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The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

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Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#121

Post by Bahamut »

niftich wrote: post #116
RhodaLs wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. HN should get rid of the downvotes. They don't really serve a useful purpose. It just adds needless friction and anxiety, puts a certain amount of negativity at the center of the discussion, and reinforces a certain level of groupthink. If someone's factually wrong, a response pointing out the errors is far more effective than a downvote, and encourages further discussion. If something is offensive,…

Although I agree with this point, I wonder if the removal of downvotes would alter the usage of 'flag' by a measurable amount, and flag be used by some as a proxy for when they would have used a downvote instead.

My guess is that the downvote system is an intentional encouragement of laziness in order to drown unpopular comments for whatever reason (sometimes valid such as noise, sometimes to intentionally suppress challenging viewpoints) while avoiding the heavy burden of moderation.

Just like Reddit's system, it is heavily flawed and easily gamed, as seen pretty much all the time here.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#122

Post by dang »

enraged_camel wrote: post #62
dang wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad to hear that an experienced editor sees HN that way, and also that you see evidence of a repeatable approach. Those are good signs. As I'm sure you know, it's a more complex problem than just being willing or unwilling to put up with bad behavior. There are costs to addressing it—quite a few, it turns out, no matter what approach one takes. Our plan is to move HN toward more community self-regulation. Each s…

IMO the biggest challenge of self-moderating communities is avoiding the echo chamber effect: ideas surviving and spreading due to their popularity, rather than their merit. I'm curious if you agree that this is a problem, and what your plans are to address it, if you do.

I agree that it's a problem, one HN already has. I doubt we can solve it. We can maybe mitigate it, or at least not make it worse.

One tactic for not making it worse is to introduce changes slowly and with lots of time to assess the effect of each change. We're also willing to get procrustean, if we have to, about lopping off any changes that have bad effects. We've done that twice that I can think of.

Any new form of community moderation will come with a mechanism for overseeing it. For example, when we added vouching for users to rescue dead comments, we also added a review mechanism for moderators to catch vouching being abused—e.g. dead comments being rescued when they ought to stay dead because they violate the site guidelines. This combination, which was inspired by the flagging mechanism, turns out to work well. HN's userbase has vastly more capacity to sift through comments than moderators do, and makes good decisions most of the time. Meanwhile it's orders of magnitude less work for moderators to review vouches and flags than to read all the comments directly, and doing so lets us correct the community decisions that don't align with the site guidelines. Such an approach benefits from the strengths of both sides, users and moderators.

I joke that our goal is to turn HN into a pyramid scheme such that the community does all the work and we can just monitor things from time to time, but the real joke is that a 'pyramid scheme' in this case would amount to the holy grail of a self-regulating system. In my wildest dreams it would work à la the Tao Te Ching and simply run itself with the occasional tweak. But I don't expect to get off that easily.

The kind of community moderation we want has to do with protecting the values of the site—intellectual curiosity and civility—rather than particular content people post or views they hold. If you were to argue that those things can't completely be separated, I wouldn't disagree. But I do think we can influence it by how we design the software, and more importantly by how we clarify what the values of the site are. HN is getting to the point where we need a new round of specification about what the site is and what it is not. That's coming soon.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#123

Post by deathanatos »

Bahamut wrote: post #121
niftich wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree with this point, I wonder if the removal of downvotes would alter the usage of 'flag' by a measurable amount, and flag be used by some as a proxy for when they would have used a downvote instead.

My guess is that the downvote system is an intentional encouragement of laziness in order to drown unpopular comments for whatever reason (sometimes valid such as noise, sometimes to intentionally suppress challenging viewpoints) while avoiding the heavy burden of moderation. Just like Reddit's system, it is heavily flawed and easily gamed, as seen pretty much all the time here.

Having used things like Facebook, however, I don't think a single upvote is a better system; a bad post from somewhere or someone with enough momentum gets enough upvotes to perhaps go viral — even if completely factually incorrect. You need the -1 to balance it out, sometimes.

I don't tend to downvote if I disagree (and I'd argue, I think, that one shouldn't — if you disagree, comment); I typically only downvote if the post is extremely factually incorrect, not adding to the discussion (for example, repeating an earlier point or asking a question that is answered in an ancestor comment — i.e., not reading), or is rude. (I reserve flag for extremely bad posts — and often HN has beaten me to it.)

Not saying a +1/-1 system like Reddit or HN is perfect, nor is it the only alternative to a just-+1 system. One could imagine, for example, giving experts in various topic areas more sway in their vote, if you knew the topic of a given article (they should know what they're talking about); but that could just as easily backfire if a newcomer has a completely valid — if unconventional — idea.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#124

Post by deathanatos »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #104
andrewbinstock wrote: post #3

When I was the editor of Dr. Dobb's, we were very concerned about how to create a lively discussion forum that was free from jerks and unpleasant people. Ultimately, we settled on two components: treat everyone respectfully even those who seemed to be trolling, and delete all insulting posts. This largely worked. Similar elements seem to work here on HN too. That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests t…

I wouldn't say that HN moderation is always effective. There is a local groupthink that will get you downvoted fast for rational commentary that runs contrary to the popular consensus. Much like Berkeley students shouting down any opposing viewpoint they've predetermined to be invalid.

