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Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

drewdevault.com

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Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#111

Post by yorwba »

mnglkhn2 wrote: post #100
ploggingdev wrote: post #67

The voting ring detector is in need of a serious upgrade. There are so many cases of vote solicitation by people with meaningful social media following and their posts even make the front page. It's mostly the Product Hunt style "Hey we launched on HN, check us out" which is code for "upvote my post". People have stopped directly linking to the post submission for fear of tripping the voting ring detector, but they e…

[flagged]

Paid submissions are already disclosed by the inability to vote or leave comments. They also tend to be by one of a few companies looking for developers.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#112

Post by wizbright »

flavio81 wrote: post #78

In this thread, some people are complaining of moderators downvoting (lowering the rank) of some submissions over others; and at least one person says "let the readers decide". I think that if I wanted a forum/news site where "the readers decide" and ONLY the readers decide, i'd go to Reddit. No thanks, i prefer HN due to the behind-the-scenes 'curation' or choice of content, which so far usually gives very interesti…

Really, the users police themselves for the most part. People aren't as obnoxious as many Reddit users tend to be. That being said, the front page changes a good amount during the day so nothing really sits at the top for awhile unless it is a really popular post. The last one Drew submitted dropped down pretty quick if I remember correctly.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#113

Post by rdiddly »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #108
mnglkhn2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think people are missing the intended irony in this post.

The final question makes it murky though. Sounds like an earnest attempt at mitigation. If it's irony, that part makes it too subtle for me!

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#114

Post by intopieces »

vormalpg wrote: post #53
sgift wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Dans explanation in the post: > We downweight posts in response to things that go against the site guidelines, such as when a submission is unsubstantive, baity or sensational. So, this is what's happening already.

Notice how subjective those descriptors are. It's been very clear in the past that moderator intervention is rampant for articles / posts that merely strike a raw nerve.

Yep, they are subjective. That's what I want. I want the HN mods to curate the content based on those guidelines. It's what makes this site worth coming to.

I'm willing a optimize for precision over recall here.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#115

Post by ballenf »

ploggingdev wrote: post #67

The voting ring detector is in need of a serious upgrade. There are so many cases of vote solicitation by people with meaningful social media following and their posts even make the front page. It's mostly the Product Hunt style "Hey we launched on HN, check us out" which is code for "upvote my post". People have stopped directly linking to the post submission for fear of tripping the voting ring detector, but they e…

I have zero problem with someone announcing on social media that they launched on HN. If they have a following it's because they have (or had) something interesting to say there. If that's the case and they have launched something, then there's a >0 chance that it is also interesting. If nothing else, it's interesting solely for the purpose of being more plugged in to what the masses think is or should be popular, even if I disagree.

At the risk of being hypocritical, I do have a problem with the opposite: coded messages to followers to flag en masse a post for basically any reason. The effects of flagging en masse vs. voting en masse are exaggerated as the data in the article illustrates. An optional email to moderators expressing the concern plus one personal flag is the appropriate response there, imo.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#116

Post by throw2016 »

A larger wordview beyond a group think bubble of SV is needed to represent the tech industry. A lack of transparency always ends up empowering people behind the scenes who then have to make casual judgements of entire swaths of people and opinion. This is bad both for moderators and discussion.

Fortunately its relatively easy to launch a site like HN. A problem is a solution waiting to happen. If there is competition and it affects HN they are not going to sit back, there will be more transparency. However good something is competition is essential to keep people on their toes, so there is a largish lacuna here for the health of the industry.

Having said that any popular site will have the exact same issues HN does, so if the point is merely to change decision makers by those jockeying for influence then its a pointless exercise of exaggerating issues to gain influence, ironically how most new products are launched on HN these days.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#117

Post by tptacek »

ballenf wrote: post #115
ploggingdev wrote: post #67

The voting ring detector is in need of a serious upgrade. There are so many cases of vote solicitation by people with meaningful social media following and their posts even make the front page. It's mostly the Product Hunt style "Hey we launched on HN, check us out" which is code for "upvote my post". People have stopped directly linking to the post submission for fear of tripping the voting ring detector, but they e…

I have zero problem with someone announcing on social media that they launched on HN. If they have a following it's because they have (or had) something interesting to say there. If that's the case and they have launched something, then there's a >0 chance that it is also interesting. If nothing else, it's interesting solely for the purpose of being more plugged in to what the masses think is or should be popular, ev…

Then, to be straightforward about it, you have zero problem with people who have large Twitter followings controlling the front page of the site, because that's what you'd get if Twitter canvassing wasn't heavily penalized.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#118

Post by yorwba »

rqs wrote: post #60
timthelion wrote: post #47

In my opinion, far more than moderation, HN is effected by who votes for the new articles. If you look at the "new" page then most stories never even get one upvote. Those who do go over there and upvote stories have far more power than those who only ever look at the front page. Sadly, it seems that there are too many stories on "new" for a person to sit there, read each one, and upvote, so the only real way to get…

And also, I wonder what if some people just use proxies to register a bunch of HN accounts and use them to promote their items. It seems not very hard to register an HN account.

A bunch of new accounts, going via known proxy sites, all voting for the same item? There won't even be a human involved in the ban decision.

If you don't have showdead on, you might not notice that many posts by new accounts are marked as dead immediately, and it's usually justified.

Re: Analyzing HN moderation and censorship

#119

Post by mnglkhn2 »

yorwba wrote: post #111
mnglkhn2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Paid submissions are already disclosed by the inability to vote or leave comments. They also tend to be by one of a few companies looking for developers.

My comment is prompted by the realization that recently (for the past year or so) a lot of general interest NYTimes articles shoot straight up to HN front page. There are two explanations: either the HN crowd is turning into a general interest one or YC/HN has a deal with NYTimes to help the later increase their memberships.

Based on how the (down)votes go, I would give it a fair chance to the HN crowd turning into a "general interest" one.

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