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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)

#241

Post by YATA0 »

foldr wrote: post #185

One thing that puzzles me is why HN does not have a policy of banning users who post explicitly racist comments. I sometimes (unwisely) get sucked into arguing with these people. However, this is essentially impossible to do within the site guidelines, as you either have to have a respectful discussion with a racist (which only legitimizes them) or call them out for being a racist (which isn't allowed). I'm aware tha…

>One thing that puzzles me is why HN does not have a policy of banning users who post explicitly racist comments.

HN does have such policy.

The issue is some users think anything right of Trotsky is "racist", "White supremacy culture", etc. It's a term that has almost lost all practical meaning in $CURRENT_YEAR.

>But I'm happy to supply on request.

I'd love to see some examples, because practically every instance I've seen of racism in the comments section has been [flagged] quickly. I flag it everytime I come across it, and I rarely come across it these days.

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

#242

Post by fennecfoxy »

zozbot234 wrote: post #64
ksec wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I "think", most of those debate ties with technology one way or another. Say Joe Rogan's issue may not have been allowed on HN if it wasn't for Spotify. And more broadly speaking, what are the roles of technology in an extremely political sensitive climate. Should Telegram do A or B, and what about Whatsapp, Facebook moderation, Apple App Store disallow certain group, is that a curation problem or a political problem…

inb4 HN stories about Canadian truckers are just gorilla advertising for self-driving trucks! New marketing slogan: "Self-driving truck don't need to get vaccine" /s

Guerrilla.

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

#243

Post by foldr »

dang wrote: post #210
foldr wrote: post #185

One thing that puzzles me is why HN does not have a policy of banning users who post explicitly racist comments. I sometimes (unwisely) get sucked into arguing with these people. However, this is essentially impossible to do within the site guidelines, as you either have to have a respectful discussion with a racist (which only legitimizes them) or call them out for being a racist (which isn't allowed). I'm aware tha…

We do ban such accounts, and I've personally banned god knows how many of them. You're always welcome to email links to hn@ycombinator.com if you want us to take a look. Keep in mind that we don't see everything that gets posted here—not even close. For outrageously bigoted comments, the odds are high that we just haven't seen it yet. Any sufficiently large open forum is going to get those, and given that we don't kn…

It's true that you'd still be criticised by some people even if you did a perfect job. (And I do think that you do a great job!) Still, a specific criticism can be on target even if criticism in general is inevitable.

Joe Biden could point out, correctly, that he'll receive criticism both from the left and the right whatever choices he makes. But so what? It doesn't follow from this that he's actually making the right decisions, or that he's found some kind of perfect middle way, or that he doesn't have any discernible political leanings. Nor does it follow that anyone who thinks that Joe Biden is left (or right) of center has been deceived by some kind of statistical artefact or cognitive illusion – though no doubt some of them may have been.

So I'm not sure that I buy the claim that HN is striking the roughly the right balance because roughly as many people call you a Commie as call you a Nazi. I mean, who cares what people hurling thoughtless insults think? Since when were they the instrument by which we calibrate the range of acceptable discourse?

One possibly constructive suggestion. It might help if there was some kind of explicit indication that an account had been banned. It would be reassuring to see this when stumbling across some horrible post from a negative karma account. I bet a lot of these accounts have been banned, but there's no visible indication of that.

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

#244

Post by shepardrtc »

I've gotten lit up by dang a few times - and I usually disagree with his criticism, though in retrospect he's probably correct - but I've always been impressed with his dedication to this site. It takes a lot for someone to be a moderator, especially with the amount of text coming through this site. I've often wondered if was actually an AI that gained sentience yet doesn't realize that he's an AI.

> Gackle, whose name is pronounced “Gack-lee” and who declined to share his age, is a muscular, bald, and loquacious father of two and a devoted fan of the Canadian sketch-comedy show “The Kids in the Hall.”

So... an AI that can do deepfakes as well? Amazing.

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

#245

Post by k__ »

bnralt wrote: post #140
k__ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some hidden gems, that's right. But I had the impression that you habe to ignore a swath of racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, and conspiracy theory to find them.

Personally, I've found that I've had to avoid hate and misinformation just about anywhere I go on the internet. I think there's a tendency for people to get used to the hate and misinformation that's acceptable for their in-group and become blind to it, thinking that their corner of the internet is devoid of it. For instance, many posts here about geopolitics appear to me as xenophobic and full of false information (…

True.

Usually the general sentiment on HN seems to be quite similar to that of the unmoderated communities. It's just that people here are more sophisticated in telling you why poor people had it coming.

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

#246

Post by f1refly »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #197
wormslayer666 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what sort of content you're looking for. Reasoned discussion on contentious issues demands considerable moderation, but anonymous platforms are great for legitimate niche/curiosity-driven topics. For example of the second, there was a thread on /ck/ a few weeks back where some guy (probably a grad student; I'll never know) stumbled on a few $K of food lab equipment. Thread went on with a variety of expe…

That thread on /ck/ was legendary! I've also seen some pretty funny "ITT: Pretend we're HN" threads on /g/. The Overlap between 4chan and HN seems to be larger than it originally appears...

