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Tell HN: Thank You Dang

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Re: Tell HN: Thank You Dang

#191

Post by hanche »

spurgu wrote: post #173
hanche wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally, pointing out misspellings is bad form, but I can't not point out that your spelling of “popping” was rather misfortunate. I think I know how it happened, since it happens to me all the time: The brain does a lot of its work in parallel, and in mine, at least, there seems to be a separate part of the brain responsible for doubling letters as I type. And this being somewhat asynchronous, it occasionally doubl…

> The brain does a lot of its work in parallel What happens to me oftentimes, when not focusing on what I'm typing, is that I misspell words like "theme" as "team". I think it's because my muscle memory sloppily translates what my brain is hearing since it's not focusing on the context, and those two words sound similar. This is also how "your" sometimes gets mixed with "you're", even though I most definitely know th…

Same thing with “its” vs “it's”, I suspect. I got so confused once because of this, I started doubting which was which, so I looked it up. With the result that I now do an involuntary eye roll every time I see the wrong one.

Re: Tell HN: Thank You Dang

#192

Post by Mizza »

Please, for the good of humanity, lock Dang in a room with an unlabeled set of comment training data and make an AlphaDang.

Unleashing the benevolent AlphaDang moderation AI across the internet will salvage the web, and ultimately all of mankind.

Re: Tell HN: Thank You Dang

#193

Post by rossdavidh »

The quality of the discussion on HN remains high, while the quality of the discussion on much of the rest of the internet gets ever-worse. I routinely leave HN for the day a bit better informed than before, whereas most other sites I leave feeling way more emotional, and also probably a bit stupider (or at least less rational).

Such things don't happen by accident, and a lot of quality contributors is clearly not enough, or many other sites would be as good. Thanks, dang, for your work in keeping HN worth visiting. It becomes all the more impressive with each passing year.

Re: Tell HN: Thank You Dang

#195

Post by vinay427 »

mkl wrote: post #142
E-Reverance wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren’t there more of these communities, and if there is I’d like to know.

Professional moderation is expensive. Keeping HN as good as it is is literally dang's job, paid for by YCombinator (who benefit from it by using it to recruit and then promote startups).

This makes sense, although it clearly isn't enough to induce HN-like moderation. Surely there are professional moderators on similar platforms such as Reddit (besides just their volunteer subreddit moderators), and there are certainly professional moderators on Facebook as well given their revenue streams. Neither website has arrived at something like Hacker News, at least as I value it. Part of this might be the scale of those websites because it's presumably difficult to scale up moderation teams that require human training.

Re: Tell HN: Thank You Dang

#196

Post by topoftheforts »

As much as people complain about the community in here, this is the best online community I'm part of (even if as a lurker mostly), and I'm always impressed by the quality of moderation. And now that I find out it's only dang doing it, it's even more impressive. Well done and keep up the good work!

Re: Tell HN: Thank You Dang

#197

Post by Dumblydorr »

I've used HN for years and have learned a great deal from its discussion threads. If the mark of great moderation is to remain mostly unseen while maintaining civil discourse, the mods of HN must be doing very well indeed! Kudos to you mods!

Re: Tell HN: Thank You Dang

#198

Post by raverbashing »

erikbye wrote: post #169
quickthrower2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some subreddits are good though by the way and don’t have external Septembers. Also some discords. I’m a bit afraid to say which though!

Yes, there are _many_ private subreddits with high quality content.

Doesn't even need to be private, it's usually a combination of strong moderation and/or a niche topic.

(though if it's too niche it might just be not that lively)

Re: Tell HN: Thank You Dang

#199

Post by lkbm »

erikbye wrote: post #166
Brian_K_White wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

trivially disproven

Is it? Controversial opinions are downvoted here, too. The Overton window is real.

The Overton window is real, but it's fairly wide open.

I could post a pro-socialism argument and get upvoted, I could post a pro-capitalism argument and get upvoted. I could criticize GMOs, or praise them. I could probably defend Trump if I'm thoughtful about it, or decry him.

Can I say "Capitalism/Socialism/GMOs/Trump is dumb" and get upvoted? No. Can I point out problems (or benefits) of them? Yes--so long as I'm not inflammatory about it.

Re: Tell HN: Thank You Dang

#200

Post by 3PS »

Thank you, dang. HN wouldn't be what it is without your moderation. So often I see threads on sensitive topics threaten to spiral out of control before your interventions, which are always calm and well-chosen. You have somehow managed to keep a growing internet forum consistently respectful, and I can't imagine how difficult of a task that must be.
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