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Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#361

Post by Jun8 »

falsandtru wrote: post #354
Jun8 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the downvote button for two reasons: overwhelmingly for rude, come-uppance, and similar type of comments; very rarely for comments spreading FUD for no particular reason. I just downvoted your comment for the second reason. Demanding transparency is fine but you’ve got to provide proof with your claims. If there are stories which feel manipulated to you link them and let the audience see, maybe you’re right.

Dang explained here that it could happen.

I’m not saying you’re wrong I.e. manipulation probably does happen, my prior=0.4 bec. it happens inmost platforms so why not here (0.5) but AFAIk HN has strong anti manipulation tools&practices in places (-0.1). Show me examples so I can update my mental model.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#362

Post by rhaksw »

dang wrote: post #352
rhaksw wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communities would get a good sense for the frequency if forums would simply disclose content moderation to the submitting users. Offending users would learn what's not allowed and share that with the community. But today's forums frequently do not disclose moderation to submitting users, and that is why we are now seeing major court cases over 230, government-led censorship, etc.

I don't know anything about other forums, but for the reasons why on HN we don't publish a full moderation log, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39234189 as well as the past explanations linked from there. You can, however, always get a question answered. That's basically our implicit contract with the community.

Full moderation logs are different than showing submitters how their posts have been moderated.

On HN, my understanding is that you (moderators) can penalize stories without the submitter's knowledge. But if HN instead disclosed that penalty to the story's submitter, that would help this community communicate better.

As for how it works elsewhere, if a YouTube channel removes your comment, you won't know [1]. Same thing on Reddit, Facebook, and X. So while HN is relatively small, the practice of withholding content moderation decisions from submitters/commenters is widespread.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e6BIkKBZpg

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#363

Post by nottorp »

comex wrote: post #336
jeremyjh wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flags on the last item don't seem to be made in good faith. This looks like abuse of the flag system to me. Is there a system for monitoring flag abuse?

By "the last item" you're referring to "Avoid Async Rust at All Cost", right? Personally I don't think that's abuse; I would have flagged that post if I'd seen it. That's despite the fact that I agree with a lot of what's in the post. The title is just too inflammatory. And there are more inflammatory bits in the post, such as saying the feature is "objectively bad", and saying that a community member's post "gracefu…

Of course, it's only inflammatory because async is a darling to more than half of HN :)

But if we get into that we'll trigger the flame war detection.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#364

Post by ggdG »

tptacek wrote: post #312
ggdG wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to me that the quality of any public discussion tends to increase when it’s relevant to the expertise in the room, and decrease when it involves people’s casual reads of complicated stuff about which they have vague but emotionally-charged impressions. HN folks have great, nuanced discussions about a wide range of technical questions, but we’re much less likely to collectively know what we’re talking about…

There's a lot of expertise about COVID here! The problem is, in a variational autoencoder discussion, that's mostly all there is, and in COVID threads there is lots of energy from non-COVID experts. This isn't complicated. You can just look at any COVID thread and see what a shitshow it is. That's not for lack of COVID expertise, though most of that expertise is probably Homer-melding-backwards-into-the-hedges when t…

>This isn't complicated. You can just look at any COVID thread and see what a shitshow it is.

I hardly see any covid threads here. I happened to see the one of this week. It got 8 comments before being flagged into oblivion.

>That's not for lack of COVID expertise, though most of that expertise is probably Homer-melding-backwards-into-the-hedges when they see the thread.

You cannot have it both ways. Either you flag covid threads preemptively [1] along with a bunch of other users [2], or you try to learn from domain experts in these threads.

But making assumptions about what these experts would have thought of these threads, had they not been flagged down prematurely, is a weird leap of reasoning.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39231535

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39232084

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#365

Post by nottorp »

dang wrote: post #298
caymanjim wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why there's no actual downvote for submissions. Was that ever discussed on here? I did a quick search for prior discussions on the topic but didn't find anything. To me, "flag" means "this is a serious violation that requires moderator attention". Something I'd want you to see and deal with because it's bigoted, illegal, spam, etc. I wouldn't flag something simply because I didn't think HN was the right a…

The only person who could answer that is pg because that design choice was part of the embryo of HN. He must have been thinking something though, because Reddit was originally his conception and he was an influence on the earliest development of Reddit as well (edit: and Reddit does have story downvoting - forgot to mention that bit).

Tbh if you just upvote what you like and do not vote what you don't like it's almost the same thing.

