The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes • Hacker News Board

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#191

Post by GVIrish » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

Noseshine wrote: post #187

GVIrish wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it just means that you can't control how something will be received and that sometimes people are going to have an negative emotional response to something benign or well-intended. Now, whether someone should change their behavior to suit the sensibilities of the offended is the question. The answer to that question is basically what social norms are. It's a moving target that evolves over time and across segment…

Since you feel you had to reply with > Um, it is someone's right to feel offended,... it certainly shows that you dispute the right of the person to say what he had to say - so my point stands. If you accepted his right as well you would not have felt it necessary to make that statement. As I said, > Which means we don't need to have this discussion and just accept both the > offended and the assholes. > This argumen…

> it certainly shows that you dispute the right of the person to say what he had to say - so my point stands.

You're reading stuff that simply is not there. Nowhere did I say that someone did not have the right to free speech, and I spoke to exactly that point RE: Erdogan/Turkey. Not arguing against free speech, just saying that whatever someone says, one cannot dictate how that speech will be received.

The parent post seemed to be arguing that the problem is that too many people are thin-skinned and they don't have the right to be offended by the statements/actions of others. I disagreed with that point.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#192

Post by KaliYugaz » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #189

KaliYugaz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's no objective morality and no objective politics. Really? The majority of academic philosophers disagree with you, and they have very good arguments for moral realism. One thing to think about: it's not possible to affirm objective standards of rationality and deny objective standards of morality at the same time without being inconsistent, since both epistemology and ethics deal with normative statements (wh…

Really? I wasn't aware that morality was a solved problem! Now that we have the one true moral code, why aren't copies being distributed everywhere?

The truth of moral realism is a meta-ethical fact that doesn't preclude debate and experimentation regarding what the Good actually is. Just like how the existence of an objective material reality is a fact assumed by science without precluding scientific debate and experimentation regarding the nature of that reality.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#193

Post by dang » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

r_smart wrote: post #177

dang wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks; I just re-read that and it seems to me that HN is mostly pretty well aligned with what he's saying. But let me phrase that as a question: what's the most important insight in the essay that HN does not currently line up well with?

As a long time lurker, but a brand new user, I think my one criticism, as it relates to the article, would be that HN doesn't facilitate conversations as well as I would like. Or I'm using the site wrong. So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some mean…

Lots of people have asked for that and I think we'll probably break down and add it relatively soon. Also, welcome!

Probably can't help with that other thing.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#194

Post by chc » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #130

gtirloni wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a different term for "shadow banning"? I only recently came to know this while reading more about moderation techniques. Apparently people will be allowed to say whatever they want but nobody will see it? I wasn't aware HN had this.

I think it means the same thing as shadow banning. We have largely phased that out, except for spammers and serial trolls. For the most part we tell people that we banned them by posting a reply to one of their comments, and when they seem rehabilitable (I suppose that's not a word?) we invite them to email hn@ycombinator.com if they want to be unbanned.

Does the automatic shadow ban when you reach super negative karma not happen anymore?

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#195

Post by dang » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #194

dang wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it means the same thing as shadow banning. We have largely phased that out, except for spammers and serial trolls. For the most part we tell people that we banned them by posting a reply to one of their comments, and when they seem rehabilitable (I suppose that's not a word?) we invite them to email hn@ycombinator.com if they want to be unbanned.

Does the automatic shadow ban when you reach super negative karma not happen anymore?

It does still happen, because trolls.

However, vouching allows the community to rescue legit dead comments, and we review all the vouches. That means that if an account has negative karma (perhaps because of a faux pas early in its history), but has been posting good comments since then, we'll eventually see it. When we do, we use an internal feature code-named 'redemption' to put its karma back to 1 and restore any remaining dead comments.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#196

Post by dang » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

executesorder66 wrote: post #141

dang wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes one's comments have trollish effects even though one wasn't intentionally trolling. It took me years to notice this in my own case, and when I did see it, it fundamentally changed my approach. Effects matter more than intent.

Interesting. Can you provide an example?

