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Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

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Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#41

Post by mindcrime »

cbeach wrote: post #28

Welcome Tom! One thing I'd really like to see is less tactical flagging of content. Hopefully with your additional help, people who suppress content they disagree with will be kept in check. Open discourse is something that used to be sacrasanct in scientific and engineering circles. Over the last decade or so, free speech has been on the decline, and discussion is now very polarised along political lines. For exampl…

Flags are issued by regular users like us though. What do you expect a moderator to do, except maybe manually intervene to "un dead" something if it seems like a case of overly biased flagging? That's assuming mods have the ability to do that (I've always assumed that they do).

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#43

Post by eddyg »

bee_rider wrote: post #35
EcommerceFlow wrote: post #6

Tom, please fix the flag abuse problem. It's gotten to the point where I realize there's no point in commenting on many threads, given my opinions, some of which are very normal nationally.

A political talking point can be nationally popular but still political, so, outside the scope of the site. Anyway, which nation? I think we also aren’t allowed to push Communist party talking points here, despite that party being highly supported in some countries (not that I’d want to, just saying, nationally popular doesn’t mean much).

A lot of people don't read the Hacker News Guidelines⁽¹⁾ before submitting and deserve to be flagged. Quoting (emphasis mine):

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

⁽¹⁾ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#44

Post by RicoElectrico »

roflyear wrote: post #38
theoryofx wrote: post #20

One thing that I appreciate about dang, and PG before him, is their intellectual honesty and strong sense of ethics. On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an investment firm as promotion for their business. But because HN was started by an individual with real values, and has been operated day-to-day by individuals that followed in his tradition, its been capable of unreasonable greatness and r…

I really don't think that HN lets dissenting opinions thrive (well, not anything that is truly controversial but not clearly hateful). That may feel cozy but it's not a reflection of anything pure or good, imo.

[flagged]

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#47

Post by cbeach »

dpkirchner wrote: post #30
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't that be directed to those with an agenda who and are flagging certain posts? Those of us who complain about this highly targeted flagging just want to avoid censorship. I can't see how we need to reflect on this.

Forums like this are "censored" and that's a really good thing. We don't need a steady stream of (for example) hate for women, minorities, and trans people that you see on truly uncensored forums.

All illegal speech should be hidden from public discussion.

However, it would be disconcerting if stating biological facts led to censorship on a forum that focusses on science and technology.

The definition of "hate" has been stretched a lot over the last few years, and if that restricts discussion of facts and ideas, then it is harmful.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#49

Post by pstuart »

roflyear wrote: post #38
theoryofx wrote: post #20

One thing that I appreciate about dang, and PG before him, is their intellectual honesty and strong sense of ethics. On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an investment firm as promotion for their business. But because HN was started by an individual with real values, and has been operated day-to-day by individuals that followed in his tradition, its been capable of unreasonable greatness and r…

I really don't think that HN lets dissenting opinions thrive (well, not anything that is truly controversial but not clearly hateful). That may feel cozy but it's not a reflection of anything pure or good, imo.

I'm not sure about that, but a lot of it depends on what you consider to be "dissenting opinions".

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#50

Post by jszymborski »

roflyear wrote: post #38
theoryofx wrote: post #20

One thing that I appreciate about dang, and PG before him, is their intellectual honesty and strong sense of ethics. On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an investment firm as promotion for their business. But because HN was started by an individual with real values, and has been operated day-to-day by individuals that followed in his tradition, its been capable of unreasonable greatness and r…

I really don't think that HN lets dissenting opinions thrive (well, not anything that is truly controversial but not clearly hateful). That may feel cozy but it's not a reflection of anything pure or good, imo.

Little ironic considering you're the second comment everyone sees on this thread at the moment.
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