Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#141

Post by beachy » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 7:48 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #113

samizdis wrote: post #5

I'd like to think that more than a few people grasp this. He's some kind of machine - in the best, complimentary way. His replies to emails are succinct, helpful, educational, and still personable. No idea how he retains his equanimity across hundreds/thousands of interactions, mostly with strangers. IMO it's a worthwhile lesson (and a free one) to peruse his comment history: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=d…

I get a very different sense from the reading of his comments to users; curt and inconsiderate. He tends to make declarations about behavior that sound objective but are really just his very casual read of a situation, and there’s no appeal or redress possible. Additionally, he tends to favor the original aggressor, ignoring the concept of instigation to fix the proximate cause of the negative interactions here. Don’…

It should be easy for you to link to examples substantiating this?

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#142

Post by beachy » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

doogerdog wrote: post #117

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I learned from moderating an internet community in the past: Some of the long-term users had become experts at skirting the rules. They had seen so many posts and watched so many other people get moderated that they learned how to walk right up to the line without explicitly crossing it. Some times they'd become very good at baiting other people into breaking the rules. Or they would writing extremely infla…

A couple of very good computer forums that I depended on years ago were slowly destroyed by "long term users". A small group seemed to think that their long history and prolific posting made it their playground. Little by little it became less worth my time to check it out every day. This place is always worth a glance. Every day. On the best discussions you can sense that people only post if they feel they really ha…

This reminds me of a pub we used to go to occasionally in Berkshire. When one of the crusty old locals went to the bar, they were always served first, even if other customers had already been waiting a while. Great for them, but made for an unwelcoming vibe that definitely reduced their custom. We only put up with it because they had a great garden area for kids.

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#143

Post by freitasm » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 8:32 PM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #70

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that moderated a … pithy … community site, I am all too familiar with that type of complaint. I would regularly get called a “nazi,” because I would step into catfights, and break them up, or “nip them in the bud.” Once you’ve been doing it a while, you learn to smell trouble brewing, and it can escalate rapidly. Many folks chafe at restrictions, and they may actually be correct. They, themselves, may be e…

> Once you’ve been doing it a while, you learn to smell trouble brewing, and it can escalate rapidly. I'm not actually proposing this, but that makes me curious how well that could be modeled via deep learning.

I run an online community, with my own developed software. We use lots of different tools to prevent spam, harassment, etc. We use different APIS to check IP, ASN, email for previous spam behaviour, use of disposable email domains, etc.

We have a team of moderators and as mentioned before you can "smell" something brewing. The words, to whom they are directed, etc.

A couple of years ago we started using Perspective API [0], a Google service "Using machine learning to reduce toxicity online". We use the toxicity model, trained by Google and The NY Times. Basically we submit the text of posts and replies and receive a score. We do some account history calculations and if it's past a certain threshold then moderators receive a notification - we can't read all posts in our platform all the time but this helps a lot.

The community itself helps too, and the reporting tool is used when things happen that we aren't aware.

[0] https://www.perspectiveapi.com/#/home

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#144

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

zamalek wrote: post #46

runnerup wrote: post #10

'sillysaurusx -- I respect your opinions. I know that I respect your opinions because you're able to use HackerNews as a bully pulpit to reach a very wide audience and I personally both enjoy and look forward to seeing your participation. I've often wished I had better opportunities to learn from you and always silently wish you well on your personal journey. I also see from your Twitter reply that you feel HN hasn't…

The one complaint is this: > He has had a habit of silencing some long-standing members of HN If anything, that shows excellent moderation skills. Everyone should abide by the same rules.

Ye, we really don’t want a “HN Royalty” clique that are immune to moderation. You see that on Reddit and it does not tend to elevate the conversation.

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#145

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #64

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that moderated a … pithy … community site, I am all too familiar with that type of complaint. I would regularly get called a “nazi,” because I would step into catfights, and break them up, or “nip them in the bud.” Once you’ve been doing it a while, you learn to smell trouble brewing, and it can escalate rapidly. Many folks chafe at restrictions, and they may actually be correct. They, themselves, may be e…

I only recall getting danged once and it was spot-on. I wasn’t acting like a full on flaming ass, but there was at least a glowing ember there and he phrased his response in a way that made it easy to accept.