I'd be suprised if most people on 4chan's /g/ and other anonymous technology boards wouldn't frequent hacker news on a regular basis. The individuals behaviour just depends on the sites social norms, so they're not a nuisance here.

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

#247

Post by mistermann »

loceng wrote: post #226
mistermann wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 othe…

> I know HN and dang aren't going to change, they're conservative let's say

I'm not quite sure what people "are", but that there is some sort of a fundamental (and I think unrealized problem) seems unmistakable to me. And I agree that they can't change on their own, but I don't believe that change cannot be coerced - at least, it is highly speculative.

> so I am working towards my own solution that I think will allow for adequate moderation and discussion management.

I am very interested, as I have been working on the same thing (but only conceptually so far), I will send you an email.

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

#248

Post by dang »

foldr wrote: post #243
dang wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do ban such accounts, and I've personally banned god knows how many of them. You're always welcome to email links to hn@ycombinator.com if you want us to take a look. Keep in mind that we don't see everything that gets posted here—not even close. For outrageously bigoted comments, the odds are high that we just haven't seen it yet. Any sufficiently large open forum is going to get those, and given that we don't kn…

It's true that you'd still be criticised by some people even if you did a perfect job. (And I do think that you do a great job!) Still, a specific criticism can be on target even if criticism in general is inevitable. Joe Biden could point out, correctly, that he'll receive criticism both from the left and the right whatever choices he makes. But so what? It doesn't follow from this that he's actually making the righ…

I agree, and am not making a Goldilocks argument (i.e. we must be just right because we're in the middle) - that's not only a non sequitur, it's a cognitive bias (you can make anything seem reasonable by framing it that way).

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

We do mark some accounts as banned in extreme cases, but it's a manual switch. We added it a year or two ago because some people would forget that they had turned on 'showdead' in their profile and then get upset about all the dreck they were seeing on HN. If anyone notices a particularly egregious account they're welcome to bring it to our attention at hn@ycombinator.com and we can turn that switch on.

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

#249

Post by samstave »

jq-r wrote: post #141
glup wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of reminds me of what happened to the Slashdot... everyone was playing video games, hacking with Arduinos, doing silly things with homelabs, arguing about OS X vs. Linux, etc. and then suddenly so many people in the community moved up through the ranks and started to interface with politics, policy, and international business, just as those things started to really change with tech. So ya, tech overflows it…

I think slashdot went down with users when they introduced the massively unpopular "web 2.0" redesign. It was unusable in that layout and they never reverted it back. I think the only users there are the ones using the old layout and know how to turn it on. Shame really as it it was the best automoderated system I've ever seen.

I'm replying for my own self-history ;

Slashdot was also a heavily BOFH type of site...

If you broke from the narrative, you were massively attacked...

That said, I was a very early user in /. - so much so that some of the prominent users I hired as linux tech consultants prior to LinuxCare... (long story and ego-s begone)

/. waned in my regular internet consumption though...

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

#250

Post by samstave »

dekhn wrote: post #30

I mostly appreciate the mods (well, dang is the only one I've interacted with) but I'm pretty tired of being scolded for occasionally making one-sentence comments that lack substance, while in the meantime, the site tolerates people who write pages of absolutely untrue covid vax denialism but don't get any comments from the mods. At this point I'm actively looking for a replacement community that focuses much more on…

All right, listen here jerk!

;

>>absolutely untrue covid vax denialism

Yeah, So a bit of background -- Both of my brothers are fully vax'd and what not. But take my elder brother:

- Personal physician (flight surgeon) to the joint chiefs at the pentagon

- Commander of the 10th medical wing in the USAF (80,000 servicemen and families)

- Director of the entire VA for the state of AK

- Now the CMO for a large hospital group

We have a LONG history in medicine. (i personally have built multiple hospitals (tech side) but my family has been in medicine for ~80 years at this point...

Yeah, I have a heart condition, and I will NEVER get a vax due to my fear of myocarditis... (inflamation of the tissue surrounding the heart) (exacerbated if you have any form of heart disease)

denialism as you call it, requires data, TRUSTED DATA - and medications require long-term review to determine their safety.

NONE of this applies to covid vax?

Nuremburg ring a bell at all? Consent is a word, no? Have you ever consented to rape? Shall you now be forced to accept something sans data, "because we tell you to"?

--

I absolutely detest the idea that people who are anti vax are somehow 'wrong'

It is a messy topic, but I am not vax denialist but here is a cool fact for you:

When my middle daughter was ~3 she got the chicken pox vaccine just before we flew to chicago to build out the Salesforce Office I was managing...

After arrival in Chicago, our intention was to go to the Zoo the next day...

Late in the envening my daughter was fussing...

She got the chicken pox FROM THE VACCINE

She spent over a week in the hotel room in a calamine bath and we had to extend our trip another week because she couldnt fly due to the pox.

I personally got the chicken pox TWICE (at 6 months and at 14 years) -- AND I WAS VACCINATED.

My elder brother also expresses I should not get the vaccine.

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