This is absolutely not true. The best postings on hacker news are cool technical stuff that doesn't have an ounce of political. And yes, there are plenty of articles with a political lean but they are really the least interesting ones here because you can read those anywhere else. I'd much rather read about the guy who built his own video card than what (non-technical) thing Uber is doing t…

Building your own video card is political, sorry. I'm not even kidding.

To elaborate:

* To get the obvious one out of the way: it's something you need sufficient free time, money and knowledge in order to even do, so the author likely comes from a certain amount of privilege which colors his experience.

* Building a video card is in itself only possible due to the existence of open standards and free access to the relevant information, which is absolutely political.

* The act in itself is to a certain degree anti-consumerist because it's likely driven by a desire to understand rather than merely use the technology.

* Building a video card that actually works will likely require some reverse engineering and working around proprietary restrictions, which may enter DMCA territory. So it's willfully doing something legally questionable if not downright illegal, i.e. protesting the laws in question, which is absolutely political.

Everything is political. If you don't see the politics it's only because you agree with them and think they're a no-brainer.

You may see a cool hobby project but try to explain the project to a non-technical person and you might find that you're carrying a lot of preconceived notions of what the world is like, how it functions and what is acceptable or not. That's all politics.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#750

Post by krapp »

ufmace wrote: post #747
azangru wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

Pardon me for stating a related opinion here - I tend to like to let my thoughts on these things churn around for a few days before expressing opinions rather than scream immediately about the obvious side. Something that bothers me about this whole trend of "deplatform everyone whose opinion I don't like" - once some person or group is near-universally deplatformed, they become sort of a boogeyman. You can attribute…

>(...) once some person or group is near-universally deplatformed, they become sort of a boogeyman. You can attribute any position you want to them, and they have no way to confirm or deny that they believe that.

Except that hasn't happened, and doesn't happen. No person or group which has been deplatformed is incapable of communicating publicly, and most, if not all, have simply moved to the dark web.

>You can claim that they're secretly everywhere and all-present, and there's no data to confirm or deny that.

Plenty of data exists. Deplatforming doesn't remove all data about a person or group from the entire web in perpetuity, that's not how the web works. Remember "once it's on the web, it's there forever?"

Hell, 8chan is already back online.

> It feels kind of like a 1984 2-minutes-hate thing where you're expected to scream outrage at something that you can't prove even exists in a meaningful way.

You're ascribing an all-consuming and existential power to deplatforming that it doesn't have.

>What better way to get everyone running around in fear, and getting them to get off of their butts and pull that voting lever for your side, or else those scary boogeymen might get them?

But isn't this argument trying to get everyone running around in fear of platforms that remove extremist content, or else the slippery slope of censorship will eventually get them? Why is it that we're not supposed to fear the unchecked spread of hate speech or the ability of extremist groups to organize online, but we're only supposed to fear anyone who wants to stand in their way?

Consider the ulterior motive when the false dichotomy we're presented with in these discussions is always "let the nazis say whatever they like, on all platforms, without restriction, in perpetuity throughout the universe, or else suffer the boot of Orwellian fascism stomping on your heads forever."

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