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

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

#161

Post by dang »

clairity wrote: post #106
waffle_ss wrote: post #66

I agree with all the asspats for dang on the day-to-day moderation level. If anything I'd like to see more of a heavy hand from him. I've modded some moderately-sized Reddit subs and it was hell. However, in strategic terms, I think HN has failed to maintain a good comment signal-to-noise ratio over the past several years. For instance it used to be that "funny" or entertaining type of low-effort comments would be st…

disheartened, as usual, to see an insightful comment lurking nearer the bottom of the page than the top, while a bunch of throwaway fawnings sit above it[0]. i have a pet theory that there can only ever be about a dozen good comments on a thread, and hn usually does a terrible job surfacing them. the (poor) karma-to-tenure ratio you describe is certainly one of the mechanisms by which this goes wrong. i actually like…

The good intentions are clear in the individual posts but I agree that their sum can be cloying.

There are a lot of 'backfiring sums' like that in internet forums.

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

#162

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

Initial conditions, both over the lifetime of a post, and of a reader's encounter with a post, both have a huge impact on discussion direction. Much of HN's moderation seems to operate with this in mind.

Clickbait titles are de-baited. Indirect links are disintermediated. Divergent distracting comments are downweighted.

Much of my own interaction with the HN mod team (ask dang, I email fairly frequently, probably a few times a week) are with regard to link or title issues.

I'll also occasionally try to steer a discussion back on track with a top-level comment I hope more directly addresses the post than many early takes do. This isn't always successful, but I've been surprised several times where my own late-in-the discussion comment ends up highly-placed in the thread. One key is to really fight back against expressing frustration (the comments are usually born from an excess of that), and just lay out a strong case for an alternative take on what seems significant.

I actually did express that frustration out loud in this thread ... and dang commented on the initial-conditions aspect:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26824383

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

#163

Post by dredmorbius »

ryandrake wrote: post #150
dang wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Searching for "by:dang " is a handy way for seeing what actions are taken, in what circumstances, and why.

I'll admit to tailing dang's comments periodically, or searching for specific terms when people challenge / inquire about my own takes on comments. (Most often in the case of dupe / non-dupe article submissions, occasionally others.)

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

#164

Post by dredmorbius »

pvg wrote: post #153
ryandrake wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lots of people do this without necessarily being trolls because they feel their comment would be lost, especially if some giant topcomment is dominating the discussion. People also do the opposite - writing a toplevel comment to discuss (berate, more often than not) multiple other comments - 'I can't believe the nattering nabobs of negativism that have been commenting here, etc'. In both cases, writing a good, non-re…

As I've responded elsewhere in this subthread, a good top-level post can often succeed in gathering enough votes / mod attention to float up.

Probably not on the busiest posts (though those are something of a conversational lost cause already), but on most typical discussions without excessive comments, yes.

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

#165

Post by clairity »

dang wrote: post #161
clairity wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

disheartened, as usual, to see an insightful comment lurking nearer the bottom of the page than the top, while a bunch of throwaway fawnings sit above it[0]. i have a pet theory that there can only ever be about a dozen good comments on a thread, and hn usually does a terrible job surfacing them. the (poor) karma-to-tenure ratio you describe is certainly one of the mechanisms by which this goes wrong. i actually like…

The good intentions are clear in the individual posts but I agree that their sum can be cloying. There are a lot of 'backfiring sums' like that in internet forums.

no doubt that there's some good intent there, but the public performativeness just undermines the genuineness for me.

i do think a dampening function on repetitive messages/sentiments would be a net-good however, since repetitiveness is not where the interesting/insightful points tend to be.

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

#166

Post by account42 »

maxbond wrote: post #102
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.

I've seen dang warn people their conduct is bannable many times. AFAIK shadowbanning on HN means your comments default to "dead", as if they had been flagged. You can see them if you enable "showdead" in your profile, and if people vouch for them, they can become visible again. See Terry Davis' comment history for examples (this is the only shadowbanned account I know of): https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Terr…

The crucial part of shadowbanning is that the one subjected to it is can't (easily) see that their comments/post are being hidden from others. It's like the difference between rejecting spam mail and silently dropping it. Since actual shadowbanning is all about showing a different view of the world to the affected user compared to everyone else we can't see if TerryADavis has been shadowbanned or not.

