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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

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

#161

Post by hutzlibu »

vkk8 wrote: post #135
mindcrime wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that's been here since the very beginning I think that tech has begun to be responsible for a larger portion of the world as a whole and this community has moved a small amount towards that direction as a result. As one of the people who thinks that more (too much more) political content has crept in here, I will say that I agree with you on the above. That is, I agree that it is becoming harder (albeit no…

We tend to reserve the word "tech" for new technology especially. Cars, power tools and horse wagons were also new sexy technology once upon a time, but no-one calls companies making those products "tech companies". The categorization from "tech" to "normal stuff" happens when a technology becomes ubiquitous part of our society rather than play stuff of early adopters and hackers. Arguably this has recently happened…

"Cars, power tools and horse wagons were also new sexy technology once upon a time, but no-one calls companies making those products "tech companies"

I think I have heard Tesla to be described as a tech company, once or twice. And with Bosch, my favourite power tool company, the same. I mean I am not a english speaker, but it would be really news to me, that "tech company" is defined as "brand new tech".

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

#162

Post by sveno »

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,…

Hacker News's biggest problem is the chilling effect. The long-timers know that if you write too well and people start inquiring about a "follow" feature with you in mind, it's only a matter of time before you get banned because you're "too young" (well, he isn't anymore) to have that kind of "success" and less articulate people feel bad about themselves.

On politics, Hacker News itself isn't right-wing, at least most of its users aren't, but the fact that anything more than a standard deviation to the left gets you hammered through that passive aggressive rank-altering and "slowban" has really put a damper on the ability for people to indulge their intellectual curiosities. Simply asking whether we, who "hack" in service to corporate capitalism, are doing the right thing, is enough to get you in trouble.

There are some absolute top-notch people posting here, but there are far too many corporate shills, and the good ones know they have to be careful.

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

#163

Post by 0x4d464d48 »

sveno wrote: post #162
dang wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Hacker News's biggest problem is the chilling effect. The long-timers know that if you write too well and people start inquiring about a "follow" feature with you in mind, it's only a matter of time before you get banned because you're "too young" (well, he isn't anymore) to have that kind of "success" and less articulate people feel bad about themselves. On politics, Hacker News itself isn't right-wing, at least mos…

"...there are far too many corporate shills, the good ones know they have to be careful."

Huh. Today I learned I'm not one of the good ones.

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

#164

Post by sveno »

0x4d464d48 wrote: post #163
sveno wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News's biggest problem is the chilling effect. The long-timers know that if you write too well and people start inquiring about a "follow" feature with you in mind, it's only a matter of time before you get banned because you're "too young" (well, he isn't anymore) to have that kind of "success" and less articulate people feel bad about themselves. On politics, Hacker News itself isn't right-wing, at least mos…

"...there are far too many corporate shills, the good ones know they have to be careful." Huh. Today I learned I'm not one of the good ones.

You only have 258 karma. You don't have to worry yet. When you get into the mid-thousands, that's when things get dicey.

Tech is like card counting. If you actually figure the game out, you get punished and flushed out. If you keep gambling and losing and don't know why (because you're bad at what you're trying to do) there will be a seat at the table until everything is squeezed out of you.

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

#165

Post by edgyquant »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #94
Operyl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I "think", most of those debate ties with technology one way or another. I feel that, if this is the reasoning it's becoming more prevalent, then it should be reeled in a bit. Politically charged topics seem to rarely bring in good-faith discussion I have come to expect from HN.

They are easy to avoid howerver. Not participating in them and upvoting other contents solve the issue at least for yourself.

Incorrect. This is what we were told about Reddit as we watched it become basically unusable as a platform. Voting alone isn’t a proper way to guarantee quality discussion (the opposite actually.)

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

#166

Post by mindcrime »

closetohome wrote: post #156
mindcrime wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that's been here since the very beginning I think that tech has begun to be responsible for a larger portion of the world as a whole and this community has moved a small amount towards that direction as a result. As one of the people who thinks that more (too much more) political content has crept in here, I will say that I agree with you on the above. That is, I agree that it is becoming harder (albeit no…

> talking about tech has always tended to lead to a certain amount of political discussion, especially in terms of things like encryption policy, DRM, etc. Growing up in the era of peak Slashdot it was hard not to view politics through the lens of technology. There were politicians trying to take away my games, and restrict my speech, and put me in jail for downloading MP3s. Fighting those battles through the years h…

Yep, same here. So yeah, definitely not arguing for a total separation of "tech" and "politics". That's probably not possible. But I do wish HN could move away from the more generic "politics with a tenuous (at best) connection to tech" and "general world news" stuff a bit.

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

#167

Post by 0x4d464d48 »

sveno wrote: post #164
0x4d464d48 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...there are far too many corporate shills, the good ones know they have to be careful." Huh. Today I learned I'm not one of the good ones.

You only have 258 karma. You don't have to worry yet. When you get into the mid-thousands, that's when things get dicey. Tech is like card counting. If you actually figure the game out, you get punished and flushed out. If you keep gambling and losing and don't know why (because you're bad at what you're trying to do) there will be a seat at the table until everything is squeezed out of you.

Maybe. I don't invest enough time and emotion here to have anything substantial to lose.

I consider myself a tradesman who, naively or not time will tell, leverages a rarified skill set at market rate trying to deliever value to clients as best as I can.

Millenial enough to have no expectations of a charmed future, despite earning an annual income in the top decile, but not jaded enough to put a price tag on my soul, principles nor well-being.

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

#168

Post by dredmorbius »

dang wrote: post #143
lgregg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I guess they're engraved into my brain like a wax recording by now. I have keyboard shortcuts to bring up the most common ones, but otherwise I just go find them in HN Search.

For those not familiar with it, HN's search, provided by Algolia, has syntax for searching posts, comments, by author, within date ranges, and (for posts) above or below thresholds, and more.

See: https://hn.algolia.com/help

It's also accessible as a DDG bang, !hn

I also make heavy use of search. Often searching for dang's comments ;-)

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

#170

Post by dredmorbius »

wormslayer666 wrote: post #105
optimalsolver wrote: post #4

I've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech" loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hit the back button pretty quick.

It depends on what sort of content you're looking for. Reasoned discussion on contentious issues demands considerable moderation, but anonymous platforms are great for legitimate niche/curiosity-driven topics. For example of the second, there was a thread on /ck/ a few weeks back where some guy (probably a grad student; I'll never know) stumbled on a few $K of food lab equipment. Thread went on with a variety of expe…

Platforms can be both anonymous (or more usually, pseudonymous) AND moderated.

Schopenhauer's commentary on authorship and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivations should be far more widely read.

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