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An Update on Hacker News

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Re: An Update on Hacker News

#121

Post by stock_toaster »

cs702 wrote: post #58
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…

More than once, I've unintentionally downvoted comments I meant to upvote, upvoted comments I meant to downvote, and/or clicked on a button I didn't mean to click (that includes clicking on 'reply' after writing something that doesn't really add any value and almost instantly regretting it). So I agree, it would be great to have more/better undo options!

Agreed. I wish the up/down vote links were on opposite sides (I would prefer they were bigger too, but at least spacing them would be preferable).

Something more like this..

   ▲ cs702 31 minutes ago ▼ | link
note: they are supposed to be the same size.. oddly unicode down triangle is rending larger for me.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#122

Post by jonnathanson »

tptacek wrote: post #103
jonnathanson wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. At first I thought, wait a minute, isn't "don't downvote to disagree" in the HN Guidelines? Then I checked, and no, it isn't. The guidelines talk about downvoting ("downmodding") very briefly, and only to say that one shouldn't complain when it happens to him or her. There are no guidelines on how or why to downvote. Maybe this is a problem, in and of itself? Seems different people have different takes o…

The "HN take on downvoting" comes directly from Paul Graham. People disagree with it, but it is what it is. I don't downvote disagreement, but that's because I'm a compulsive (and, from what I can tell, fast) commenter. The simple way to metabolize this system is just not to get unhappy when you get downvoted.

Gotcha. I'll take your word for it, because I regard you as about as much a lay authority on HN posting as HN has. And if pg has weighed in on this topic, well, he's quite the authority, too. :)

That being said, I still feel weird about downvoting to disagree. The way I see it, disagreement-downvoting creates noise in its own way. Less noise than unproductive or bad replies, certainly, but more noise than doing nothing.

"The simple way to metabolize this system is just not to get unhappy when you get down voted."

True, and this is also an official guideline. (A good one, too, IMO).

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#123

Post by nightpool »

dang wrote: post #69
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.co…

Also, FWIW, all flag actions can already be undone.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#125

Post by ggchappell »

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…

> If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment ....

Certainly not.

Up & downvotes determine what is shown on the site, and what is prominently featured. Is your goal for this site for it to be full of things you agree with? I hope not. That's not my goal.

Now, there are varying opinions on the issue of downvoting for disagreement. Regardless, it is certainly never officially stated that this is the purpose of downvotes.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#126

Post by throwit99 »

vectorpush wrote: post #111

How does HN's moderation staff feel about users who are dead, completely oblivious to it, but who continue to post, sometimes for years after the fact without any kind of warning that they are wasting their time. Sometimes I check the comment history of these dead posters; 80% of the time it appears like they are a genuine troll who was correctly moderated out of the community, however, a significant portion of the t…

I had this happen to me when I critiqued a YC backed company. Had a few thousand in 'meaningless internet karma points'. You pretty soon realise after a few further comments anyway, so I doubt it's actually effective.

It's pretty mean spirited though - generally a "douchebag" move. It'd be like having a bad employee, but instead of firing him, or discussing his work, just don't bother paying him any more.

After being hellbanned I actually realised that commenting on internet forums is toxic, generally a waste of time, and not productive. So I quit. At the start, you sort of care about "karma". But you end up realising it's a measure of two things. 1. How much time you waste commenting on the internet, and 2. How much you can agree with the groupthink echo-chamber.

But for those that like spending time commenting, I would have thought following a subreddit model would work better here, with the growth. Spread the power out. If I get hellbanned from the "rust is the future!!!" subhackernews, big whoop.

It'd also help with filtering out all the non-interesting (self driving cars) stories.

But then perhaps it'd basically be reddit at that stage which would defeat the point...

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#127

Post by dang »

vectorpush wrote: post #111

How does HN's moderation staff feel about users who are dead, completely oblivious to it, but who continue to post, sometimes for years after the fact without any kind of warning that they are wasting their time. Sometimes I check the comment history of these dead posters; 80% of the time it appears like they are a genuine troll who was correctly moderated out of the community, however, a significant portion of the t…

We've got an idea about this that we want to try. It's one of the future experiments Sam alluded to at the end of his post.

(I'll add some details in a few minutes. Edit—well, quite a few minutes.)

The problem is that banning an account is an all-or-nothing system where inappropriate commenting is not necessarily an all-or-nothing phenomenon. The solution we want to try, which was suggested by several users, is to give the community the power to bring comments out of [dead] status. Letting fellow users make the call when a comment is (or isn't) ok seems like it might work, especially since the recent experiments with flagging seem to have helped. This is one of the things Sam was referring to when he said we plan to experiment more with community moderation.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#128

Post by readerrrr »

axlprose wrote: post #108
readerrrr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an incorrect fix. Since the comments are separated by trees, they should be positioned and compared to comments relative to that tree, not relative to the master tree. Being at the bottom of a sub-tree marks the comment automatically as the most downvoted in that tree. Applying fading to all the comments just because a downvoted comment has a parent that happens to be at the top, seems wrong.

Agreed. If they're this adamant about keeping the fading functionality tied to downvoting, they should just do away with downvoting all together, because fading just seems to worsen the discussion. I've lost count of how many times I've seen perfectly good insightful comments around here that get ignored because some people decided to downvote them for some arbitrary reason. In fact, it's so bad, that I'd say I've ba…

I believe the fading starts at 0 ( a comment starts with 1 point ).

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#129

Post by chrisblackwell »

I would love to see them lower the threshold for down-voting. I've only got 200+ karma, and it's hard for me to get more. I can't be on here all day commenting, and being the first to submit articles.

If I have something important to say, I comment, otherwise, I mostly consume. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to download a comment I don't agree with or find offensive.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#130

Post by [deleted] »

sciurus wrote: post #62

"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 misusin…

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