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Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
381–390 of 498 posts
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#382Welcome tom!
I'm long time lurker on hn. Excited to see you as mod.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of evidence would satisfy you, then?
I have `showdead` enabled. It should not be the case that I find flagged posts that are good -- that are well written, don't break rules, etc -- but are flagged (presumably) due to expressing a dissenting view.
You can vouch it, and if the comment is still [dead] but it's really good you can send an email to dang and tomhow hn@ycombinator.com Remember to include a link to the comment, and use it sparsely because it's a manual processes.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#384Many thanks for the warm welcome, everyone. It’s been a privilege to help support this community and to work alongside dang, who has been a great friend and mentor for many years. It’s a great responsibility, to keep HN a healthy and thriving community, and I’m continually amazed to see all the ways dang puts thought and energy into it. One final note is that it was never part of the negotiations that I was expected…
[flagged]
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#385Thanks for the work you guys do, Dan and Tom, to keep this place a good and intellectually stimulating place for discussion. We appreciate you.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#386[dupe]
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that that's not a best practice. It's not what the downvote mechanism was intended for.
Flagging is used by people who have no rebuttal but are mad. That's why I have only flagged one or two posts, ever, but not because I was mad, but because the comment was just plain beyond the pale. And my posts against portaying violent rape in film got flagged. Make it make sense, because I understand the failure of this system because systems are my trade-in-craft.
Nope, sometimes I would have a rebuttal but flagging is the better option (constructive discussion is hard without mutual respect, and/or don't feed the troll). Or, the comment doesn't even have anything to refute, it's just disrespectful or it's spam, or both.
I have flagged a few comments but I'm rarely mad.
And if one is mad because of a disrespectful comment, the flagging is probably appropriate too.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 persona…
> I can't really relate to the mindset of people who use downvoting as a 'I disagree' button.
Downvoting is a legitimate expression of disagreement according to PG.
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#389Welcome to the job Tom. :-) Could you or Dang please explain, why this post with 118 points and 121 comments in 3 hours, about news of the day highly relevant to anybody in Tech, only shows up on page 18? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43561253 Just trying to understand the algo...
You can see the front page for each day: https://news.ycombinator.com/front
Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
In his article https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_i... he mentions several times that he is aiming for "comment traction," treating articles with more comments than upvotes as successful while complaining that recently there haven't been as many comments. It does make sense that DaringFireball would consider starting a flamewar a job well done, but of course HN is optimizing for the opposite.
Or - he's critical of SV and large tech companies?
HN is replete with criticism of these things.