One of the moderation techniques I don’t really understand is the “We detached this subthread” move. I don’t know what it accomplishes, besides narrowly targeting a (sometimes highly-upvoted) subcomment to specifically bury it. It’s harsher than even flagging because it nukes the whole subthread full of replies, too. Often no explanation. Just “We detached this subthread from [url]” and that’s that. Seems like something you'd only want to do to the most heinous of posts.

I recall having a +80 upvote or so reply “detached” in this way, but can’t find the link.

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#146

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 11:02 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #145

sokoloff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only recall getting danged once and it was spot-on. I wasn’t acting like a full on flaming ass, but there was at least a glowing ember there and he phrased his response in a way that made it easy to accept.

One of the moderation techniques I don’t really understand is the “We detached this subthread” move. I don’t know what it accomplishes, besides narrowly targeting a (sometimes highly-upvoted) subcomment to specifically bury it. It’s harsher than even flagging because it nukes the whole subthread full of replies, too. Often no explanation. Just “We detached this subthread from [url]” and that’s that. Seems like someth…

Yes, it's understandable that that moderation practice is kind of obscure and can be annoying. I wrote an explanation of it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132402.

I looked for posts that match your description and found these three:

It looks like we detached https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27058506 from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27058435 because it was offtopic - and probably also several other of the reasons I listed at the above link.

Looks like we detached https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28695222 from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28694236 for similar reasons.

Looks like we detached https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30749836 from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30748070 for similar reasons.

In all 3 cases, the original parent was a massive subthread, probably at the top of the page. When child threads develop under top-heavy subthreads and cause discussion to drift in a generic direction, away from the original topic, that's a problem for thread quality. This is one of the most common times when we detach subthreads. All 3 examples look like classic cases to me.

Moderating top subthreads in this and other ways is probably the single biggest thing that moderators do here to promote thread quality. It makes a huge difference. We've learned a lot about this in the last few years.

By the way, none of this is necessarily a problem with the detached comment, nor does it imply anything bad about your (i.e. the child commenter's) intent. Often the child comment has been posted for exactly the right reason—thoughtful conversation. But if it takes a step away from the original topic in a generic direction, or a flameprone direction, upvotes and replies often start pouring in, skewing the thread as a whole in a way that makes it less interesting.

In other words, this is not just the fault of the child commenter (and maybe not at all). It's a co-creation along with all the other repliers and upvoters.

The more we learn, the clearer it gets that we need to moderate not specific posts, but subthreads. Subthreads are the unit of HN comment moderation. (Edit: doesn't that mean—someone will ask—that you could maliciously derail/destroy a subthread by adding bad comments to it? No, because we can detach those. That's case (2) in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132402.)

Understanding that online discussion gets less interesting as it gets more generic is one of the bedrock principles here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#147

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 11:38 PM UTC

beachy wrote: post #142

doogerdog wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of very good computer forums that I depended on years ago were slowly destroyed by "long term users". A small group seemed to think that their long history and prolific posting made it their playground. Little by little it became less worth my time to check it out every day. This place is always worth a glance. Every day. On the best discussions you can sense that people only post if they feel they really ha…

This reminds me of a pub we used to go to occasionally in Berkshire. When one of the crusty old locals went to the bar, they were always served first, even if other customers had already been waiting a while. Great for them, but made for an unwelcoming vibe that definitely reduced their custom. We only put up with it because they had a great garden area for kids.

That last bit reminds me of Orwell's description of his ideal pub, the "Moon Under Water":

The great surprise of the Moon Under Water is its garden. You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and find yourself in a fairly large garden with plane trees, under which there are little green tables with iron chairs round them. Up at one end of the garden there are swings and a chute for the children.

On summer evenings there are family parties, and you sit under the plane trees having beer or draught cider to the tune of delighted squeals from children going down the chute. The prams with the younger children are parked near the gate.

Many as are the virtues of the Moon Under Water, I think that the garden is its best feature, because it allows whole families to go there instead of Mum having to stay at home and mind the baby while Dad goes out alone.

