Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the name of Sam's account?
The article mentions Scott who I think is @sctb.
Scott, alas, stopped working on HN about a year ago.
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
211–220 of 322 posts
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I first assumed D. Ang
I've been assuming literal dang as in "dang! the update crashed the OS"
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
#213Thanks dang! You've helped keep HN readable, corrected countless title and link errors, and prevented heated discussions from devolving into fights. I also am super thankful for your help getting my "Show HN" post to the front page. We all appreciate you.
TIL it's "Dan G" and not the Chinese surname "Dang" that I'd always assumed.
Haha yes I discovered this like a year ago, and still get a kick out of it when I'm so overloaded that I am reflecting on usernames as opposed to getting work done...
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
#214Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
#215Thanks Dang and Sam!
I don't think I've read as many comments as I have on this thread and neither have I read every line of any other New York Times article as diligently!
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
#216Thanks 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…
I do think that there is room for ML/NLP tools to be useful but we haven't done much with that yet.
Probably looking through the flagged comments is the least favorite, as well as most repetitive and time consuming manual activity, for all the mods who do it.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also the 'delay' setting that you can set in your HN user profile, which gives you 1-10 minutes to edit your comment before it becomes visible to others. This has saved my bacon on many occasions.
Never knew it was built in. I do the same as other people: I type it into the text box, walk away, come back to my computer later and if I still think it’s worth posting, do so. Probably abandon 75% of my “contributions” that way. It also helps that you can only post like 5 times per 24 hour period. Helps me to not waste my quota on low value replies. It doesn’t look like everyone on the site is subject to that limit…
You've been experiencing that because your account is rate limited. We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars. I've looked through your recent history and it seems fine, so normally we'd remove that restriction from your account—but you just said it was helpful, so maybe I shouldn't? You're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com if you want it removed.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
#218When 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…
This did not happen overnight; for more than a year I have been watching perfectly fine comments getting buried There's a pandemic on. Voting has been a bit wonky this year, probably because of the pandemic. People are cranky and scared and yadda. But normally HN is much more tolerant of dissent than most online spaces, assuming it's done right. Rants that call other members names or that implicitly or explicitly sug…
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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
#219Moderation 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.
I'd like to think that too—it would be so much easier—but I'm pretty sure the answer is no, and I think I know why. It's because the moderation problems are all traceable back to the fundamental things we struggle with as human beings. Pain and misunderstanding in relationships, mostly.
I do still have one optimistic belief about this, which is that groups have a kind of consciousness (call it culture) and that this can develop over time, and get more organized. To the extent that that happens, moderation is not needed so much. Moderation is there to try to provide the organization that the group can't do for itself, so it's always a substitute and not a very good one.
Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
#220When 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…
This did not happen overnight; for more than a year I have been watching perfectly fine comments getting buried There's a pandemic on. Voting has been a bit wonky this year, probably because of the pandemic. People are cranky and scared and yadda. But normally HN is much more tolerant of dissent than most online spaces, assuming it's done right. Rants that call other members names or that implicitly or explicitly sug…
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