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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 nickdrozd »

dang wrote: post #218
nickdrozd wrote: post #216

> In an Emacs file, Gackle collects a list of contradictory statements that people have used to describe Hacker News. dang, could you please describe your Emacs setup?

I use a vanilla Emacs that I download the binary of and that flickers annoyingly on the M1 Macbook I started using recently. My .emacs file is 861 lines long and, like anyone else's, contains years' worth of accumulated gizmos. Not sure what else to say!

I'm sure it seems unremarkable to you, but you are on the borderline of being a prominent enough user that your config is ipso facto noteworthy. (Less prominent than someone like Donald Knuth, but more prominent than someone like me.)

Anyway, thanks for all the moderating work!

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

#222

Post by tptacek »

dang wrote: post #218
nickdrozd wrote: post #216

> In an Emacs file, Gackle collects a list of contradictory statements that people have used to describe Hacker News. dang, could you please describe your Emacs setup?

I use a vanilla Emacs that I download the binary of and that flickers annoyingly on the M1 Macbook I started using recently. My .emacs file is 861 lines long and, like anyone else's, contains years' worth of accumulated gizmos. Not sure what else to say!

Are you using Homebrew's `emacs-mac` (IIRC, the Homebrew packaging of "railwaycat Emacs", which you can also install directly)? It's holding up well on my M1.

Obviously, the other thing to say here is to share your emacs configuration, as is the tradition. But your call! :)

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

#223

Post by loceng »

krapp wrote: post #190
loceng wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, there's still the rule of "new phenomenon" that makes it news/discussion worthy - like Canada's quick turn towards fascism, tyranny.

interesting new phenomenon that satisfies intellectual curiosity. And by interesting - anything good hackers would find interesting. It's a purposely high bar to filter out almost all mainstream news and even most tech news, and definitely most politics, which tends to satisfy emotional curiosity at the expense of intellect. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. These stories tend to brute-force their way in.

Because there may be more emotion involved doesn't negate its intellectual value - that's a scapegoat reason, and people avoiding intellectual interests that have emotion involved is avoiding learning and opportunities to learn. That's arguably quite detrimental to society, and "hackers" avoiding it who have domain expertise with technology and maybe could provide a unique perspective or brainstorm uniquely is then likely reduced. Arguably political issues, policy and information propagation are the main problems we have in society these days.

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

#224

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

The secret that nobody tells you about HN is that it's not moderated by dang and sctb, but by dang, sctb and all users. In a sort of emergent way by users, of course, because we just downvote the kinds of comments we don't want to see (and some probably actively look out for comments that break the site guidelines) and upvote the ones we want to see. Hence the constant chatter about the "hive mind" etc. I guess. If you have a large body of users up- and down-voting what they think is right/wrong behaviour there's going to be _some_ tendencies that come out on top in every thread, and perhaps in the site as a whole. But that's not to say that what these top-tendencies are won't fluctuate wildly, even in the same day.

It's complicated. A simulation would be interesting.

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

#225

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

dang wrote: post #207
yamrzou wrote: post #194

Question for the mods (@dang): Do you not experience some kind of information overload from monitoring all those stories and comments on HN? How are you able to handle all of that? Otherwise I just want to say thank you for maintaining this forum and making sure it stays interesting.

At first it's like being paid to eat cheesecake: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... . You stop enjoying the cheesecake, and then you stop eating it. Later, it's like having one's brain sandblasted: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... . I don't remember most details but I pattern-match quickly. It's probably not so different from doing any other rather-specific…

You have created an expert system for HN comment threads implemented as a browser extension and with a knowledge base encoded as keyboard shortcuts.

Now all you need to do is to use machine learning to learn the shortcuts, and then use them. Then you will have automated half of your job :P

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

#226

Post by loceng »

mistermann wrote: post #215
mindcrime wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "political" content being so heavily suppressed is the community abdicating responsibility; Presumably every single member of this community is also a member of one or more other communities, some of which have an overt intention to be "more political". Given that, no one is being denied an outlet to share their views, give input, discuss, influence, vote, etc. when it comes to political events. So what is it…

> So what is it so particularly important that this community be "political" (I'll just hand wave around exactly what we mean by "political" for now, for the sake of discussion)? My opinion: because here you can find arguably the highest concentration of powerful and knowledgeable minds, and this is the sort of thing that the world needs working on these hard problems. I find the concern over serious issues that is o…

Exactly.

