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An Update on Hacker News

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Re: An Update on Hacker News

#231

Post by gohjo »

dang wrote: post #217
gohjo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, here's what you do: 1) you ban people who are rude and who you disagree with philosophically, while you do NOT ban the equally rude people who you agree with. For evidence of the above, look at users like etherael (and his other names; not sure if he tors/vpns or if you can find them), who are raging assholes on a semi-routine basis, but who aren't banned because Libertarian BitCoin Lover matches your values. And…

The people who hold the opposite ideology believe fervently that HN is biased the other way (liberal, politically correct, socialist, etc., are some of the terms they use). I realize it's a bit facile to say "both sides claim bias therefore we must be doing something right". But for what it's worth, no, we don't consider ideology when banning people, we consider incivility.

Which is why many toxic people have perfected the art of being an enormous asshole while being "civil". Because they know that you allow that to happen.

As to your claim that you aren't soft on Libertarians... LOL. I've actually A/B tested this, saying the same toxic shit but with the positions swapped. Upvoted in one case, banned in the other.

Part of the mechanic might be that you never even see the Libertarian version because it doesn't get flagged in the first place, despite being identical in profanity, intelligence, and toxicity to the version that does get flagged. but whatever the causes, there's a real and definite bias as to what positions are tolerated here.

---

Response to below: Etherael gives good conversation like:

"Congratulations, you are a retard."

"I have no hopes for you at all."

"Get off that lawn, you old crank."

"Why is this being downvoted? Are people really so naive as to not be aware of this?"

---

" Because when you present a point in this way with this kind of language and in this kind of behavior, you just lose everything."

You're right. I have the same amount of respect for dang as he has for the public at large. And that's my fault. I should be better, even if I really believe that HN is worse and less useful each year, and that dang is poorly suited to moderation.

He's probably a smart guy, but we're all just apes, and he's one who isn't the right fit for the job.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#232

Post by cm2012 »

vectorpush wrote: post #111

How does HN's moderation staff feel about users who are dead, completely oblivious to it, but who continue to post, sometimes for years after the fact without any kind of warning that they are wasting their time. Sometimes I check the comment history of these dead posters; 80% of the time it appears like they are a genuine troll who was correctly moderated out of the community, however, a significant portion of the t…

Apparently, this is the comment that got my old account banned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4342935. I'm not sure though, it's just the last one on the profile before they go dead.

I did like my old account.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#233

Post by PavlovsCat »

existencebox wrote: post #156
dang wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable. We don't ban people be…

For what its worth, validity of the hellbanning aside, I do agree with the points he brought up re: emergent problems in scored boards. The karma system does tend to contribute heavily to the echo-chambery nature of many of these discussion forums; and while I certainly think HN is in a much better state than any others that come to mind, it's not immune. (Mentioning because to me, this point is far closer to home th…

Maybe sorting options would help? I'd prefer to sort responses by time (and maybe some javascript to mark new comments since last visit on the page, but I dream..), or even sorted randomly because why not. Maybe serve that from a static cache that only gets refreshed every 5 minutes or so? I would still use it, gladly.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#234

Post by etcet »

tptacek wrote: post #73
jonnathanson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments." In theory, no, downvoting is not supposed to be used to disagree. It's supposed to be used to move "stupid" comments (inarticulate, illogical, poorly argued, etc.) down towards the bottom of the screen. Flagging, on the other hand, is meant to call out wildly inappropriate, offensi…

That's a reasonable take on what downvoting is for, but the HN take is that it's better to downvote a disagreement than to write a noisy bad comment to express the same disagreement.

Wouldn't it be better to upvote the disagreements you agree with?

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#235

Post by Kiro »

cm2012 wrote: post #232
vectorpush wrote: post #111

How does HN's moderation staff feel about users who are dead, completely oblivious to it, but who continue to post, sometimes for years after the fact without any kind of warning that they are wasting their time. Sometimes I check the comment history of these dead posters; 80% of the time it appears like they are a genuine troll who was correctly moderated out of the community, however, a significant portion of the t…

Apparently, this is the comment that got my old account banned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4342935 . I'm not sure though, it's just the last one on the profile before they go dead. I did like my old account.

I very much doubt that was the comment that got you banned.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#236

Post by gohjo »

etherael wrote: post #230
gohjo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, here's what you do: 1) you ban people who are rude and who you disagree with philosophically, while you do NOT ban the equally rude people who you agree with. For evidence of the above, look at users like etherael (and his other names; not sure if he tors/vpns or if you can find them), who are raging assholes on a semi-routine basis, but who aren't banned because Libertarian BitCoin Lover matches your values. And…

The worst I ever do is respond rudely to people who have already attacked me, and even there I try to avoid doing so. As for using other names that's just flatly false, as is any gloating about baiting people into flamewars and laughing when they get banned. I haven't even used irc in over a year. Basically I have no idea what you're talking about.

Your post history has multiple occurrences of you calling people retarded.

You're so full of shit it's fucking ridiculous. Just fuck off back into your whole, you professional troll.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#237

Post by Arjuna »

vectorpush wrote: post #111

How does HN's moderation staff feel about users who are dead, completely oblivious to it, but who continue to post, sometimes for years after the fact without any kind of warning that they are wasting their time. Sometimes I check the comment history of these dead posters; 80% of the time it appears like they are a genuine troll who was correctly moderated out of the community, however, a significant portion of the t…

Maybe an experiment with pending comments [1][2][3] would be beneficial?

[1] Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761

[2] Pending Comments Update

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304

[3] Pending Comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/pending

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#238

Post by dang »

rudolf0 wrote: post #211
dang wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable. We don't ban people be…

>Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? >their claims are nearly always false. >perennial sob story Hmm, I wonder where these fall on Graham's disagreement pyramid... Seriously, how hard is it to tell the guy "shoot me an email and I'll look into the ban" and then make your judgment after that? Maybe the guy's bullshitting us. Or maybe he really…

> Seriously, how hard is it to tell the guy "shoot me an email and I'll look into the ban" and then make your judgment after that?

You're absolutely right. I'll add that to my comment.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#239

Post by lucb1e »

> To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately.

That seems like a lot of manual work, but maybe it needs to be. Perhaps it could be part automated by revoking flagging privileges when others upvoted the post? If it really are post nobody wants on the site, surely very few people (if anyone) would upvote it. So if it gets both flagged and upvoted, it are probably flags from users that disagree and you can pretty consistently revoke their permissions.

Just an idea, I don't have the data to test this.

Thanks a lot for all the work you are doing and have done so far on the site. I agree that the quality has increased!

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#240

Post by btreecat »

dang wrote: post #34
btreecat wrote: post #18

> The threshold for flagging is low (only 30 karma), so everyone can help there. So I guess I am not able to help.

An earlier draft of this post that Sam sent me had "nearly everyone can help there". I'll ask him to put it back. But it's not like this is much of a barrier. Even this one comment moved you significantly (as of right now at least).

Fortunately enough people "agreed" with me to bump my total karma just over the threshold.

The problem is this comment was a total fluke really. I have _tried_ engaging in comments before with the results of only a vote or two usually.

Had my previous comment not been up-voted so much, it likely would have taken me another 10 comments to reach the threshold for just flagging.

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