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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#771

Post by dang »

resters wrote: post #632
dang wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I didn't realize (and if you said it, sorry I missed it) that you were talking about comments rather than submissions. We rate-limit accounts when they have a history of posting too many unsubstantive comments too quickly, and/or getting involved in flamewars. I know it's annoying and a crude tool, but it's one of few ways we have to address that problem in software. If I knew a less rude way to do it, I'd love t…

I think each account should show its history of being rate limited, and the mod who initiates it should cite specific comments that were used as evidence of wrongdoing, as well as describe the nature of the wrongdoing. The mechanism itself isn't necessarily a problem, it's the arbitrariness of it and the lack of accountability. Most people have some degree of accountability in their job. I think HN mods are an except…

> Most people have some degree of accountability in their job. I think HN mods are an exception.

I might have thought that too before working with a community this large, but the degree to which we're accountable is much more intense than anything I've experienced in a job before. When every misstep is met with instant outrage and hard pushback, you learn to adapt to feedback quickly.

People think we control HN, and to some extent we do, but we are controlled by HN to an even greater extent. This is maybe the most important thing for understanding how HN works. HN consists of a big system (the community) and a little system (the moderation) and the two interact via reciprocal feedback.

There's a third system too (the software), but I left it out for simplicity.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#772

Post by dang »

resters wrote: post #337
repolfx wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A mature HN reader skilled in technology, is least likely to undergo an emotional/identity-driven flight of fancy about political issues pertaining to technology Heh, except for anything programming language related, what the best web framework to use is, whether end-to-end encryption actually works or is just security theatre, etc. There are lots of technical topics that people attach their identity to and would loo…

> but you can't possibly claim HN bans politics when maybe 20-30% of the stories discussed here are political in nature. Well, many of the most crucial stories have been nipped in the bud when speculation is flying every which way. I'd argue that the brief moment of uncomfortable uncertainty, when speculation is flying, is actually the most valuable point for analysis in the trajectory of any issue... before those wi…

> FWIW we all know there are HN users who can send a message to a mod and get a user shadow banned no questions asked.

That's false. It's remarkable how something false turns into something "we all know". How you can imagine HN is run that way, let alone declaim about it publicly, is beyond me.

Anyone can "send a message to a mod" (just email hn@ycombinator.com). No one can "get a user banned". All anyone can get us to do is take a look at what they're concerned about—and that we do for everyone.

Your psychological analysis of us as discomfited anti-intellectual authoritarians (with quirks) is remarkable too, as it suggests that you have a mind reader. If you had a mind reader, though, you'd have known how false the above smear was, so the odds are that your voyage into the depths of our unconscious is imaginary as well.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#773

Post by pvg »

dang wrote: post #772
resters wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you can't possibly claim HN bans politics when maybe 20-30% of the stories discussed here are political in nature. Well, many of the most crucial stories have been nipped in the bud when speculation is flying every which way. I'd argue that the brief moment of uncomfortable uncertainty, when speculation is flying, is actually the most valuable point for analysis in the trajectory of any issue... before those wi…

> FWIW we all know there are HN users who can send a message to a mod and get a user shadow banned no questions asked. That's false. It's remarkable how something false turns into something "we all know". How you can imagine HN is run that way, let alone declaim about it publicly, is beyond me. Anyone can "send a message to a mod" (just email hn@ycombinator.com). No one can "get a user banned". All anyone can get us…

To be fair, "Act with a nearly instinctual zeal" is a terrific daily affirmation.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#774

Post by dang »

diminoten wrote: post #331
radcon wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, HN's lack of transparency is slowly killing it. You can see the discussions becoming more one-dimensional every day.

You're being downvoted because you're hitting on a trope/cliche that's called out in the rules, and while I doubt HN is dying from a user engagement perspective, I do believe the comments are less filled with value than they have been in the past, given how negativity dang sees conflict. Healthy conflict is good, but I've participated in healthy conflict here and was stopped by dang because of it.

> I've participated in healthy conflict here and was stopped by dang because of it.

Where did I do that?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#775

Post by craftyguy »

dang wrote: post #757
celticmusic wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It wasn't accurate. They mentioned the lesser part of why I moderated the comment and omitted the greater part, which is what most people do when telling a story about how we suppressed them unfairly. That's presumably why such stories never come with links, which would allow readers to make up their own minds about what happened.

