Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 322 posts

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

#171

Post by krapp »

ethbr0 wrote: post #156
pratik661 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed a lot of economists (ie Robert Reich, Krugman, etc) thinking they would post interesting economics related content. They do, but it turns out that they are ordinary humans who like posting the same tweets (and rants) that I would post. I don't think Twitter can have the same signal to noise ratio as a well moderated forum like HN, even if you follow the "right" people, because the format of the site incent…

HN tends to devalue the individual, and value the content. (E.g. high quality comment by a not famous person) Twitter seems to value the individual, but devalue the content. (E.g. low quality posts by a famous person) The former is more meritorious, inasmuch as the vote base can accurately judge a comment. The latter is more consistent, in that popular people stay popular (and admittedly, are popular for a reason). P…

> HN tends to devalue the individual, and value the content. (E.g. high quality comment by a not famous person)

And yet its measure of quality is karma scores for the individual, not the content.

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

#172

Post by bra-ket »

Thanks for flagging flame trolls like us.

People tend to get carried away in a heat of discussion, but eventually return to the mean of civility after cool-down period.

Other places just impose ban frivolously, which doesn't help long term, bans destroy the community, methinks.

Moderate moderation like yours is the way to go, and I'm not saying it as a kiss ass.

Edit: dang, what moderation tools do you think could be helpful. What part of your job can be automated via ML/NLP?

What is your least favorite, repetitive or time consuming manual algorithm as a mod?

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

#174

Post by sungam »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #157
throwaway4220 wrote: post #64

This place is amazing, and I learned so much about a variety of topics. Most of my MD colleagues use Twitter or Facebook, where the signal-to-noise is much, much lower. I assume there have been plenty of spin-offs from HN (I would LOVE to have a similar forum for discussing medical issues; Can I fork the codebase somehow?), but I do think the secret sauce is moderation. Also, politically, I'm "an enlightened centrist…

I wonder how many doctors browse HN... Sometimes I find some great posts by MDs here and it's really interesting.

I have for many years (since nearly the beginning).

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

#175

Post by NewOrderNow »

NewOrderNow wrote: post #159

Except for the rich insulting the poor. Dang allows rich people to say some fucked up shit, but if you defend your honor in that situation, you are the asshole. Classism exists everywhere.

Downvoting won't change the truth, it just shows that your are rich

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

#176

Post by krapp »

dang wrote: post #120
Tossrock wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you're soliciting them, here's a few concrete suggestions: - Avatars. A consistent, recognizable image can go a long way from transforming a faceless internet post into something closer to a person you recognize and would hesitate to harm. With enough time and exposure, usernames can work for this (everyone recognizes when tptacek, or moxie, or you post), but avatars supercharge it. People hate changes to the s…

I don't think we'd go for #1 because it's core to HN that it's a text-only site. And #2 is too shaming. We've found over the years that under punishing people (relative to what they expect) is more effective. There's a nice user report about that somewhere in the current thread. (edit: actually several now, which is pretty cool) #3 I think is a good suggestion though. We should have some means whereby users can exalt…

Can I do one?

The UX for paginated threads is awful. I know you want to get rid of it, but I really hope you don't, because reading through something like the 4000 comment Biden thread as a single page would be incredibly taxing, and having to go through 'more' links to get to recent content is annoying.

Long threads do need to be paginated, but I think you should consider what other forums do and add a set of page links at the top and bottom of each page. It would be slightly more clutter but you wouldn't have to remind people that paginated threads are a thing every time it happens.

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

#177

Post by lazyasciiart »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #122
lazyasciiart wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he gets to shadowban you and then get credit for telling you he issued a secret crazy punishment?

1. I don't think it was him. He told me a while after I was banned. 2. I got warnings beforehand and deserved it.

Oh so he gets to shadowban other people and get credit for telling you about the secret crazy punishments they use here. Shadowbanning is psychopathy and if you disagree, then logically you should never have been told about it.

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

#178

Post by NewOrderNow »

Razengan wrote: post #82

When I first discovered HN, it was like a breath of fresh air compared to Reddit etc. I have since lost faith. HN likes to masquerade as some sort of upscale establishment, high and above the petty squabbles of Eslewhere, but in the end this place too devolves into a predictable echo chamber just like the rest of them, when it comes to any topic on which people have varied opinions. This is not a place for dissenting…

HN is broken, but you won't get anyone here to agree with this comment because of where you are. They don't like the truth here just like most places don't like the truth.

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

#179

Post by Karunamon »

iratewizard wrote: post #48
chrisweekly wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risking violation of "don't feed the trolls" here to reply: that seems unnecessarily harsh. FTR I'm not downvoting you any further, but responding in case you have more specific and articulate criticism to level.

I've seen several instances over the years. The one that stands out for me is a post about ICC suing a YC company. It was an astroturf-fest.

The problem with astroturf accusations is that they are all flamebait (even if true), off-topic meta noise (the point stops being discussed in favor of the commenters), and worst of all unfalsifiable (how do you prove you're not a shill?). I've been spending a lot more time on political boards as of late, and I've yet to see accusations along these lines be even a net neutral. On balance, they're always bad.

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

#180

Post by madrox »

Moderation is the hardest, most subjective problem on the internet today. Plus, it doesn't scale well. Part of me wonders if the way we design the forums themselves lend itself to this problem. Is there a way to design forums so that the need for moderation is lessened or unneeded? I think the answer is no, but I'd like to think it's yes.
Post reply on HN