And though, strictly speaking, they are only allowed in the garden, the children tend to seep into the pub and even to fetch drinks for their parents. This, I believe, is against the law, but it is a law that deserves to be broken, for it is the puritanical nonsense of excluding children—and therefore, to some extent, women—from pubs that has turned these places into mere boozing-shops instead of the family gathering-places that they ought to be.

The Moon Under Water is my ideal of what a pub should be—at any rate, in the London area. (The qualities one expects of a country pub are slightly different.)

I'm sure the Moon Under Water would treat newcomers well, though!

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#148

Post by dang » Sat, Jul 09, 2022, 11:42 PM UTC

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #87

As dang is shadowbanning people, I cannot agree with many of the popular sentiments expressed. I think shadowbanning is unjust, and if is someone is violating the rules nonstop they should be made aware of it through notice and an actual ban.

When an account has an established history, we tell them we're banning them and why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

Shadowbanning is reserved for spammers and for new accounts that show signs of abusing the site, e.g. by trolling or egregiously breaking the site guidelines, or if there's evidence that they're related to past accounts that have been abusing the site. It's not a good idea to use explicit banning in all of these cases (for different reasons).

Here are some longer past explanations:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686672

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21288858

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20666742

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20289994

This system has drawbacks—banning new accounts means guessing—by definition, there isn't a lot of information to go on—and we guess wrong sometimes. But we try to correct those errors later. Btw, if anyone notices a banned account that shouldn't be banned, please let us know at hn@ycombinator.com—we've unbanned many accounts that way.

In fact I'm just working on a ban review system that will make it much easier for mods to track banned accounts that are still posting and unban the ones who are making good contributions (whether because we guessed wrong when banning them, or because they've reformed since having been banned).

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#149

Post by TameAntelope » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:04 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #139

TameAntelope wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a very different sense from the reading of his comments to users; curt and inconsiderate. He tends to make declarations about behavior that sound objective but are really just his very casual read of a situation, and there’s no appeal or redress possible. Additionally, he tends to favor the original aggressor, ignoring the concept of instigation to fix the proximate cause of the negative interactions here. Don’…

> Additionally, he tends to favor the original aggressor, ignoring the concept of instigation to fix the proximate cause of the negative interactions here. Don’t get caught punching second, in other words. Can you give an example? I just went through dang's comments in the last few days and found nothing of the sort, and it has not been my experience at all, unless posting an unpopular opinion counts as instigation.…

Look at his post history, you can see plenty of examples.

A pattern he follows very commonly is seen here [0]: "Can you stop doing $thing?" However, it's dang's opinion that $thing is occurring, and he makes zero effort to understand why $thing could even be happening, and further entertains zero challenges to his interpretation of what has taken place. It's, "stop doing $thing, which is definitely happening, or else I will ban you."

Here's another good example of dang handling moderation poorly [1]: he spends zero time explaining the situation, zero time listening to the perspective of the "accused", and simply, curtly, dismisses that person from the site.

Ironically, dang's intervention is often the most toxic behavior in a comment chain, and these examples are what I found in just the past two hours.

There are thousands, or more, people treated this way, and instead of concern, praise is constantly dumped on him, like what he's doing is some incredible or even desirable behavior! The assumption is the site is better off without these people he treats poorly on it, but I doubt any rigor has been placed on that assumption whatsoever.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32039759

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32039501

Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)

#150

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Jul 10, 2022, 12:11 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #146

ryandrake wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the moderation techniques I don’t really understand is the “We detached this subthread” move. I don’t know what it accomplishes, besides narrowly targeting a (sometimes highly-upvoted) subcomment to specifically bury it. It’s harsher than even flagging because it nukes the whole subthread full of replies, too. Often no explanation. Just “We detached this subthread from [url]” and that’s that. Seems like someth…

Yes, it's understandable that that moderation practice is kind of obscure and can be annoying. I wrote an explanation of it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27132402 . I looked for posts that match your description and found these three: It looks like we detached https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27058506 from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27058435 because it was offtopic - and probably also sever…

Wow, thanks for taking the time to make that massive reply. This kind of Inside Baseball is facinating and really helps to take the mystery out of what goes on here. Surprised that this "tree balancing" really makes much of a difference.

EDIT: I wonder if trolls deliberately wait for and then target top main-threads, in order to maximize the blast radius of their trolling.