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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)

#31
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more that tech (and tech companies) become more subjects of political debate.

People want to debate politics, but submissions about politics get killed. Therefore people end up using any excuse to debate politics in any thread.

I see tons of threads without political debate. I actually think the majority of threads are not political.

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

#32
post #22
post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

I think "political" content being so heavily suppressed is the community abdicating responsibility; and also is a sign of how much users here aren't able to emotionally regulate to have civil conversation [which is a signal of strength, of health - physical and mental health, mastery of oneself, self-control] - so much practically everything important - including the Emergency Act (war measures act aka martial law) b…

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 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)?

Personally I come here (mainly) to hear about / discuss obscure programming libraries, new programming languages, startup strategies, new scientific breakthroughs, etc. I get enough of "general politics" and "world news" elsewhere... I'd really rather not see it here as well. But, that's just me.

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

#33
post #21

I've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech" loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hit the back button pretty quick.

Do you seek the truth unconditionally, or only truth that fits within your pre-conceived notions of acceptability? Can you imagine a society where an objective truth was unacceptable, and denial of that truth was harmful to themselves or others?

To be frank, often when I see this glossy pamphlet cover for free speech, you open up the pamphlet and see a bunch of child porn, antisemitism and/or racism.

The issue with free speech platforms is they attract a crowd of people whose only narrative is one that can't be said in other places. It isn't a narrative of truth, it is one of hate and bigotry.

I've seen few examples where objective truth is banned. I have, however, seen a lot of Nazis get banned.

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

#34
post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics

Good luck with that. One person’s apolitical feel good story is a nefarious propaganda piece in another person’s eyes.

(Interpreting “about politics” to also encompass “political”.)

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

#35
post #22
post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

I think "political" content being so heavily suppressed is the community abdicating responsibility; and also is a sign of how much users here aren't able to emotionally regulate to have civil conversation [which is a signal of strength, of health - physical and mental health, mastery of oneself, self-control] - so much practically everything important - including the Emergency Act (war measures act aka martial law) b…

No post body was provided.

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

#36
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more that tech (and tech companies) become more subjects of political debate.

People want to debate politics, but submissions about politics get killed. Therefore people end up using any excuse to debate politics in any thread.

Still better than being unregulated.

I don't come here to have political discussion, I want to find out what's interesting in tech, not to engage in flame wars (except the vim/emacs kind, that I fight).

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

#37
post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

Without getting into the details of each particular submission I’m curious if you think the submission standards have remained consistent throughout the years or if your curation philosophy has changed at all and if so, in what ways?

There was a change a while back that made the front page less volatile, around that time you started seeing stories merged more often, and traditional news creeping in a bit more. I think it is sort of like a lightning rod to keep the rest of the front page pure. Before that stories would show up and get flagged constantly, and the front page would change multiple times an hour.

One thing that I have noticed is that 2020 was a bit of an eternal september for hn. Many times I see people posting things that don't really seem to work with the hn style, but they have a fairly high karma count and an account that was created in or after 2020. I think maybe a bunch of people suddenly working from home felt safe to use the internet without a boss over their shoulder, and needed a bit of community they were missing from not going in the office. This influx has watered down the ability of hn to aggressively flag/downvote politics, dumb jokes, etc.

Though, all in all it's still mostly the same it has been in the last 10 years or so.

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

#38
post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

Would you consider, for example, Musk moving to Texas, or that same state's power grid failing to be political stories?

Both these ostensibly tech-related stories have strong political undercurrents.

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

#39
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…

1. I've never seen a 'absolutely untrue covid vax denialism' that doesn't get downvoted to death here.

2. Just because others make bad comments, it doesn't mean you should, too.

3. Your type of bad comment is the one there's a rule against, while there's no explicit rule about being wrong.

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

#40
post #6

Question for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news s…

Without getting into the details of each particular submission I’m curious if you think the submission standards have remained consistent throughout the years or if your curation philosophy has changed at all and if so, in what ways? There was a change a while back that made the front page less volatile, around that time you started seeing stories merged more often, and traditional news creeping in a bit more. I thin…

I think it's quite different now, the gap between HN and lobste.rs content is growing wider and wider, lobste.rs to me represents more closely what "old" HN was like
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