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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)

#41

Post by axiomsEnd »

loceng wrote: post #22
awb wrote: 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…

Or it may that this community is international, so you either have tech talks, or a pile of discussions about politics in every part of the world.

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

#42

Post by mindcrime »

bin_bash wrote: post #20
awb wrote: 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…

As someone that's been here since the very beginning I think that tech has begun to be responsible for a larger portion of the world as a whole and this community has moved a small amount towards that direction as a result. I distinctly remember reading articles about major world events in the beginning as well so it's not entirely new, but it has grown a little. I don't think it's a problem, and this is coming from…

As someone that's been here since the very beginning I think that tech has begun to be responsible for a larger portion of the world as a whole and this community has moved a small amount towards that direction as a result.

As one of the people who thinks that more (too much more) political content has crept in here, I will say that I agree with you on the above. That is, I agree that it is becoming harder (albeit not impossible!) to disambiguate what is "tech" versus what is "politics" when it comes to things like the discussions around, eg "social media's affect on society" and etc.

And to be fair, talking about tech has always tended to lead to a certain amount of political discussion, especially in terms of things like encryption policy, DRM, etc. So even I wouldn't try to say we should have zero political content here. But it does seem like it's grown a bit more prevalent than I'd prefer.

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

#43

Post by tptacek »

jl2718 wrote: post #21
optimalsolver wrote: post #4

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?

Why bother making an argument that pretends people can't see the difference between 4chan /pol/ and MetaFilter? You don't even have to like MetaFilter to see that they're not the same species of site, and that the differences have nothing to do with a search for the truth.

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

#45

Post by dspillett »

jl2718 wrote: post #21
optimalsolver wrote: post #4

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?

> Do you seek the truth unconditionally

To truly be open to everything you have to make a lot of analysis and filtering effort. If you go to a lot of the sort of information sources the GP mentioned, the signal-to-noise ratio is so low that unless you have literally nothing to do with your day the chance of finding some useful truth is neg liable (sometimes even zero, because sometimes the signal is not just downed out by noise it is actively beaten away by it).

I seek truth as unconditionally as it is practical for me to do so.

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

#47

Post by hammock »

awb wrote: 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…

>In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed.

In the old days, politics and world news were not as intertwined with technology as they are today.

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

#48

Post by m_fayer »

optimalsolver wrote: post #4

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.

Here here. This and metafilter are my two islands of quality, both very much moderated.

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

#49

Post by dqv »

stickfigure wrote: post #27
awb wrote: 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…

How far back do you consider the "old days"? In the decade-plus I've been around, there has always been a small but steady stream of nontech political content. Despite the policy. My perception is that hasn't increased or decreased, though it does have periodic surges (say, US election season). I personally think it adds to the appeal of HN - in moderation, of course. Political conversations here are generally better…

Another thing people might not realize is that a lot of political comments die. With showdead enabled, you can see all sorts of junk that sounds more like the comment sections on political sites. Short comments that parrot the same talking points seen on TV die rather quickly.

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

#50

Post by hwers »

jl2718 wrote: post #21
optimalsolver wrote: post #4

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?

On a society level there should certainly be room for every type of voice. Governments shouldn't moderate forums. But there's definitely value in small communal focused bubbles like this as well, that isn't manipulated into derailment by some mob hive mind. (Speaking as someone very pro free speech.)
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