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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#101

Post by distant_hat »

beefhash wrote: post #69
rubinelli wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm of the opinion that it is best to err on the side of strictness. Once you make a reasonable exception, you open a precedent, and some people are very good at digging up and pointing out precedent.

> and some people are very good at digging up and pointing out precedent. As one of the people who loves being that guy in another community: They're not only very good at digging up and pointing out precedents, they likely have systematic archives of everything that remotely relates to the decisions they wish to see made.

The mods should keep an archive of decisions that go the other way. This would keep a balance.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#102

Post by charlesism »

Mizza wrote: post #16

Shout out to dang! You're doing a great job! Thank you! Strict moderation is the reason HN is the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet. I wish good moderation was a skill that more people learned - would you ever be interested in writing a guide or teaching a class on moderation?

I've been waiting for an excuse to compliment the mods here, without it being off-topic. They do a great job! Of course, it also helps that the community here is more reasonable than most.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#103

Post by read_if_gay_ »

pron wrote: post #95
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because, well, it was true [...] Every person I showed this to was disgusted, as was I What you’re saying here is: because the opinion of me and my friends is objectively correct and yours is not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Whoever is "right", it wasn't just the media, but also lots of developers, who felt it was a shameful display of misogyny. So it is certainly wrong to claim that the media spun this story a certain way out of the blue. Also, if I didn't think my opinion was correct it wouldn't be my opinion.

One could say the exact same thing except for the other position. Certainly there exist a number of journalists who think the media’s reporting on the topic was biased in order to garner more clicks and/or push an agenda, so it is wrong to claim Bouman just fell victim to sexists. Total non-argument.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#106

Post by jacobush »

elorant wrote: post #88
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #68

This article does seem to get at the essence of HN, appreciative of dang and sctb's humanity while not ignoring the problems. Personally, I would actually consider it an excellent demonstration of the fallibility of one of HN's favourite tropes, Gell-Mann amnesia. If there's one critique that I believe is paramount it's that HN has, due to its readership, an ethical obligation that goes beyond making discussions all…

... the HN readership is in a position of power, and shouldn't routinely be spared the anguish of being reminded of their responsibility. What kind of power do you think we have? We can't even convince our friends and family to stay the fuck off of Facebook. Aside from the fact that some people from our industry have a shitton of money I don't see us having any kind of social influence.

Because we are busy building Facebook. Or some other similar facet of online life.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#107

Post by pron »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #103
pron wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever is "right", it wasn't just the media, but also lots of developers, who felt it was a shameful display of misogyny. So it is certainly wrong to claim that the media spun this story a certain way out of the blue. Also, if I didn't think my opinion was correct it wouldn't be my opinion.

One could say the exact same thing except for the other position. Certainly there exist a number of journalists who think the media’s reporting on the topic was biased in order to garner more clicks and/or push an agenda, so it is wrong to claim Bouman just fell victim to sexists. Total non-argument.

One could say anything, but while it's unsurprising that women's achievements are highlighted because they are objectively a minority in a field that, like other fields, was shown to suffer from sexism in numerous studies, the response was different from when a man's achievement is highlighted, and that, too has been shown in studies. So I do think empirical observation is on my side as well.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#108

Post by azangru »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #68

This article does seem to get at the essence of HN, appreciative of dang and sctb's humanity while not ignoring the problems. Personally, I would actually consider it an excellent demonstration of the fallibility of one of HN's favourite tropes, Gell-Mann amnesia. If there's one critique that I believe is paramount it's that HN has, due to its readership, an ethical obligation that goes beyond making discussions all…

> HN's prevailing attitude (e.g. cloudflare-shouldnt-ban-).

Funny, I thought HN's prevailing attitude in the case of the recent ban of 8chan was, hell yeah, good riddance to those reprehensible twats. (Which, personally, annoyed me, because I believe that even the deplored should have a space for communication.)

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#109

Post by vinceguidry »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #94
vinceguidry wrote: post #82

> The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—often masks a deeper recklessness. I recently started contributing on another online community, a Slack, and I've found the rhetorical habits I've unwittingly cultivated creating a weird sort of mood. Nothing I'm saying is wrong , but HN has managed to make me somewhat oblivious to tone. It's exactly…

I may be misinterpreting what you're saying, but just in case: the critique isn't about "style", as in being too direct or offensive or anything like that. It's about the value system, and about how arguments are evaluated. Case in point: a few days ago an article about India/Kashmir shortly made the front page ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20612461 ) The ensuing discussion is entirely obsessed with the lega…

> It's about the value system, and about how arguments are evaluated.

Sure, that critique is all over the piece, and quite valid. So valid that calling attention to it again feels like beating a dead horse.

It was the 'performative erudition' part I wanted to share my experience with. HN has changed the way that I communicate and think, in ways that I couldn't put a finger on until I started reading the article. It's changed how I come across at work, how I interact with my friends and family.

> Hence, I've seen repeated suggestions that web fonts shouldn't exist because nobody needs more than one readable font or, more generally, that "design" is superfluous wastefulness at best and often akin to lying.

Why do people insist on things being pretty? Obviously they're overcompensating for deficiencies in some other area. I'll stop now before you start thinking I'm serious.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#110

Post by DanBC »

mschuster91 wrote: post #28
kuu wrote: post #12

Interesting that only 2 people can moderate million users

Millions of readers, the amount of active commenters is much lower. In addition, HN doesn't get much of the "classic" troll crowd (no matter if 4chan/8chan/outright real Nazis/gamergate) or Trump supporters - from the occasional politics thread aside, there's nothing much of interest for them here, and so the biggest blocks of trolls simply stay away.

Do you have showdead set to on? Because there's a bunch of trolls who post to HN.
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