An Update on Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#61

Post by comex » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:04 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #35

michaelochurch wrote: post #30

I still read HN. There's a good article or two per day. That said, the moderation needs work. (Or, more accurately, to be put out of work.) I've been under "rankban" for at least a year, if not longer. This means that my posts, even if they get a lot of upvotes, fall to or near the bottom. I don't really care, and while I could use sock puppets to get around that, I'm too old for that shit and I don't really care. St…

An alternate explanation would be that your comments are frequently marked as off topic. (dang has commented about marking his own comments off topic, so the support for that is in there, but I'm speculating about how it might be used.)

Even if this is true, I doubt his comments are undesirable enough to passive-aggressively try to get him to stop using the site by silently slowing it down (if his claim to be on slowban is true). This kind of behavior seems like it should be reserved for trolls and other highly noxious personages.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#62

Post by sciurus » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:05 PM UTC

"To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately."

When I first joined HN, I aggressively flagged stories and comments that didn't meet the guidelines. I thought that's what I was supposed to do. However, one day my comment flagging privileges disappeared with no explanation. If someone had contacted me and explained how I was misusing flags, I would have happily self-corrected.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#63

Post by baddox » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:05 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #46

readerrrr wrote: post #14

If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. But is fading the comment really the correct behaviour. Isn't the position on the page deciding whether the community agrees with the comment? My suggestion is: remove the fading; let downvoting only move the comments down, since the comment is appropriate yet the community doesn't a…

> downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment I hope downvoting has nothing to do with agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated). I want to see many more comments that are valuable and challenge the community (and challenge my thinking too). The groupthink is already well known and if not, will certa…

> I hope downvoting has nothing to do with a agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated).

That's a weak distinction when there is a factual disagreement, since most people probably believe that factually incorrect statements are not valuable to the conversation.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#64

Post by vacri » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:06 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #35

michaelochurch wrote: post #30

I still read HN. There's a good article or two per day. That said, the moderation needs work. (Or, more accurately, to be put out of work.) I've been under "rankban" for at least a year, if not longer. This means that my posts, even if they get a lot of upvotes, fall to or near the bottom. I don't really care, and while I could use sock puppets to get around that, I'm too old for that shit and I don't really care. St…

An alternate explanation would be that your comments are frequently marked as off topic. (dang has commented about marking his own comments off topic, so the support for that is in there, but I'm speculating about how it might be used.)

Which makes no sense because michaelochurch has a high comment upvote average and is one of the more prolific commentors. Even if the comments are off-topic, a high average suggests people like them.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#65

Post by Mithaldu » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:06 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #35

michaelochurch wrote: post #30

I still read HN. There's a good article or two per day. That said, the moderation needs work. (Or, more accurately, to be put out of work.) I've been under "rankban" for at least a year, if not longer. This means that my posts, even if they get a lot of upvotes, fall to or near the bottom. I don't really care, and while I could use sock puppets to get around that, I'm too old for that shit and I don't really care. St…

An alternate explanation would be that your comments are frequently marked as off topic. (dang has commented about marking his own comments off topic, so the support for that is in there, but I'm speculating about how it might be used.)

They will absolutely put high-voted comments at the bottom of the page. This happened to me when i posted a post with a lot of constructive criticism about a product i wanted to pan out, but which had a lot of problems in countries other than the original country (to the point of threatening human lives). Others agreed, even the makers of the product were happy about the feedback, upvotes happened. Yet my comment is dead last on the page.

I mailed the moderators and one of them confirmed it had been marked "off-topic", and left it there, despite admitting it wasn't off-topic, because he did want to cut down on "negative" comments on new products.

I understand the stance, but disagree with it, and have taken it a fact of life that both the moderatorship, and the userbase at large, are unwilling to consider strong posts that aren't full of praise as worthwhile. I can even mildly understand that, since it takes more effort to verify strong criticism as being grounded, than it takes to verify strong praise. It's disappointing nevertheless.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#66

Post by lotharbot » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:06 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #46

readerrrr wrote: post #14

If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. But is fading the comment really the correct behaviour. Isn't the position on the page deciding whether the community agrees with the comment? My suggestion is: remove the fading; let downvoting only move the comments down, since the comment is appropriate yet the community doesn't a…

> downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment I hope downvoting has nothing to do with agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated). I want to see many more comments that are valuable and challenge the community (and challenge my thinking too). The groupthink is already well known and if not, will certa…

pg has said many times that it's OK to downvote out of disagreement (particularly since it's OK to upvote due to agreement.)