I know HN and dang aren't going to change, they're conservative let's say, and Twitter and Reddit aren't going to change either - and so I am working towards my own solution that I think will allow for adequate moderation and discussion management. I've had 5 years of severe chronic pain, only recently had a surgery that reduced my remaining pain by 25%+ and the specialist was finally able to diagnose 2 other nerve compression syndromes I have, and after those surgeries I believe I'll be able to go full speed ahead with my plans. I'll probably only do a "Show HN" in a year from now, but if you're interested in joining it earlier/once very basic MVP is launched and giving feedback I'd appreciate it; matt@engn.com

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

#227

Post by Akronymus »

WalterBright wrote: post #199
sveno wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only have 258 karma. You don't have to worry yet. When you get into the mid-thousands, that's when things get dicey. Tech is like card counting. If you actually figure the game out, you get punished and flushed out. If you keep gambling and losing and don't know why (because you're bad at what you're trying to do) there will be a seat at the table until everything is squeezed out of you.

I have 51000 karma. I am not playing any game. I just enjoy posting here, and try to make interesting comments. I far prefer it to Reddit and Slashdot, and rarely bother with them anymore. Probably all thanks to dang!

I made one submission that got a LOT of traction. which got me to around 1k karma.

Karma is useless.

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

#228

Post by axiomsEnd »

loceng wrote: post #182
axiomsEnd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it may that this community is international, so you either have tech talks, or a pile of discussions about politics in every part of the world.

Not really, there's still the rule of "new phenomenon" that makes it news/discussion worthy - like Canada's quick turn towards fascism, tyranny.

And why exactly Canada's turn is more intresting than, for example, Ukraine and Russia on a brink on war? I live in country, which for the last 7 years made a sharp turn towards rather literal authoritarism, but probably due to the issue being localised to Europe, not North America no one here would be fighting for the topic to be on the front page. Also, there are thousands of places create to discuss local and global events, less to discuss obscure IT topics.

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

#229

Post by dredmorbius »

WalterBright wrote: post #199
sveno wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only have 258 karma. You don't have to worry yet. When you get into the mid-thousands, that's when things get dicey. Tech is like card counting. If you actually figure the game out, you get punished and flushed out. If you keep gambling and losing and don't know why (because you're bad at what you're trying to do) there will be a seat at the table until everything is squeezed out of you.

I have 51000 karma. I am not playing any game. I just enjoy posting here, and try to make interesting comments. I far prefer it to Reddit and Slashdot, and rarely bother with them anymore. Probably all thanks to dang!

Similar karma, also post as I think. Often disagree with viewpoints expressed, including many of those of WalterBright's.

But I agree with him here that there's been no general penalty observed.

The only things I've noticed are a couple of people reaching out on account of my being on the leaderboard (no, I can't get your posts approved, yes, I will report your trying to do so), and having corresponded with the mod team for years (occasionally viewpoint issues, mostly boring submission stuff such as titles, disambiguated URLs, and occasional spam), what I think is a fairly good mutual understanding. Not always agreement, but general respect. I'll make my case or argument, and almost always accept the moderation response. I've had numerous submissions entered into the 2nd chance pool.

Overall calibre of discussion for an open and general-interest website is excellent. Occasional visiting expertise is an added plus.

My own submissions sometimes succeed, are occasionally flagged, and mostly just languish in the "new" page.

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

#230

Post by dredmorbius »

WalterBright wrote: post #200
WalterBright wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 51000 karma. I am not playing any game. I just enjoy posting here, and try to make interesting comments. I far prefer it to Reddit and Slashdot, and rarely bother with them anymore. Probably all thanks to dang!

I also have many unpopular views, and know I'm going to get downvoted plenty for them, but post them anyway.

My tactic is more trying to get people to either think through or substantiate their claims or positions than simply focusing on "unpopular opinions". Including in some recent exchanges with you. I make a point of challenging what I suspect are viewpoints adopted for conventionality rather than empiricism or reasoning.

That also occasionally seems to unsettle some readers. I think on balance it improves the site. All the more so when people respond or learn things.

(I've certainly learned from being challenged on my own comments, and make my own fair share of errors.)

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