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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

#101

Post by JoshTriplett »

kccqzy wrote: post #60
pstuart wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

That's not a moderation issue. You can post that opinion, and people will disagree with it, post responses to it, and downvote it. It will not be flagged out of existence, unless it's also violating site policy in other ways.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#103

Post by mschuster91 »

ryandrake wrote: post #67
cbeach wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Since it's such a powerful action, it would be nice if flaggers had to at least justify the flag. Is it breaking a site rule? Is it spam? Is it not the original source? Does it actually violate the rules, or are you just using "Flag" as a mega-downvote for articles you don't personally like?

Frankly, I'd also love to see this for downvotes.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#105

Post by lolinder »

incoming1211 wrote: post #63
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.

The problem is HN is mainly left leaning so its difficult to have discussion at times as dang and the community will shut it down quickly as differing opinions are not welcome even if its factual. (chances are people will downvote without comment or scream "ThAtS nOt TrUe") (Love how HN proved my comment as correct)

> HN is mainly left leaning

This is largely an illusion, as can be seen by the number of people complaining in the other direction about how wacko libertarians or MAGA or whatever dominate on here.

What you're actually observing is that HN is one of the more diverse public spaces you participate in and there's no personalized algorithm that filters the content to only show what you want. When your exposure to left-leaning content goes from Just know that it feels just as overwhelming to the left-leaning people on here, and they will jump to the same interpretation in the opposite direction.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#106

Post by kubb »

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 hope people don't get punished for flagging Musk appreciation content. There's a lot that can be wrong with such submissions (cultism, uncritical praise, excessive volume, lack of substance, etc.).

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#107

Post by tracker1 »

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.

Strong disagree here... While there are definitely those that will bury some opinions with downvotes, there are others that will upvote. Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive, Liberal and even outright Communist views get expressed in varying comments and that's just political leanings.

I only really recognize this because I'll be actively reading/replying sometimes and see comments go +/- 2-3 up or down votes back and forth on the same comment. While you may be at say -2, that's just the aggregate. I sometimes wish I could see the total up/down votes just out of curiosity.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#108

Post by jdoliner »

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…

> On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an investment firm as promotion for their business.

I think it's at least as plausible that this is part of the magic that makes it good. HN is sufficiently "on the margin" that they don't have to do things like placate advertisers with their moderation policies. The mods like dang, tomhow and pg mostly care about HN as users rather than owners.

> It would be a good thing for the world if HN was spun out as a non-profit and maintained long-term.

That sounds good in theory... in practice it might be the beginning of the end. Once there's a non-profit behind it the non-profit has a mission of its own. Although I'm actually not sure of the legal status of HN right now, maybe it's already something like that.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#110

Post by buttercraft »

kccqzy wrote: post #60
pstuart wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> having the opinion

What I see a lot of is this:

User posts "$opinion $generalization $snark $dismissal $adhominem".

User gets down voted or flagged. User complains that downvotes are for expressing $opinion and that $opinion is not allowed on this site!

But we can all see the other things in their post that probably brought on most of the downvotes.

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