> That's presumably why such stories never come with links

No, I didn't include a link because I was posting from my phone, and "hacker" "news" doesn't include a sane way to search through thread history for specific comments. I'm glad someone else went through the trouble.

But hey, you're free to continue to not assume good faith, right?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#776

Post by dang »

craftyguy wrote: post #775
dang wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't accurate. They mentioned the lesser part of why I moderated the comment and omitted the greater part, which is what most people do when telling a story about how we suppressed them unfairly. That's presumably why such stories never come with links, which would allow readers to make up their own minds about what happened.

> That's presumably why such stories never come with links No, I didn't include a link because I was posting from my phone, and "hacker" "news" doesn't include a sane way to search through thread history for specific comments. I'm glad someone else went through the trouble. But hey, you're free to continue to not assume good faith, right?

I said most people and presumably as a way of not jumping to that conclusion about you. The pattern in general is very consistent. But I can see how it would be annoying to read that, if your preference really was to provide a link.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#777

Post by celticmusic »

dang wrote: post #770
celticmusic wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also, since I forgot to address it in my other response. asking for sources is not unsubstantive, not in the least. It's one of the most substantive things you can do, both as someone providing information, and as someone trying to evaluate the information being provided. The fact that you've come to feel that asking for sources is less important than not making others feel uncomfortable goes a long way towards why I…

I didn't say any of those things. I'm afraid we're going in circles now.

That doesn't pass the reasonable person test.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#778

Post by whalabi »

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…

Australia here, the entire tech industry in this country reads HN

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#779

Post by lazyasciiart »

dang wrote: post #731
lazyasciiart wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not. I'm not insane and so I didn't continue using a shadow banned account.

You said we weren't willing to hear you out, but that seems unlikely to me. People sometimes come to HN with stories of how badly we've mistreated them, but rarely provide links or enough information to let readers make up their own minds. Mostly these stories leave out important details about how the account had behaved and how we interacted with them. But we do make mistakes—moderation is guesswork, and we guess wr…

> We don't shadow-ban accounts unless they're new and show evidence of spamming or trolling, or unless there's evidence that the user has been serially creating accounts to abuse HN.

That's a complete contradiction of the explanation you gave at the time. And yes, I asked what had happened when I noticed the account was shadowbanned, and your response was

----------

Hacker News Aug 31, 2018, 10:43 PM to me

Politlcal/ideological flaming; unsubstantive comments; addressing others aggressively. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17358383. That's unacceptable and bannable in its own right—and you did a lot of other things along those lines.

You can turn this around by doing the opposite: (1) become less inflammatory, not more, when posting about a divisive subject; (2) make sure your comments are thoughtful; (3) be extra respectful.

Daniel

-------

(I especially liked that the example comment was from three months earlier. Why didn't I immediately think that far back??@!)

Of course, despite my multiple followup questions, you never bothered to reply again. I'm sure that now you will find the motivation to give an extensive public explanation complete with links of exactly how you really meant that I was "new and spamming or trolling" or "serially creating accounts to abuse HN". It would never work to, say, reply to comments that were 'unacceptable and bannable in it's own right' to say that. Or to follow your previous public explanations of moderation policy, such as

>When we’re banning an established account, though, we post a comment saying so. https://drewdevault.com/2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#780

Post by lazyasciiart »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #779
dang wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said we weren't willing to hear you out, but that seems unlikely to me. People sometimes come to HN with stories of how badly we've mistreated them, but rarely provide links or enough information to let readers make up their own minds. Mostly these stories leave out important details about how the account had behaved and how we interacted with them. But we do make mistakes—moderation is guesswork, and we guess wr…

> We don't shadow-ban accounts unless they're new and show evidence of spamming or trolling, or unless there's evidence that the user has been serially creating accounts to abuse HN. That's a complete contradiction of the explanation you gave at the time. And yes, I asked what had happened when I noticed the account was shadowbanned, and your response was ---------- Hacker News Aug 31, 2018, 10:43 PM to me Politlcal/…

If you'd just banned me at the time I probably wouldn't be so angry still. The experience of discovering that you had been invisibly fucking with me, probably for months, was absolutely infuriating, and seeing you flat out deny that you pull that shit as a way to manage actual users is unacceptable.
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