I'd be embarrassed to provide one of mine and it would be unfair to pick on somebody else's.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#197

Post by dang » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #128

dang wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I understand the question. Can you rephrase?

It sounded like there were two questions: 1) What is the right number of moderators per comment for HN 2) Do you think that number would generalize to other forums.

In that case the answers are I don't know. We don't have many moderators, and I mostly think it would be a mistake to try to solve HN's problems by adding more official moderation.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#198

Post by Noseshine » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

GVIrish wrote: post #191

Noseshine wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you feel you had to reply with > Um, it is someone's right to feel offended,... it certainly shows that you dispute the right of the person to say what he had to say - so my point stands. If you accepted his right as well you would not have felt it necessary to make that statement. As I said, > Which means we don't need to have this discussion and just accept both the > offended and the assholes. > This argumen…

> it certainly shows that you dispute the right of the person to say what he had to say - so my point stands. You're reading stuff that simply is not there. Nowhere did I say that someone did not have the right to free speech, and I spoke to exactly that point RE: Erdogan/Turkey. Not arguing against free speech, just saying that whatever someone says, one cannot dictate how that speech will be received. The parent po…

    > You're reading stuff that simply is not there.

Well, so are you? Please read what I wrote. You are missing my point.

    > The parent post.... I disagreed with that point.

Exactly. How about the right of OP to say whatever he feels like? Your support for "free speech" (the one in quotes) is selective.

    >  Nowhere did I say that someone did not have the right to free speech

Except you don't want OP to say what he did.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#199

Post by xlayn » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 8:35 PM UTC

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #165

xlayn wrote: post #102

I see an exploit of human interactions favoring employers, let me extend, for example below comment: __derek__ 5 I attended npm Camp on Saturday, and the tl;dr version of their policy may fit the bill: > be actively kind now imagine you are paired with 5 other "junior" programmers on trying to get some project to x state that requires 5 senior programmers. -saying that you require 5 senior, not juniors can be seen as…

> saying that you require 5 senior, not juniors can be seen as non polite. Depends on how you define politeness. To me, not saying that you require 5 senior programmers, or more time, is a form of grinfucking your manager and producers. It is intentionally keeping them out of the loop, which is rude. It is disrespecting their ability to take well intentioned, reasonable, important, and professional feedback as fellow…

Nice response but it's just a game of words just like mine.

>To me, not saying that you require 5 senior programmers, or more time, is a form of grinfucking your manager and producers. It is intentionally keeping them out of the loop

This means they in first place took the decision without asking you or without having metrics, not polite of them.

>The trick is to manage your time wisely

First law of thermo dynamics.. energy cannot be created or destroyed. Politely I ask you to please complete the work with the assigned resources.

>It would be both rude and irresponsible of me to allow myself to be so mismanaged.

People who care first about them are called egoistical... on the other hand they said the first person you should care about it's you.

It's up to you, always.

This is just a point of view, take informed decisions.

Re: The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes

#200

Post by sievebrain » Tue, Aug 02, 2016, 10:50 PM UTC

deathanatos wrote: post #124

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that HN moderation is always effective. There is a local groupthink that will get you downvoted fast for rational commentary that runs contrary to the popular consensus. Much like Berkeley students shouting down any opposing viewpoint they've predetermined to be invalid.

I've heard this several times; I know there are viewpoints that HN tends to lean certain ways on (many of us are similar not only in profession, but that probably leads to similarities in views). Would you happen to have a link to a good comment thread that shows the alternate viewpoint not getting fair treatment or serially downvoted? (or, if not that, is there a particular topic area or debate, s.t. next time it co…

Politics related threads have that issue. Downvoting should go: lots of people use it as a way to try and suppress political views they disagree with.

For instance, I pretty much accept that pro-Brexit posts will always get downvoted, even posts that state a matter of fact with citations. I don't care, I have great karma scores already and I've noticed that initial negative scores tend to end up slightly positive -> the problem eventually gets corrected, but it's incredibly obvious that lots of people simply downvote posts they disagree with regardless of content.