The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#121

Post by paulpauper » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:14 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #27

awb wrote: post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

How far back do you consider the "old days"? In the decade-plus I've been around, there has always been a small but steady stream of nontech political content. Despite the policy. My perception is that hasn't increased or decreased, though it does have periodic surges (say, US election season). I personally think it adds to the appeal of HN - in moderation, of course. Political conversations here are generally better…

I would not say they are more polite. they get heated here like anywhere else. I have noticed a lot of green accounts, I think people are using second accounts to post stuff that they do not with to tie to their main account.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#122

Post by dekhn » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

pvg wrote: post #80

dekhn wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My "insubstantial" one-line comments are often more valuable to readers of HN than pagelong of pseudointellectual debate (I watch my upvotes carefully. Which reminds me: is there a tool to track votes and comments on my comments?)

Lame things get upvoted all the time so watching your upvotes is not really a measure of 'value'. Adding more lame things to the site just because it already has lame things only makes it lamer, not better.

I've spent the last several years treating Hacker News as a machine learning source and have learned to understand upvotes (and downvotes).

If you word things in a confrontationally, overly partisan, or ignorant way, you'll get downvoted, even by people who technically agree with you. So, go out of your way to write more neutrally to reduce downvotes on tone.

If you propose an unpopular idea, or criticize one of HN's Holy Cows, you'll get a bunch of downvotes from people who disagree with you. Occasionally, I don't comment at all if I think my opinion is out of the mainstream and not justifiable.

Some folks just downvote people who state the truth because they don't like negative naysayers. Make it clear, if you're stating How the World Is, that you don't necessarily agree with it, but it's a structural problem.

Other folks don't like simple solutionism so avoid saying "It's easy. We can solve world hunger by idea" which will never work, because food production isn't the reason people are starving.

Another thing that can get you downvotes is invoking Expert Privilege. For example, HN will downvote you if you don't provide some sort of pseudo-rational sounding argument and instead just say you're an expert. OK, fine, ignore the fact that my PhD taught me how to read science papers and press releases.

Finally, and this is the most interesting thing, votes come in waves. I'll often get -2 on a comment right after I post and then it will trend upward for a whole day. I suppose my comments age well.

Ultimately, maxxing my karma is generally correlated roughly with making good contributions to the site, and I've calibrated well enough to interpret downvotes.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#123

Post by tgv » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:18 PM UTC

alphachloride wrote: post #12

> The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative ... Reading this, I felt the description hit very close to home with regards to a substantive amount of discourse here. I also learned a new word!

It's very meta, because "performative erudition" could be the subtitle of The New Yorker.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#124

Post by dang » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:20 PM UTC

awb wrote: post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

I spent a few hours a while back writing up a reusable answer for this question, with lots of links from years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

The short answer is that not much has changed, including the perceptions of change (e.g. "HN is becoming 2005 Slashdot" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6157485 - August 2013.)

If anyone wants to understand our thinking about political topics on HN, here are some links:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490

or you can look at these past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

p.s. In case anyone's worried, no, we're not letting (or going to let) HN be taken over by politics. The proportions are stable and carefully regulated, although there is fluctuation, as with any stochastic process.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#125

Post by stonogo » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #63

dekhn wrote: post #30

I mostly appreciate the mods (well, dang is the only one I've interacted with) but I'm pretty tired of being scolded for occasionally making one-sentence comments that lack substance, while in the meantime, the site tolerates people who write pages of absolutely untrue covid vax denialism but don't get any comments from the mods. At this point I'm actively looking for a replacement community that focuses much more on…

Stop making insubstantial one-line comments, please.

Is this irony?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#126

Post by dang » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

everybodyknows wrote: post #2

2019. Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052

Yes, these threads are starting to get a little less "lonely" aren't they. I guess once a year ("or so" - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) is ok.

Macroexpanded:

The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415 - Nov 2020 (291 comments)

The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052 - Aug 2019 (777 comments)

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#127

Post by samstave » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #115

ksec wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I "think", most of those debate ties with technology one way or another. Say Joe Rogan's issue may not have been allowed on HN if it wasn't for Spotify. And more broadly speaking, what are the roles of technology in an extremely political sensitive climate. Should Telegram do A or B, and what about Whatsapp, Facebook moderation, Apple App Store disallow certain group, is that a curation problem or a political problem…

> I "think", most of those debate ties with technology one way or another. Nah. Yesterday's political topic (there's almost always at least one per day) was about the WWII Tokyo firebombing. I think the real answer is even simpler: I think dang (or whoever is on duty that day) asks themselves "is this topic going to lead to an interesting conversation, or will it devolve into a shitshow?" Shitshows generally get cann…

I "think" you both are missing the point of HN ;

HN, to me (and I am long in the tooth on this site), is about that which is fascinating to the mind, with a culture of good, meaningful content which is relevant to said minds...

Politics permeate our lives - and especially moreso now. (FB was never a thought re politics when it was born, but it has so much mindshare now that its inexcusable to not think of FB as a political force (even though its literally a revolving door with government security apparatai)

Also, @Dang is a fucking bad-ass... He is probably the best mod I have ever encountered...

He has on multiple occasions put me in my place, gently, as I tend to post heavy handed comments when drunk and we have gone at it and agreed about when we both posted drunken rage comments...

Yet @Dang ALWAYS replies to my emails and helps me when I ask for it...

I've been on HN/YC for a long time -- @Dang has never failed being just an awesome mod of this forum.

---

The culture of HN posting is golden, thus far, and this forum is something to be protected. @Dang needs a mod protege to take the reigns when he decides to go live his fuck-you money on an island.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#128

Post by pvg » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #122

pvg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lame things get upvoted all the time so watching your upvotes is not really a measure of 'value'. Adding more lame things to the site just because it already has lame things only makes it lamer, not better.

I've spent the last several years treating Hacker News as a machine learning source and have learned to understand upvotes (and downvotes). If you word things in a confrontationally, overly partisan, or ignorant way, you'll get downvoted, even by people who technically agree with you. So, go out of your way to write more neutrally to reduce downvotes on tone. If you propose an unpopular idea, or criticize one of HN's…

Be that as it may, you should still not post lame one-liners. That's still just obviously lame and you get sensibly scolded for it because it makes the site worse, orthogonal to unified theories of voting you may have developed.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#129

Post by lgregg » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #124

awb wrote: post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

I spent a few hours a while back writing up a reusable answer for this question, with lots of links from years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 . The short answer is that not much has changed, including the perceptions of change (e.g. "HN is becoming 2005 Slashdot" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6157485 - August 2013.) If anyone wants to understand our thinking about political topics on HN,…

how do you manage all these replies? is it just bookmarked or do you keep a spreadsheet? I see you do this often.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

#130

Post by tasha0663 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #113

awb wrote: post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

Software (some made by HN contributors) ate the world.

Seriously, it's all on-topic. That's why I went into software. It appealed to my cross-disciplinary interests.