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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)

#221

Post by blast »

mikewarot wrote: post #148

I find that NH is a great jumping off point for adventures I didn't even know I wanted to take. For instance, in this story I learned that some people can down-vote, and a lot of work is done in the background to keep goofballs like me from derailing things. I too would like to thank the moderators. Further, and more interestingly to me, I learn that HN is written in a LISP variant called ARC... I've never understood…

There are several IDEs for specific Lisps, like Dr Racket or the Lispworks implementation of Common Lisp. There's also Emacs, which is kind of like a Lisp-based IDE, and Slime is a really good Common Lisp plugin for it.

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

#222

Post by dang »

saagarjha wrote: post #193
grayclhn wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been reading this site for almost 10 years and never noticed them until you just pointed it out. I don't think many people look at the footer. :) (They're also not in the footer of the comment page and a link in the otherwise empty header could be useful for new users.)

I’d argue that the comment page is probably the most important page to have that link on.

Ok, I'll put it there - but can you guys please specify exactly what you mean by "the comment page"?

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

#224

Post by guru4consulting »

Thanks Dang for all your hardwork in maintaining HN to be a wonderful and sane place in internet. I always worry and wonder how HN can stay this way in future. I hope you, Sam, and other moderators write a journal of your thoughts, all the lessons learned in moderating HN.. that could help future moderators.

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

#225

Post by saagarjha »

dang wrote: post #222
saagarjha wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue that the comment page is probably the most important page to have that link on.

Ok, I'll put it there - but can you guys please specify exactly what you mean by "the comment page"?

Uh, I guess a more accurate description would be “the page where you edit your comment”, which is uncharacteristically bare.

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

#226

Post by part1of2 »

dang wrote: post #130
part1of2 wrote: post #128

> site’s anti-abuse systems, many of which Bell and Gackle have written themselves. That sounds interesting! How were these built? In the same Arc language? Any chance this can be open sourced?

In Arc, yes. Unfortunately not, because we don't know how to write anti-abuse systems that keep working once people know what they are.

I get it, thanks. Instead, Could you write about them, rather than the code? I'm picturing lessons learned, don't try ABC it's a waste of time, and so on..

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

#227

Post by xwdv »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #38

When I first came to HN from reddit, I posted some jokey nonsense comment. A moderator gently scolded me. I really disliked it. Now, I see the wisdom of keeping the jokes to a minimum and focusing in thoughtful discussion. So thank you, mods.

There are still jokes, they just require higher levels of intelligence to parse now. Without the ability to inject obvious humor, many jokes straddle the threshold of Poe's Law. Sometimes people mistake a thoughtful sounding well written comment as sincere.

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

#228

Post by carapace »

dang wrote: post #219
madrox wrote: post #180

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.

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…

You remind me of Bucky Fuller's trim tab metaphor:

> Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.

> It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_tab#Trim_tab_as_a_metapho...

- - - -

And thank you!

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

#230

Post by rattray »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #181
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…

> I followed a lot of economists (ie Robert Reich, Krugman, etc) thinking they would post interesting economics related content. I think you have to stop following famous people like those guys, and instead follow up-and-coming economists and other scientists and bleeding edge researchers/builders, who are working hard to make a name for themselves with novel research in some interesting area. Those are more likely t…

This is a really good idea.

Any accounts you'd recommend in particular?

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