I always wondered how HN manages to do moderation 24/7 around the clock. Australia makes sense.
A lot of it boils down on dang being oversubscribed. And having some automations to help him
Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
111–120 of 498 posts
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/newsguid…
You say that, but there was a big thread on Val Kilmer on the front page this morning...
He died, I'm fine with making an exception for it.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A polite well worded post that disagrees with the mainstream will indeed still exist, but it will be moderated to unreadably transparent and hidden by default. It’s not a great experience.
Meanwhile personal attacks and hyperbole regarding Elon Musk and Trump have become very common on HN.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let us not use the word "thrive" or "quash" to avoid misunderstandings. To rephrase, I hope that on HN even minority opinions have reasonable rebuttals. Unfortunately what currently happens is people flag minority opinions with no discussion.
I agree that that's not a best practice. It's not what the downvote mechanism was intended for.
In a way, iirc, it really is. It's as much a "I disagree" as it is "I don't like this". That said, I would like to see more people actually respond in addition to a downvote.
I don't think that's generally a function of the moderators though.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#115Earlier 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.
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…
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Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#116One 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.
My experience is that HN's Overton window is probably on average 15-20% larger than most forums. That's not uniform across all topics though. So if you skew toward a particular set of topics it may feel like a typical forum, or even in some ways more constrained.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
It is a shame that people will downvote a thing that is expressing an honest opinion.
I can't really relate to the mindset of people who use downvoting as a 'I disagree' button.
I don't think this extends to the way that HN is moderated or run. It is worth looking at dang's posts every now and again to take in the job that he does and how patient he can be, even with antagonism aimed directly at HN or himself personally.
From time to time I also have a look at the histories of some of those antagonistic people. Frequently there are signs that their behaviour was not always like this. Recent posts might be outright abusive and sound like the postings of angry teenagers. A few years earlier they might have been posting reasonable discussions on their thesis topic or tutorials on some useful subjects. Keeping that in mind helps you realise that these are real people and there may be other things going on in their life.
I think there are some good things to learn from people who work with addicts. You can simultaneously challenge bad behaviour and be compassionate to the person who committed it. Similarly, this is why I'm not a fan of cancelling people or holding them forever accountable for past bad behaviour. If they recognise that their behaviour was bad and are endeavouring to not be that way again, I don't think permanent ostracism benefits anyone. If anything it restricts people to a community that amplifies their negative behaviour.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#118Welcome Tom! Thanks for helping to make this the highest signal-to-noise ratio forum in the general technology/business space.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#119Earlier 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 think the fact that you're being downvoted for your comment proves your point.
There is a difference between downvoting and flagging, and between flagging and moderating.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#120Congrats and welcome to the new public status! Forgive the non-substantive comment but that's awesome :-)