The one exception is if some group organizes to upvote something that fits their agenda / business plan. But in this case it's generally something worth flagging and it gets flagged?

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#366

Post by ggdG »

felixgallo wrote: post #344
ggdG wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The six foot rule was based on what the best understanding of the experts was at the time, and probably saved thousands of lives. You can't just make up the beneficial effects of something as you go. Can you cite some randomized controlled trials that support your claim? >Just like forced masking up probably saved tens of thousands of lives. One year ago, a huge Cochrane meta-analysis of the available RCTs regarding…

literally quoting from that meta-analysis, which does not include many clinical trials that have demonstrated an impact: "Key messages We are uncertain whether wearing masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses based on the studies we assessed." Example very large study published in a reputable journal: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi9069?cookieSe...

>literally quoting from that meta-analysis, which does not include many clinical trials that have demonstrated an impact:

Yes. To their credit, they only looked at randomized controlled trials.

>"Key messages We are uncertain whether wearing masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses based on the studies we assessed."

In other words: the RCTs don't show an effect to a significant degree.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#367

Post by mkl »

reductum wrote: post #329
a12k wrote: post #3

Looking at the list of removed stories makes me really happy with the moderators here. They're all sensationalist, advertising for some company, clickbait, way off topic, or some combination of above. In fact, I don't see a single story that I personally feel should not have been removed. Thanks, mods.

I witnessed a recent front page link silently get changed to point to a parody video, then silently changed back later, with the top comment that remarked on the change silently removed. That told me all I needed to know about the moderation of this site. Thankfully someone captured a screenshot: https://merveilles.town/@cancel/111834048502040552

Dang explained it was a mod error: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39182625, which links to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39170137

huppeldepup's comment in the screenshot is collapsed on p2 of the comments (after it was no longer relevant) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39157010&p=2, and is also accessible as the parent of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39170137.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#368

Post by lukan »

mandmandam wrote: post #360
lukan wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic metric this site optimizes for is: "interesting discussion". So yes, sometimes there can be interesting discussion about political topics. But most of the times - not so much. And what you apparently want is activism, not discussion. Not to say your activism is bad - but this site is simply not made for activism of any kind. Activism is controversial. Which means flame war.

> what you apparently want is activism, not discussion I'd call the flaggers colluding to spike stories with lively and non toxic discussions the 'activists'. > Activism is controversial. Which means flame war. So add a flame war tag, or a politics tag, and let people filter it. Filter it with AI. Grow a thicker skin, or expand your mind - there's a lot of options. Suppressing anything with a whiff of controversy doe…

"and non toxic discussions"

Have you seen one discussion about Gaza free of that? I haven't. (My main account is rate limited, because of a recent Gaza debate btw. Because I like heated discussions from time to time. But I can respect that it is not wanted here)

"So add a flame war tag, or a politics tag, and let people filter it. Filter it with AI. Grow a thicker skin, or expand your mind - there's a lot of options."

So one of those options are, you start your own forum, where you can have all that, instead of demanding that other people and places change to your liking. Just a suggestion.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#369

Post by dang »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #337
dang wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two you listed were downranked by the flamewar detector. The last one was downranked by users. Admins didn't touch any of them. Note for everybody: can you guys please include the HN /item link if you're mentioning specific threads? That would be much more efficient and that way I can answer many more of people's questions.

I don't necessarily want to dissect every little story, but this post was a funny edge case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39203106 a tame story that got some discussion, but was marked as a dupe. But I didn't see any other posts linked in the comments as expected. I search for other submissions and see two other posts... with 0 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39190710 https://news.ycombinator.c…

We try to, and often users help by, posting links to the previous discussions in the thread. But there isn't enough time to do that in all of them.

In this case, you can see from https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... that there had been a lot of submissions, and from https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... the ones that got comments.

Of those, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39165981 had been just a few days earlier. And it turns out that there actually was a link to it in the later thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39204186, but this comment was flagkilled, probably because of the personal swipe in it. (You can still see it but only if you turn on 'showdead' in your profile.)

I could go on! because there's endless detail one can go into about these calls. But you "didn't necessarily want to dissect every little story" :)

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#370

Post by tptacek »

rhaksw wrote: post #321
tptacek wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that could happen. And if it does, it will happen by way of people leaving sites like this one for sites moderated differently. I think we're all OK with letting the market decide.

I would prefer if the market decides, but there are a few non-trivial court cases coming up that may influence what happens. [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/... [2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/... [3] https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc
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