131–140 of 170 posts
Not joking, we are trying to build a large online community now and I would love to pick his brain on balancing incentives, encouraging curiosity, having equanimity, and all kinds of aspects in “practical sociology”.
I think his in-the-trenches experience would benefit many people trying to build and maintain healthy online communities.
Thanks dang!!
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To my knowledge, there is a combination of specific views on the site that highlight important features of the site (an obvious example might be the list of flagged comments; a less-obvious example might be https://news.ycombinator.com/topcomments which shows the top-most comment of each front page item) as well as email alerts from a variety of sources, some of those being user-driven.
in order to read your reply to my comment, i had to : - click on my user name - click on comments - search/scroll to this thread and see your reply I don't get notified of comment replies like on reddit. there is no slack/email page of DMs/PMs.
He should write a book on moderating online communities. Not joking, we are trying to build a large online community now and I would love to pick his brain on balancing incentives, encouraging curiosity, having equanimity, and all kinds of aspects in “practical sociology”. I think his in-the-trenches experience would benefit many people trying to build and maintain healthy online communities. Thanks dang!!
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HN isn't the place for politics. If I was a zealous liberal or a zealous right wing nutjob I'd imagine I'd get roughly equal treatment.
> HN isn't the place for politics. It seems that if the politics meet a certain criteria, they are allowed ad nauseam. You also see where certain names are allowed to say things where others are chastised for the rebuttal of said things.
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HN isn't the place for politics. If I was a zealous liberal or a zealous right wing nutjob I'd imagine I'd get roughly equal treatment.
Moreso, it’s a place for thoughtful discussion. I’ve seen great comments from people I’ve disagreed with get lots of positive attention, and trolling comments from people I agree with downvoted into oblivion. I respect that.
It is ironic that HN has not yet been monetized like metafilter was.
Look at the URL. It’s monetized. HN is a marketing arm of Y Combinator. HN contributed significantly to Y Combinator’s early success.
I seriously wish the monthly "Who's Hiring" and "Who Wants to be Hired?" were a more structured feature of the site, but maybe that's the charm of them
Posts like these, for me, highlight the class divide. PG thinks "few people" grasp how much effort dang expends, when in reality, a whole class of people working in customer service roles expend roughly the same amount of effort. Sure, dang might be uniquely efficient, but the expenditure of effort is on the same order. I once witnessed a Delta employee in ATL process a queue of customers, all with issues regarding t…
I'd say the tendency is to absolutely trivialise the work that goes into moderating online forums. It should be easy, right, you just click buttons while sitting at home in your pajamas, no? Well no, not really.
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There is however a big difference in the legitimacy of restrictions. The reality is that their are many unreasonable people on the Internet. Most unreasonable people however think of themselves as reasonable and other similarly unreasonable people as reasonable as well. There are also some reasonable people on the Internet. So how do you know which one you are? When we can't assume one or the other we have to look at…
It would basically be impossible for a site like HN to silence anyone. There are many other highly-visible places to break news even if dang wants to cover something up. It's not remotely the same as if the government were to impose restrictions on speech.
Presumably you disagree, but then you disagree with the far majority of well regarded implementations in the real world. I am about to buy an apartment and it is the same thing. You need a witness, a contract and approval from the housing organization. Because that how you reasonably decide what happened.
And yes, people break the news all the time. For example on Twitter on this very post. That is the point. When they do how do you know who is reasonable? Which is what I have argued.
I'd like to think that more than a few people grasp this. He's some kind of machine - in the best, complimentary way. His replies to emails are succinct, helpful, educational, and still personable. No idea how he retains his equanimity across hundreds/thousands of interactions, mostly with strangers. IMO it's a worthwhile lesson (and a free one) to peruse his comment history: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=d…
I get a very different sense from the reading of his comments to users; curt and inconsiderate. He tends to make declarations about behavior that sound objective but are really just his very casual read of a situation, and there’s no appeal or redress possible. Additionally, he tends to favor the original aggressor, ignoring the concept of instigation to fix the proximate cause of the negative interactions here. Don’…
Can you give an example? I just went through dang's comments in the last few days and found nothing of the sort, and it has not been my experience at all, unless posting an unpopular opinion counts as instigation. Dang's pattern, every time I've been witness to his moderation, is to cut the first comment that descends into incivility or flaming.
Conversations on HN sometimes get heated. Some people take people disagreeing with them as a personal attack and quickly descend into actual personal attacks in response. Those people may feel like they're being singled out by dang, but it's because they actually are misbehaving.
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To my knowledge, there is a combination of specific views on the site that highlight important features of the site (an obvious example might be the list of flagged comments; a less-obvious example might be https://news.ycombinator.com/topcomments which shows the top-most comment of each front page item) as well as email alerts from a variety of sources, some of those being user-driven.
in order to read your reply to my comment, i had to : - click on my user name - click on comments - search/scroll to this thread and see your reply I don't get notified of comment replies like on reddit. there is no slack/email page of DMs/PMs.
I had no idea about this until someone mentioned it. Prior to that I couldn't be bothered very often to check my comments for replies. It was too many steps and made me feel narcissistic for doing all that just to see.
edit- spelling.