Shadowbanning might be effective against actual spammers but preventing the user from seeing that they were banned removes even more accountability from the moderation than other tools which makes shadowbanning particularly prone to abuse as well as mistakes that won't get fixed. I think it's pretty dishonest to punish someone without telling them they are being punished.

It's also worth pointing out that shadowbanning is more effective against good faith users than malicious users since all it takes is to check using a disconnected session to uncover the ruse - something that will hardly be difficult for a motivated malicious user.

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

#167

Post by Wowfunhappy »

the_only_law wrote: post #114
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.

Shadowban is [dead] right? On rare occasion I've seen [banned] accounts as well with showdead on. Weird thing I've noticed is [dead] accounts that aren green tend to be typical troll, spam, or people who can't calm down during certain discussions. They may even have some comments still love. [banned] accounts on the other hand tend to be completely deragned. They seem almost obsessed. Despite being banned they contin…

Interesting! I don't think I've ever seen "[banned]", although I may have not been paying enough attention.

I've definitely seen "[dead]" on accounts which, if you go into their post history, were told by dang that they were being banned.

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

#168

Post by dang »

clairity wrote: post #165
dang wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good intentions are clear in the individual posts but I agree that their sum can be cloying. There are a lot of 'backfiring sums' like that in internet forums.

no doubt that there's some good intent there, but the public performativeness just undermines the genuineness for me. i do think a dampening function on repetitive messages/sentiments would be a net-good however, since repetitiveness is not where the interesting/insightful points tend to be.

It would be valuable to automatically detect that sort of repetition—repetition is pretty much what we're trying to avoid on HN. Although a certain amount of it can be good for morale I suppose.

Re intent: many people underestimate good intent in these cases. My experience interacting with users is that they're mostly trying to say good and helpful things, even when what they actually say is bad and unhelpful.

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

#169

Post by clairity »

dang wrote: post #168
clairity wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no doubt that there's some good intent there, but the public performativeness just undermines the genuineness for me. i do think a dampening function on repetitive messages/sentiments would be a net-good however, since repetitiveness is not where the interesting/insightful points tend to be.

It would be valuable to automatically detect that sort of repetition—repetition is pretty much what we're trying to avoid on HN. Although a certain amount of it can be good for morale I suppose. Re intent: many people underestimate good intent in these cases. My experience interacting with users is that they're mostly trying to say good and helpful things, even when what they actually say is bad and unhelpful.

also, given the eternal september phenomenon where things that are new to new members are often tired and trite to older members/people, perhaps there's a "maturity" factor that can calibrate what gets surfaced to whom and how much gets collapsed (but still accessible), rather than a single function for everybody. that way new members get to establish some of those same baseline points and arguments without wearing out the "seniors" with retreads.

totally agree that most people have good intentions most of the time, but i'm skeptical of motivations in a public context. intentions and motivations cross purposes all the time, and cheap social points, like junk food, are nearly irresistable to our evolutionarily-culled pro-social chemical pathways.

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

#170

Post by maxbond »

account42 wrote: post #166
maxbond wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen dang warn people their conduct is bannable many times. AFAIK shadowbanning on HN means your comments default to "dead", as if they had been flagged. You can see them if you enable "showdead" in your profile, and if people vouch for them, they can become visible again. See Terry Davis' comment history for examples (this is the only shadowbanned account I know of): https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Terr…

The crucial part of shadowbanning is that the one subjected to it is can't (easily) see that their comments/post are being hidden from others. It's like the difference between rejecting spam mail and silently dropping it. Since actual shadowbanning is all about showing a different view of the world to the affected user compared to everyone else we can't see if TerryADavis has been shadowbanned or not. Shadowbanning m…

I've never been shadowbanned on HN but afaik you will see that your comments are flagged.

I would disagree with the form of banning you are describing, however.

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