I've heard this several times; I know there are viewpoints that HN tends to lean certain ways on (many of us are similar not only in profession, but that probably leads to similarities in views). Would you happen to have a link to a good comment thread that shows the alternate viewpoint not getting fair treatment or serially downvoted? (or, if not that, is there a particular topic area or debate, s.t. next time it comes up I might know to look?)

Perhaps the best I can come up with is the debate around good encryption, network communication, and the government's abuse of people's rights; but in this example, the counter-arguments I've heard have just not been convincing, which I find different from not getting fair treatment.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#125

Post by kagamine »

mratzloff wrote: post #61
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #43

I'm a true believer of monkey see and monkey do. Unfortunately much of our entertainment deals with the ugly side of human nature. The most popular comedies deal with insults and getting back at people. You can say the same for other forms of entertainment. This includes what goes by as news. Yes, NEWS. I understand that it's make believe and it happens to others but lines are crossed that where there for a reason. Y…

I tend to agree. For example, I know some parents who could always tell when their son and daughter had watched The Disney Channel at a friend's house. For days afterward their kids would be sarcastic and obnoxious—imitating every tween show on that channel. They weren't allowed to watch the channel in their own house for that reason, because it had such a negative effect on their behavior.

I thought it was just me being a horrible father. I have noticed this in my own children too. They come back as different people from the neighbor's house where they watch TV they aren't allowed to watch at home. Using vocabulary, including in the past some swear words that I know they did not learn at home (bi-lingual household, I never swear in the local language). I just ask them, "why are talking that way? Where did you learn to say that?" and then tell them "Civilized people don't speak that way".

I really cannot stand the Cartoon Network and most TV aimed at children. The standards are very low. And quite a lot of seems to be adults testing to see how much adult humor they can slip into a "Kid's" show.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#126

Post by dang »

Bahamut wrote: post #121
niftich wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree with this point, I wonder if the removal of downvotes would alter the usage of 'flag' by a measurable amount, and flag be used by some as a proxy for when they would have used a downvote instead.

My guess is that the downvote system is an intentional encouragement of laziness in order to drown unpopular comments for whatever reason (sometimes valid such as noise, sometimes to intentionally suppress challenging viewpoints) while avoiding the heavy burden of moderation. Just like Reddit's system, it is heavily flawed and easily gamed, as seen pretty much all the time here.

> it is heavily flawed and easily gamed, as seen pretty much all the time here

I don't have that impression, and would be interested to see examples of HN's mechanisms being "easily gamed".

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#127

Post by dang »

ars wrote: post #117
enraged_camel wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the biggest challenge of self-moderating communities is avoiding the echo chamber effect: ideas surviving and spreading due to their popularity, rather than their merit. I'm curious if you agree that this is a problem, and what your plans are to address it, if you do.

You need to moderate based only on civility. And emphatically NOT content (which slashdot does). Say something completely wrong, but you are polite about it? No problem, it stays up. Say something right, but insult those who disagree? Take it down, even if it's right and the others wrong.

That's a fundamental point and one we can do more to clarify. It's in everyone's interest not to discredit their own argument by going about it uncivilly.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#128

Post by aidenn0 »

dang wrote: post #120
vroombaprime wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys do a great job with HN moderation and I've always been curious what ratio of mods:numComments is sustainable and still keep quality high and mods not burned out - do you think HN is a good datapoint or just special?

Not sure I understand the question. Can you rephrase?

It sounded like there were two questions:

1) What is the right number of moderators per comment for HN

2) Do you think that number would generalize to other forums.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#129

Post by dang »

DHMO wrote: post #113
andrewbinstock wrote: post #3

When I was the editor of Dr. Dobb's, we were very concerned about how to create a lively discussion forum that was free from jerks and unpleasant people. Ultimately, we settled on two components: treat everyone respectfully even those who seemed to be trolling, and delete all insulting posts. This largely worked. Similar elements seem to work here on HN too. That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests t…

> delete all insulting posts This would be ok on HN. I'd rather that than people downvoting because they disagree or because you made an honest mistake. It wounds me every time I get a downvote, and often I just logout and create a new user, so that I don't feel marred by being associated with a past comment that someone didn't like. I had a serious amount of karma about 9 years ago and probably should've just gotten…

Sometimes one's comments have trollish effects even though one wasn't intentionally trolling. It took me years to notice this in my own case, and when I did see it, it fundamentally changed my approach. Effects matter more than intent.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#130

Post by dang »

gtirloni wrote: post #63
chc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few people will do this. Most people won't, in my experience, especially if you use hellbanning. I've seen HN accounts full of rude comments that have been hellbanned for years.

Is that a different term for "shadow banning"? I only recently came to know this while reading more about moderation techniques. Apparently people will be allowed to say whatever they want but nobody will see it? I wasn't aware HN had this.

I think it means the same thing as shadow banning. We have largely phased that out, except for spammers and serial trolls. For the most part we tell people that we banned them by posting a reply to one of their comments, and when they seem rehabilitable (I suppose that's not a word?) we invite them to email hn@ycombinator.com if they want to be unbanned.
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