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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)

#251

Post by rocqua »

scott_s wrote: post #192
sokoloff wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karma scores are not front-and-center, though. Years ago, they switched to hide the score of an individual piece of content (such that an unvoted content is visually the same as one that has 100 upvotes [it might be sorted differently, but otherwise is indistinguishable]). To my mind, that was one of the better changes to the quality of community moderation.

Agreed. And HN has something I associate with it specifically: the back-and-forth argument, maintaining consistency in positions and reasoning, looking like two people taking. But, upon inspection, many people are involved. That, I think, is an example of the de-emphasis on identity.

This is indeed a very common thing I notice on HN. And yet, also quite weird when you think about it.

Thanks for verbalizing it. I didn't notice how remarkable this was before you said it.

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

#252

Post by abhinav22 »

batirch wrote: post #247

HackerNews is my go to place for any type of tech question. Recently, I had RSI because of related sports injury. I learnt VIM shortcuts, bought Microsoft Egonomic keyboard and logi mouse based on suggestions here. I am learning tones of stuff on technologies that I use daily. I really wish I had like-minded friends in real life who are hackernews fans. Hit me up if anyone currently in or visits Dubai, UAE.

Awesome, I am in Dubai too. Always cool to see another HN user here :-)

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

#253

Post by rkagerer »

I just want to say I love this community and am grateful for the heroic work Daniel (dang) and others have devoted through the years to maintain it, both technical and social.

The article showcased some of the more extreme comments out of what I've found to be, overall, a cornucopia of informative and thoughtful discourse.

This quote in particular was poignant and I think epitomizes a core value that makes this place special:

There’s often a strong wish to solve these contentious problems by changing the software, and, to the extent that we’ve tried things like that, we haven’t found it to work. What does seem to work better is personal interaction, over and over and over again, with individual users. That, case by case by case, seems to move the needle.

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

#254

Post by bergstromm466 »

mrspeaker wrote: post #113
rathel wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the noise is still there, even if it takes another form. Jokes, puns and nastiness are swapped for hacker-y style rants (we know how idiosyncratic many of hackers are) or people who talk about things they lack the knowledge of. Ironically, under front page HN submissions where comments would give some context, often there are none. Who upvoted them all the way to the front page? People who want to feel intelli…

Did you just do a hacker-y style rant?

...or maybe it’s important feedback? Why immediately assume malevolence or ill-intent?

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

#255

Post by js2 »

raverbashing wrote: post #249
js2 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mods are reviewing every flagged comment? I don't flag comments often, but I'll be even more careful now when I do if that's the case. Suggestion: when flagging a comment, allow the flagger to state which guideline they think the comment violates (I believe both reddit and FB do this).

I'm not sure how many of those flags are just misclicks or "I don't like this" button, but I guess the noise level is higher than expected

It’s easy to flag submissions by accident and I’ve definitely done that and had to unflag them. I flag submissions on purpose fairly often when I feel they are really poor quality, spam, or way off-topic for HN. I also flag submissions where the discussion has gone off the rails.

Flagging a comment takes extra work because you have to click through to the comment. I’ve never done that by accident and tried to only do it for comments that violate guidelines. Sometimes I subjectively feel a comment is trolling and will flag it. That’s not strictly against the guidelines and is a judgement call.

(The worst is when I accidentally hide a story. That’s way too easy to do and too hard to undo.)

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

#256

Post by TeMPOraL »

foota wrote: post #124
crispyporkbites wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What help is available to get show hn posts to the front page?

Following their post history, it looks like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 .

Thanks for linking that. TIL: sorting rank is a function of timestamp and votes, so when the mods push a story back to the front page, instead of special-casing the behavior, they just (get a computer to) fabricate a submission timestamp that puts the story in appropriate place on the front page.

It's a clever hack, alright, but dang if I didn't start to think I was going crazy, because something felt off with timestamps and surely the mods wouldn't be silently messing with those...

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

#257

Post by arminiusreturns »

dang wrote: post #162
Moru wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I feel a bit to much about a subject I open notepad and write the comment there and then just close the window if it feels inappropriate. This way there is no risk that I accidentally post it but it still feels like I got to say what I wanted to say. And then I can write something more levelheaded.

There's also the 'delay' setting that you can set in your HN user profile, which gives you 1-10 minutes to edit your comment before it becomes visible to others. This has saved my bacon on many occasions.

I really need to start using this, thank you so much! Not sure why I never payed much attention to those settings... but I know I edit my comments way too much after posting.

As for dang and his moderation, I appreciate very much his not-so-gentle nudging towards better conversation. I still fail frequently, but I try (and hope I am doing better). I had a particular ban that I got annoyed about because I thought the other guy deserved one too, but the real lesson was that it was about my response... and while it took a while, I took the correction to heart. Thanks dang for that, and for putting up with my more unothordox comments in a time when that is less and less tolerated.

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

#258

Post by fit2rule »

grawprog wrote: post #167
echelon wrote: post #32

Thanks dang! You've helped keep HN readable, corrected countless title and link errors, and prevented heated discussions from devolving into fights. I also am super thankful for your help getting my "Show HN" post to the front page. We all appreciate you.

I'm going to throw one out for dang here. I took your moderating personally when I first joined here, got banned for some comments I didn't think were that bad, hell i've made worse since, spent a while posting greyed out comments going off at dang, posted some not so shitty comments that got given a chance, realized I should try harder in my comments and just push my way back in by writing things that contribute bet…

I'm banned right now, and I find it refreshing.

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

#259

Post by saagarjha »

Razengan wrote: post #236
joe_the_user wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN likes to masquerade as some sort of upscale establishment, high and above the petty squabbles of Eslewhere, but in the end this place too devolves into a predictable echo chamber just like the rest of them, when it comes to any topic on which people have varied opinions. This isn't a place where dissenting opinions get upvotes. Why should they? I think a fair of posters with plenty of karma are still willing to po…

> I don't think hn is more broken than America or the Internet or whatever. But HN wants to be different, with its quirky rules like not being allowed to downvote posts and replies, or needing a certain amount of karma to be able to downvote comments, and the time limits on edits etc., instead of just following the basic Reddit model. So clearly someone at HN thought that a simple free-for-all system wasn't good enou…

Hacker News doesn't show comment points, though. And post points are easy to guess based on leaderboard position, age, and number of comments.

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

#260

Post by TeMPOraL »

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"?

Maybe a textual link next to the "Reply" and "Add Comment" buttons?
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