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An Update on Hacker News

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: An Update on Hacker News

#321

Post by yummyfajitas »

dang wrote: post #135
throwit99 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable. We don't ban people be…

So on the topic of unfair bans and the new system, here is a useful way for you to both improve transparency and figure out for yourself if the new system is working.

Post a list of comments which were [dead]ed under the new system but would not have been [dead]ed under the old system.

If the list contains a bunch of comments like "u r a gay homoz", you'll make a pretty convincing case (both to yourself and everyone else) that the new system is awesome. If the list contains a bunch of "I'm concerned about the security implications of ordinary users putting significant money into bitcoin..." then maybe the new system isn't so awesome.

[edit: I realize it's probably too late for this to be seen, perils of posting from IST.]

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#322

Post by zanny »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #281
lotharbot wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing we try to discourage on HN is "me too" or "disagree" posts that don't have much more content. The presence of upvote and downvote buttons means that those comments don't get made, because votes serve that purpose instead. There's still room to start a discussion if you have a specific point to make (and the desire to make it) about the problems with someone's comments. Those discussions do tend to happen wh…

Without a downvote button, offensive or mean comments would easily fall under the "B" option and get flagged (and I believe they should now anyway even with the downvote button). Obviously wrong or stupid comments would probably sink to the bottom pretty quickly anyway if people were upvoting the stuff that should be upvoted.

Exactly. Quality content will always trickle to the top, downvoting just means to produce an echo chamber and disincentivize actual conversations.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#323

Post by jacquesm »

logicallee wrote: post #200
angersock wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reading is correct...unfortunately, my early posts actually did better than expected, and I seem to have become the mask, so to speak. I agree there is nothing wrong whatsoever with his actual comments. That's the nicest thing anybody's said about me all week. :)

well, I've seen a lot of great posts where I wished 'angersock' would change his name. I am sure they will get visibility under a more neutral name as well, and you can always put in your profile that you had posted under angersock.

I don't think they'll get more visibility at all. A name is but a sequence of letters, angersock to me does not mean more or less than logicallee and I'll read both of you with equal interest. Of course other people might have a different set of criteria but the reputation of a person should be the sum of their output and interactions, not <= 10 alpha characters picked from a limited set. And what better story than someone who enters a forum under a moniker like that and decides to change his ways. Beats the alternative!

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#324

Post by jacquesm »

dang wrote: post #127
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 gi…

Very much looking forward to that, it will have two good effects, it will take the edge of hellbanning and it will reduce the load on the moderators. Three good effects, and give those that have been hellbanned (if they are aware of it) a reason to try to be extra good in the future.

Four good effects, and it will make hellbanning more effective (because occasionally there will be answers to a comment). Five good... Wait, let me come in again.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#325

Post by segmondy »

throwit99 wrote: post #126
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…

My account segmond got hell banned, it's a miracle that this is not. HN will downvote any comment that they don't like down to hell. An opinion that is disagreeable with is flagged, it's like the opposite of facebook like button. Dislike.

You don't have to spam or be disruptive. I'm putting my account name on here so folks can look at it. I was new to HN, didn't know much, had no idea I was dead. :)

This account get's a decent amount of flag too when I make unpopular opinion, I have to stop myself from censoring myself because the moment I feel like I can't talk or participate, I will just leave the community. If I can't express myself around a bunch of "hackers" then what's the point?

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#326

Post by jacquesm »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #321
dang wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable. We don't ban people be…

So on the topic of unfair bans and the new system, here is a useful way for you to both improve transparency and figure out for yourself if the new system is working. Post a list of comments which were [dead]ed under the new system but would not have been [dead]ed under the old system. If the list contains a bunch of comments like "u r a gay homoz", you'll make a pretty convincing case (both to yourself and everyone…

It's being seen. (Perils of getting up in the middle of the night. ;) )

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#327

Post by ende »

There are many classes of topic. Many posts are considered 'on topic' for HN, some are considered 'off topic' and flagged away, and then there is a lot of grey territory which seems to be tolerated but can't exactly be labeled as 'hacker news'. Politics is the most obvious example. Should downvoting work the same way in political threads as in technology threads? It really isn't serving the same function.

Perhaps political or otherwise 'semi-topic' submissions can be flagged as such and thereby disable voting within them. People can visit them if they want to, but they do so knowing there is a different ettiquette.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#328

Post by jacquesm »

amyhoy wrote: post #280
dang wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable. We don't ban people be…

Hi there. Why not tell me why I was hellbanned then? Here's my comment history. Such bullying, so horrible, wow: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ahoyhere The only conclusion is that HN hellbans dissent. I'm about as far from a troll as you can get. It's your platform; do what you want. But don't lie about it.

Wow, I didn't even realize ahoyhere was hellbanned, I thought you just drifted away from the site.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#329

Post by rspeer »

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…

And now I know. It's not draconian in this case, it's just twice as opaque as I expected.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#330

Post by krapp »

existencebox wrote: post #275
krapp wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think account-level filters might alleviate a number of problems users tend to complain about here. Just imagine how useful people might find it to simply block posts by keyword, or not show threads with a certain ratio of upvotes to downvotes, or be able to train their own Bayesian filter. They wouldn't even have to change the UI (which they seem to not want to do) apart from what a particular user sees.

The filters would get very complex very fast though, I imagine. The symptoms of "echo-chamber-itis" are as varied as the humans that exibit them. Sometimes it's aggressive downvoting of an idea that doesn't align with the status quo despite validity for discussion, sometimes it's aggressive upvoting of an idea that aligns better, sometimes it's an aggressive amount of churn as various subgroups battle for "placing" t…

You're probably right - even though I think people do want their own bubbles, attempting to provide them might just result in more complaints when the filters inevitably fail.

Then again, there does appear to be a confligt in the way the HN community seems to be growing, with the site itself still geared towards providing a relatively low amount of content through a single channel. Stories overwhelming the site and reposts are a known problem, and probably almost no one bothers watching past the first page of /news so those top 30 slots might as well be the entire site. Although, many of the most obvious remedies to this would make the site look more like reddit, and we can't have that I guess.

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