Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#271

Post by downerending » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

lalaithion wrote: post #232

twic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really interesting insight, thanks. There are roughly two views on moderators. Moderators think that moderators are the thin green line protecting the ordinary users from a handful of bad actors, letting them live in blissful ignorance of the awful things that are happening. Ordinary users think the that moderators are power-mad bullies who ban and delete as they see fit, with no accountability. Both of the…

The analogy is really insightful, but also makes me slightly uneasy. When a moderator gets it wrong, you can't comment on an internet forum. When a police officer gets it wrong, you're dead.

> When a police officer gets it wrong, you're dead.

Or, as often happens, they're dead. I don't envy members of a profession that have to get every life-and-death decision right in real time on a daily basis.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#272

Post by sokoloff » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:07 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #158

staycoolboy wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello, bad actor here. I only use Hacker News and Reddit. And I always manage to get banned every few months, so I guess I'm a "bad actor". Usually I start off OK. I can rank up 1000 points on HN or 20k karma on Reddit quickly because some of the discussions are interesting and non-inflammatory and I have interesting things to say. But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find…

I've long argued that the downvote is terrible for civil discourse, I've had to tread carefully and be warned many times when I comment on it - including writing in-depth constructive criticism and not simply whining. It's strange to me that especially on a technology forum discussing the negatives or pitfalls of certain mechanisms is being suppressed, censored - just like with politics, as politics is inherently int…

The upvote/downvote thing was way, way worse when vote counts were shown per-post. That went away years ago and I think the current system seems to work pretty well when viewed through a macro lens. (In the sense of "is this a good community overall?" and "would it likely be worse if the up/down voting were entirely removed?")

I'm on another forum that opted for an up/down vote system and showed counts per-post much like news.yc used to. It created so much drama and anxiety that people were openly antagonistic towards each other over what amounted to fake-internet-points.

The solution the admins came up with over there was "keep the counts shown publicly" but also "make public the specific votes that were up/down on any given post" (with an anonymization of all historical downvotes before the policy change, but not afterwards). Within days, the community adapted and it was a huge net benefit, IMO.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#273

Post by twic » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

lalaithion wrote: post #232

twic wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really interesting insight, thanks. There are roughly two views on moderators. Moderators think that moderators are the thin green line protecting the ordinary users from a handful of bad actors, letting them live in blissful ignorance of the awful things that are happening. Ordinary users think the that moderators are power-mad bullies who ban and delete as they see fit, with no accountability. Both of the…

The analogy is really insightful, but also makes me slightly uneasy. When a moderator gets it wrong, you can't comment on an internet forum. When a police officer gets it wrong, you're dead.

Which is why we, in principle, regulate the police much more than moderators. The classical ideal of policing is that the most the police can do is apprehend you and put you in front of a judge and jury. The jury are specifically not people who spend all their time with criminals, so they should be able to act as an effective check on the policeman's instincts. Then we have all sorts of procedures and laws and rules of evidence and oversight and so on, to try and guide the police into doing their job well, and protect people who are caught up by mistake.

Moderators operate purely on the Judge Dredd model.

But then, in reality, the police operate in a 90% classical, 10% Dredd sort of way (for values of 90% and 10% that vary by location). They can mete out small punishments without going to court, oversight is not very effective, etc.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#274

Post by exo-pla-net » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

httpsterio wrote: post #260

bredren wrote: post #15

I am a freshman moderator of /r/portland. I had thought working as a moderator would be a great way to help grow the subreddit's base. Offer more useful real world interaction points and basically have a big impact on Portland. Instead what I've found is that 99% of the time the moderators are dealing with bad actors and that has to be the primary focus to keep the sub from falling apart. It isn't just dealing with t…

I know what you're talking about. I was also a mod myself on /r/Suomi (Finland) and quit after a rather serious incident. Other mods and users on far-right subs started to compile a list of European subreddit moderators whom they deemed 'SJWs' and tried to gather as much personal information on everyone. Someone from that group leaked the documents to us and it was quite alarming. The scale, effort and hate that went…

Horrifying. Is there a news story on the stabbing?

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#275

Post by paganel » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

bredren wrote: post #42

ryandvm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News suffers from the same problem. We have folks like dang (God bless him) manually dealing with assholes. Seems like we could solve these problems with technology, but here we are two decades into the 21st century and we still have humans cleaning the pools. I'd be interested to know if actual forum moderators think that we could solve the bad actor problem with algorithms...

As I was typing this, I was thinking about moderation of HN and but was cautious to comment on meta. Speaking generally, without real-world consequences for violating community TOS on a service there are no teeth in tracking bad actors, banning them, etc. For a long time, I loathed Facebook's real-name policy. However, to some extent I suspect the amount of identity validation and attribution of comments to actions d…

Don't think the real-name policy helps that much, to be honest.

