Skipping from thread to thread felt a bit like arriving at a party where half the room was sipping non-alcoholic shrubs and the other half had spent the afternoon tailgating in a stadium parking lot.
This kind of vibe is why I read HN.
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
121–130 of 812 posts
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Strict moderation is the reason HN is the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet Not at all. It's rather the community that makes it a reasonable discussion space. Most people here understand that this is not Reddit and that proper answers are needed when you interact with other members. Of course moderation is useful and necessary in certain cases, but it's certainly far from being the key fact…
Without the moderation the trolls take over, and then it doesn't matter what most people here understand.
I highly doubt "2 moderators" would be able to do anything if half of the community was composed of trolls. The fact that trolls are very few in the first place, and not welcome by other members who flag them and downvote them to hell, make it possible for it to work even with a low level of moderation.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#123Congratulations to "paulmd" for getting a flagged comment cited in The New Yorker! ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13094354 is the comment, which I find entirely reasonable but obviously people disagreed, or at least it was considered off-topic)
Really surprising to see that comment, which, full disclosure, I agree with, get flag-killed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it get a few downvotes. But rarely have I ever seen a thorough, well-sourced, and civil comment actually be flag-killed. If anything, the shallow replies to his comment are the type of things that typically seem to get downvoted (though not necessarily flagged either).
It happens all the time. Constantly and consistently. If you go against any kind of socially conservative or libertarian perspective it will get down voted and very likely flagged. It's always been this way.
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/28232.html
>The effect of both is to enforce the status quo of social beliefs. Stories that appear to challenge the narrative that good programmers are just naturally talented tend to vanish. Stories that discuss the difficulties faced by minorities in our field are summarily disappeared. There are no social problems in the technology industry. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
You cannot discuss things in an actual academic manner on this forum. It is a tech enthusiast forum that happens to have a lot of money surrounding it.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#124This 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.
> What kind of power do you think we have?
Not having power, or having less power than before, makes the discourse even more important.
> We can't even convince our friends and family to stay the fuck off of Facebook.
The idea that people should stay off Facebook is part of that narrative. That is how the industry can claim that they are changing the world, but at the same time aren't to answer for any of the changes.
> 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.
Social influence isn't so much what is said and done in isolation, but what is and isn't accepted. Things like what you see as a problem, why it is a problem and how it should be addressed influences what happens next.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#125Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#126Definitely noticing the trend of politicizing of this place. But yeah, if that is what people cares about then so be it.
Performative erudition is an interesting characterization, especially when this is from New Yorker.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#127This 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.
I understood this to mean the power of appreciating the societal consequences of technology, and the responsibility of educating others about those consequences, both positive and negative.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really surprising to see that comment, which, full disclosure, I agree with, get flag-killed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it get a few downvotes. But rarely have I ever seen a thorough, well-sourced, and civil comment actually be flag-killed. If anything, the shallow replies to his comment are the type of things that typically seem to get downvoted (though not necessarily flagged either).
I think this is a side effect of self-moderation. By making everyone in the community (over a certain threshold of participation) a mini-mod you turn rules enforcement into a popularity contest. Valid, interesting, yet unpopular points get suppressed. Rules violations that are popular get ignored, and sometimes even lauded. There is no reason, based on the HN guidelines, that the referenced post should have been down…
I agree with what you said, but my presumption has been that the HN status quo would generally be receptive to the argument that u/paulmd made, or at least, not offended/angered enough to flag it. Especially it being so well-written, and in response to someone whose argument was entirely speculative or based on emotional appeal, and who didn't bother using basic capitalization or punctuation.
It's even more surprising since HN had the "vouch" feature since before Dec. 2016 [0]. My best guess is that people might have reflexively downvoted/flagged upon seeing the opening sentence of "Black people are measurably less likely to own a car or have a bank account".
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really surprising to see that comment, which, full disclosure, I agree with, get flag-killed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it get a few downvotes. But rarely have I ever seen a thorough, well-sourced, and civil comment actually be flag-killed. If anything, the shallow replies to his comment are the type of things that typically seem to get downvoted (though not necessarily flagged either).
I think this is a side effect of self-moderation. By making everyone in the community (over a certain threshold of participation) a mini-mod you turn rules enforcement into a popularity contest. Valid, interesting, yet unpopular points get suppressed. Rules violations that are popular get ignored, and sometimes even lauded. There is no reason, based on the HN guidelines, that the referenced post should have been down…
There's a counterbalancing option to downvotes and flags - you can "vouch" comments. Enough people using it[0] can make the software unkill a comment provisionally, though doing this puts your own reputation and vouching rights at stake, since according to [0], vouched comments are eventually reviewed manually.
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[0] - Not sure what's the power of a vouch relative to a flag or a downvote, but my impression is that it's stronger.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is a side effect of self-moderation. By making everyone in the community (over a certain threshold of participation) a mini-mod you turn rules enforcement into a popularity contest. Valid, interesting, yet unpopular points get suppressed. Rules violations that are popular get ignored, and sometimes even lauded. There is no reason, based on the HN guidelines, that the referenced post should have been down…
I agree with what you said, but my presumption has been that the HN status quo would generally be receptive to the argument that u/paulmd made, or at least, not offended/angered enough to flag it. Especially it being so well-written, and in response to someone whose argument was entirely speculative or based on emotional appeal, and who didn't bother using basic capitalization or punctuation. It's even more surprisin…
Might have been bad timing, too. I don't know how many people vouch for comments; I do so when appropriate, but every now and then I discover comments I would have vouched for had I seen the thread when it was live.