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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

#51

Post by roflyear »

pstuart wrote: post #49
roflyear wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I agree it depends on the definition. Quite honestly my vibe, and really that is all it is for any of us discussing this, is pretty much anything more aggressive than my comment above (or even including my comment above, once more people read it).

I definitely DO NOT mean clear hate speech, etc.. that's not my point at all.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#52

Post by bee_rider »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #27
kstrauser wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I've found myself being publicly tsk'ed by the people around me, I've taken a moment to try go figure out why they disapprove of what I'm saying. It's been a useful life exercise.

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.

They are flagging posts that they see as pushing an agenda. There isn’t some official separation of agenda-less and agenda-full ideas.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#53

Post by ddingus »

Observation:

How lucky are we that our contributions here warrant two fine moderators?

I just read Tom's brief story on how he arrived here and what it means and felt... I don't really have a quick word for it.

I know I am better for having spent time here.

Oh, I got it! A tiny bit spoiled, but in the best of ways. Yeah, that is what I felt.

How lucky we are indeed. :)

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#54

Post by roflyear »

jszymborski wrote: post #50
roflyear wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, let's see how that plays out first, I did just post it a few minutes ago (refresh has me at 0 karma fyi)

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#55

Post by chrisweekly »

Right on! Thanks and good luck and please keep the ethos / vibe going the way it improbably has for all these years. I've been active online since about 1998, and HN remains unique in my experience. Kudos as always to dang for the huge role he's played in that.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#56

Post by cbeach »

mindcrime wrote: post #41
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).

Flagging content should be a privilege that comes at a certain level of trust, and the privilege should be revoked by moderators for people that use flags to further an agenda.

Trust in forum users can be measured by various metrics - The Discourse forum software is a good example of how to do this: https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-discourse-t...

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#58

Post by roflyear »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #44
roflyear wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Yeah! Absolutely. They want the wheel to keep turning - and I do too, if I'm being honest! I get paid from the system like lots of people here.

I just would like for more people to acknowledge that. IDK. Seems more honest and more fitting to what everyone says the HN culture "really is."

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#59

Post by ryandrake »

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…

> I've seen positive news about Musk and his companies get quickly flagged and squirreled away.

Huh, I always thought it was the other way around. Anything negative about Musk also gets quickly flagged and buried. I guess we can agree that Musk is currently a lightning rod, and brigades on both sides are acting to hide (positive and negative) coverage of his actions.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#60

Post by kccqzy »

pstuart wrote: post #49
roflyear wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN.

Personally I hope Tom will bring new moderation policies that will truly let unpopular opinions thrive, but I don't have high hopes here since this is just an announcement of a new moderator, not an announcement of new moderation policies.

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