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Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

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Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#221

Post by kccqzy »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #213
kccqzy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us not use the word "thrive" or "quash" to avoid misunderstandings. To rephrase, I hope that on HN even minority opinions have reasonable rebuttals. Unfortunately what currently happens is people flag minority opinions with no discussion.

"flag" and "downvote" are two different tools with two different purposes. "downvote" seems more appropriate for for "this is not interesting and should be less prominent". "flag" seems more appropriate for "this should not be here at all". By way of an example, on a political story, if you say something merely unpopular, you'll get downvotes and replies; if you say something hateful, you'll (usually) get flagged.

I agree with you, but that's not what happens for polarizing topics that are technical in nature and not political. People on HN seem to flag comments rather than downvote them.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#222

Post by dooglius »

otterley wrote: post #212
dooglius wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a pretty mild controversy to me. How many people could even say whether their water has added fluoride?

What kind of evidence would satisfy you, then?

I have `showdead` enabled. It should not be the case that I find flagged posts that are good -- that are well written, don't break rules, etc -- but are flagged (presumably) due to expressing a dissenting view.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#224

Post by fwip »

cbeach wrote: post #90
Zak wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stating biological facts" is code for an opinion about how society should view trans people, which is off-topic for HN.

If stating certain facts is made illegal (by our democratically-elected representatives) then by all means HN will need to censor those facts for the sake of its own self-preservation. But until then, we should be free to state facts. > The old adage “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it” was once a touchstone of liberal society. Having been involved for most…

"Stating facts" does not mean you are following the other rules of the site.

For example, if you irrelevantly post "My software is on sale now for 10% off and here is the link!" on every story, everything in it is factual, but it's spam regardless.

I'm sure your specific facts that you want to post are in service of a particular social or political viewpoint you are trying to push, one that the people flagging find either off-topic or odious. And, given that you refuse to elaborate on what specific facts you think are banned, reveals that you think you only can convince people by being vague about what specifically you mean.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#226

Post by ttepasse »

layer8 wrote: post #126
airstrike wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, I think it's a bit unfair that this comment is currently downvoted as it's discussing moderation on a topic about moderation, so very much on-topic in this particular submission. On the other hand, I think it needs to be more specific in order to be valuable feedback. Which dissenting opinions? Can you provide specific examples of comments you think got unreasonably flagged? There's been an uptick in…

My understanding is that flagging does not imply moderation. When enough people flag a comment, it becomes dead automatically. There is, separately, the case that a moderator “kills” an unacceptable comment, but then it only appears as [dead] I believe (unless it was also being flagged by people). Someone correct me if this is wrong.

The value of "enough" is a moderation decision made by a human.

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#228

Post by dpifke »

cbeach wrote: post #62
bee_rider wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are flagging posts that they see as pushing an agenda. There isn’t some official separation of agenda-less and agenda-full ideas.

Posts that break guidelines should be flagged, and the bar should be pretty high. I don't think there is a guideline that bans posts from "pushing an agenda" (which would be very subjective)

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."

"Agendas" are often ideological battlegrounds. I flag comments, even those I agree with, that I recognize from experience are going to lead to the same tired, off-topic debates and flame wars.

Lately, I've also been maintaining a personal uBlock Origin filter list to hide certain prolific rule breakers. I would love if HN had an equivalent built-in "killfile"[0] functionality for auto-hiding submissions and comments. (This has been suggested to the admins, and was seemingly received favorably, but I'm sure it's a matter of resources.)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file

Re: Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator

#229

Post by nailer »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #206
nailer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A polite well worded post that disagrees with the mainstream will indeed still exist, but it will be moderated to unreadably transparent and hidden by default. It’s not a great experience. Meanwhile personal attacks and hyperbole regarding Elon Musk and Trump have become very common on HN.

> A polite well worded post that disagrees with the mainstream will indeed still exist, but it will be moderated to unreadably transparent and hidden by default. It’s not a great experience. Speaking from personal experience only: I have mostly not observed "polite, well-worded posts disagreeing with the mainstream" get downvoted to oblivion, unless some other factor also applies, such as that they're also things tha…

> If you post (by way of example only, please observe the use-mention distinction here) a polite version of "ads are good and adblockers are stealing", and get a massive pile of downvotes...

Sure, I imagine the grandparent poster means arguing something like "limiting access for extensons is good because they're often used to steal financial assets". Old extensions are sold, or cracked and updated to inclue malware.

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