Just in the last couple of days of me commenting on FB I've been called a "retard" (sorry for the word, but that's what the lady used to describe me) and a "troll" (presumably Russian), this latter description accompanied by said commenter saying how I only write down dumb stuff which shows that I don't think before writing (but not saying where and especially why he thought I was wrong in my statements).

Compared to all that commenting almost anonymously on HN seems like a breeze of fresh air. Of course in the many years I have been commenting in here there have been ups and downs (a couple of very down points for me were the reactions after the Boston marathon and the endless banana references after the Fukushima disaster), but other than that when one is told that he/she is wrong the person saying it usually comes with his/her own reasons which helps move the conversation forward.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#276

Post by the_af » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

throwphoton wrote: post #192

the_af wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can simply register another account and start over, how would this help avoid stagnation?

You'd lose any privileges associated with a high number of karma points, also all of your previous content would be removed, so people could cover the same territory in possibly new ways with less fear of being called redundant. It basically compensates for first-mover advantage in forums.

As a thought experiment, your idea is interesting!

I see a few problems though. This wouldn't work for just any karma-based site. For example, on StackOverflow where there are good "canonical" answers to tech problems, and these get heavily upvoted (because they are useful), having them removed and later rephrased (possibly incorrectly) by a new user would be detrimental. So any system where "good" posts are archived and referenced wouldn't benefit from this.

Even when there are no canonical/permanent answers, the thought that every "good" post you make takes you nearer to account deletion is not exactly enticing. Why not simply get rid of points and make all posts ephemeral, kind of like Instagram stories? What good do points even do in a system where your account and posts will get inevitably deleted?

Also, wouldn't mediocre/bad accounts stick longer than "good" accounts, making the whole system worse? I don't mean terrible or troll accounts -- I understand the point system would still be used to ban or hide them -- but mediocre accounts which post mediocre/bad posts. Wouldn't they dominate in this kind of system?

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#277

Post by tsukurimashou » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

thebouv wrote: post #5

So, I don't get it. Why does it matter if a few volunteer mods manage a ton of subs? Isn't it hard to do? So they have a hard job? And it's volunteer? And .. what? I don't understand the outrage directed at mods I guess. Note: I'm a light Reddit user. I follow a handful of subs. And I can't name a single mod of any of them. Maybe this is more meaningful for people who spend more time on the site and are more involved…

ffs the place is already a big echo chamber and controversial opinions are downvoted to oblivion, do you really want on top of that to add a single guy to moderate all top subreddits? remember most people have political agenda and tons of bias they don't even realize

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#278

Post by throwphoton » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

joshuaissac wrote: post #259

throwphoton wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd lose any privileges associated with a high number of karma points, also all of your previous content would be removed, so people could cover the same territory in possibly new ways with less fear of being called redundant. It basically compensates for first-mover advantage in forums.

If upvoting a post/comment (which gives the author karma points) would risk triggering its deletion (by making the author cross the karma threshold), then is that not effectively turning the karma system on its head? Under such a system, if I think a post is valuable, I would then try to "protect" it and its author's account by downvoting it. Similarly, if I think a post is not valuable, I can help trigger its eventu…

That would only really matter if the poster were really close to the threshold. Moreover the gaming of the system would be unlikely to work forever, requiring too much coordination of effort.

But to answer your question, yes, it is turning the karma system on its head for people near the top of the standings; the idea being that having "titans of karma" in the community becomes detrimental at some point.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#279

Post by jakelazaroff » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

haunter wrote: post #241

jakelazaroff wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>how meaninglessly violent people become when their posts are modded > Maybe if mods were more transparent across all the subs. Does the latter really justify the former? If you disagree with a moderation decision, take it up with them politely. If you consistently disagree, maybe this community just isn't for you! Mods are just people donating their time. Even if they're inconsistent or "corrupt", there's no reason…

> If you consistently disagree, maybe this community just isn't for you! Ah the classic "don't let others make changes but outcast them" approach.

If you are in conflict with enough other members of a community, you are de facto outcast anyway. And if enough other members agree with you, just break off and form your own community!

We’re talking about online communities — low stakes to join, low stakes to leave. There are exactly zero reasons that anyone should resort to doxxing/threats/etc in response to moderation decisions.

Re: Reddit's top user leaves platform after harassment

#280

Post by tptacek » Thu, May 21, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

snazz wrote: post #73

ryandvm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News suffers from the same problem. We have folks like dang (God bless him) manually dealing with assholes. Seems like we could solve these problems with technology, but here we are two decades into the 21st century and we still have humans cleaning the pools. I'd be interested to know if actual forum moderators think that we could solve the bad actor problem with algorithms...

Thankfully the HN moderators are paid employees--I can't imagine doing that kind of work for free.

Dan has better things to be doing than this; he runs the entire site. It's not like individually dealing with jerks is meant as his whole job.