I generally don't unless the disagreement has another value-subtracting component (lack of substance, poor reasoning/phrasing, factual errors, unnecessary incivility.) For disagreeable but worthwhile comments, I prefer responding instead. But I recognize the value in having differences of opinion over the use of downvotes -- comments of marginal quality (which some people disagree with, and others don't find valuable enough to upvote even if they agree) will end up dropping down the page.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#67

Post by hackuser » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:07 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #31

It seems like early comments on any article generally have a huge advantage in garnering votes. This appropriately rewards engagement, but also pushes down other worthy comments that come slightly later, often to effective near invisibility when replies to the top comment dominate the discussion. I wonder if there is any mechanism that could help counter this.

I expect that there is a strong correlation between how soon a comment is posted and its points. Two thoughts from a relative noob (sorry if these ideas already have been discussed or tried):

* On threads with many comments, few users have time to read all or even most of them. Perhaps find a way to shorten the list, improve signal-to-noise, and surface newer comments by burying older comments that haven't received votes.

> This appropriately rewards engagement

* It rewards engagement by people who have the time to frequently check HN, read linked stories, and comment throughout the day. My guess is that the smarter someone is, the less availability they have for such things. I would create a system that rewards engagement by busy people.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#68

Post by twoodfin » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:07 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #8

A third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We heard that and reversed the change. Good to hear they decided to roll that back. PG opened a pandora's box when he said that d…

I read an anecdote about the Swedish language today that's just too good to check[1]:

Being fluent in both Swedish and English, I know there are certain concepts, such as the difference between belief in an opinion and belief in a fact, where the Swedish language makes clear distinctions (tycka and tro) and English does not. English speakers spend ridiculous amounts of time arguing about these things, and Swedes simply don’t need to. It’s not that English speakers can’t conceptualize the difference between opinion and fact, but doing so is way more difficult in English, because the word “belief” in English is quite fuzzy, whereas in Swedish, the language makes it simply impossible to confuse the two.

HN voting seems to suffer from an inability to make this distinction: I think it's terrific when comments are downvoted because they're factually inaccurate, no matter how well they're written. So much nonsense ends up at the top of some comment threads simply because it reinforces existing beliefs or loyalties. On the other hand, if you make a good case on one or another side of some live debate, I don't think it should matter whether I agree with you or not. The discussion is always enriched by quality arguments.

[1] http://ken.arneson.name/2014/11/10-things-i-believe-about-ba...

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#69

Post by dang » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:07 PM UTC

rspeer wrote: post #37

> To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately. This seems like one of the cases where HN's moderation is both draconian and completely opaque. I can't flag comments, and I have no idea why. I certainly don't think of myself as an abusive user. Maybe I accidentally clicked the "flag" link once. If that gets flagging privileges remo…

As other users have pointed out, to flag a comment you have to click on 'link' to go to the comment's item page [1]. I don't know why PG designed it this way but have always assumed it was a speed bump to reduce impulsive flagging, since flags are more powerful than downvotes.

We never remove flagging privileges because of just one flag. The concept of a mistake is all too familiar over here.

1. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adang+flag+link#!/comment/...

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#70

Post by splintercell » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:07 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #46

readerrrr wrote: post #14

If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. But is fading the comment really the correct behaviour. Isn't the position on the page deciding whether the community agrees with the comment? My suggestion is: remove the fading; let downvoting only move the comments down, since the comment is appropriate yet the community doesn't a…

> downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment I hope downvoting has nothing to do with agreement; I thought it was for comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive, poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated). I want to see many more comments that are valuable and challenge the community (and challenge my thinking too). The groupthink is already well known and if not, will certa…

Reddit/HN create one interaction with the comment(upvote/downvote) and then expect that they must use this button to make the post more prominent or less prominent, even though the most strong emotional reaction is agreeing/disagreeing.

Its like you invite people to a debate, where you say "please only boo when someone is saying something obscene and nasty or breaking the rules of the debate, not when they are saying something you disagree with".