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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#531

Post by crumpets »

crispyambulance wrote: post #378
cloakandswagger wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data is the best tool we have. It can be cherry-picked and tainted for sure, but I'd much prefer debates be governed by that instead of whose argument is the most "humane"/morally superior

> prefer debates be governed by [cherry-picked data] instead of whose argument is the most "humane" To be overly generous, that's a false dichotomy. There's a time and place for humane arguments and, in the absence of complete "data" (whatever THAT means), that may be all you have. At the end of the day, we're all emotional creatures and this often justifiably dominates considerations of human affairs. Not everything…

>"data" (whatever THAT means)

Holy shit. Observable evidence.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#532

Post by soneil »

cesarb wrote: post #260
soneil wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fat-finger a lot, especially on mobile where these tiny little arrows are a challenge. And one thing I notice is that since both the arrows disappear, you're never quite sure if you did. You have to question your fat fingers yourself, and if you're unsure, Undo gives you the option to take a second shot. But you're never entirely sure.

> And one thing I notice is that since both the arrows disappear, you're never quite sure if you did. [...] But you're never entirely sure. The undo link says "unvote" when you upvoted, and "undown" when you downvoted. And yeah, after every single click on one of these arrows, I check the undo link to make sure I clicked the right one.

I must admit I never noticed that! Apparently I don't downvote often.

The more you know - Thanks!

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#533

Post by [deleted] »

cc81 wrote: post #503
cowabungacode wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "alt-right" is mostly a boogieman for talking heads. No, it's not. The alt-right uses anonymous web boards like this one (but not HN to my knowledge) to coordinate and celebrate mass shootings that are directly admitted to be race-focused and white-supremacist-led. (Edit: The alt-right does use HN to spread hate and their "ideology", but I have not seen direct specific calls to violence here) > Groups labeled "…

> No, it's not. The alt-right uses anonymous web boards like this one (but not HN to my knowledge) to coordinate and celebrate mass shootings that are directly admitted to be race-focused and white-supremacist-led. (Edit: The alt-right does use HN to spread hate and their "ideology", but I have not seen direct specific calls to violence here) I'm not sure they are calling themselves alt-right or match that descriptio…

[deleted]

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#534

Post by crumpets »

fzeroracer wrote: post #484
ethbro wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that still an improvement over the alternative though? If the fundamental nature of short-duration comment consumption is antithetical to fact checking, that's certainly a problem. But it's still superior to uncited points, as it is ultimately verifiable. In a choice between the two, I'll take the ill (claims appearing more supported than they are) for the good (inculcating a culture of transparent citation).

I'd honestly argue that it can be worse. If someone cites a claim with a bogus citation and no one chooses to challenge it, then that becomes something that's not just an opinion, but something that's viewed to be scientific fact. For example have you ever been in an argument where you recall reading a paper or statistic, but don't have it on hand? What if that statistic was a false correlation drummed up by a highly…

> but something that's viewed to be scientific fact.

By who? Do you seriously read an HN comment that states something you didn't already know with a citation you don't bother to click and then just go forward assuming it's scientific fact?

I don't even take publications themselves as scientific facts until they have been reliably reproduced or provide ample evidence.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#535

Post by the8472 »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #402

Yep strict moderation is required for (quasi) anonymous internet discussion sites. Strict moderation is why olde forums like Somethingawful don't have nazis, but weak/no moderation twitter is full of them.

Twitter may be full of nazis, but when I am looking at a feed of cute cat pictures I don't see any of them.

That they merely exist shouldn't matter, what matters is giving users the tools they need to look at the content they want to see instead of random crap injected by others. Choose your filter bubble.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#536

Post by azangru »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #118
azangru wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN's prevailing attitude (e.g. cloudflare-shouldnt-ban- ). Funny, I thought HN's prevailing attitude in the case of the recent ban of 8chan was, hell yeah, good riddance to those reprehensible twats. (Which, personally, annoyed me, because I believe that even the deplored should have a space for communication.)

Could you clarify why you thought this? What evidence do you have that supports this? The big thread shows that the top comment agrees that 8chan should be left alone. [0] and the comment chain shows that there seems to be something like a significant minority against 8chan, but it doesn’t appear to be a prevailing majority. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395

> Could you clarify why you thought this?

I learnt of the news about 8chan from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20616055 — which was on the HN’s first page before it was replaced by the slightly longer thread you linked to. The top comment in that thread is decidedly against the chans.

There’s also been a lot of mentioning of Popper and his paradox of intolerance in these threads. A post [1] in the thread you referred to (it also was among the top ones when that thread appeared on the front page), for example, began by saying that "Popper taught us that we can't be tolerant towards intolerants" ("taught us" implying that this statement has grown to become general wisdom).

If HN’s prevailing sentiment has since turned in favor of 8chan, I am very happy to hear that.

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20611816

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#537

Post by mikemotherwell »

jasim wrote: post #386
IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #68

This article does seem to get at the essence of HN, appreciative of dang and sctb's humanity while not ignoring the problems. Personally, I would actually consider it an excellent demonstration of the fallibility of one of HN's favourite tropes, Gell-Mann amnesia. If there's one critique that I believe is paramount it's that HN has, due to its readership, an ethical obligation that goes beyond making discussions all…

The political discussions that make their way into HN are very US-centric and that excludes me and countless others who actively participate here. A lot of such discussions are not real enough to me - they are problems of a much more privileged world. If we were to have truly political discussions, we'll need to include all the other countries of the world, which none of us would want. There are other places where po…

I was shaking my head in disagreement, until I read:

> If we were to have truly political discussions, we'll need to include all the other countries of the world, which none of us would want

That's a really, really good point, and I'll keep it in mind when political topics arise.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#538

Post by segfaultbuserr »

mushufasa wrote: post #455

I liked this article, though I think it missed the best part of Hacker News. To me, Hacker News can feel like walking through Dumbledore's office -- magical and mind-bending collections of incredible devices, ideas, and oddities. Just yesterday someone posted a comment with links to UI design libraries that I've been subconsciously wishing for in my dreams (humaans, undraw.co), and I used it in a product demo. As a s…

I like this article as well.

But I think while it legitimately criticizes parts of the Hacker News and Silicon Valley culture of missing humanism and ethics (it quoted "they’re people who are convinced that they are too special for rules, [...] Society [...] is a logic puzzle where you just have to find the right set of loopholes to win the game. [...] Silicon Valley has an ethics problem, and ‘Hacker’ ‘News’ is where it’s easiest to see."), it also ignored the fact that Hacker News is not only a Silicon Valley backyard (although often is, but the matter of fact is:), it does attack unethical practices in technology as well, sometimes contrarian.

For example, just now, I saw a submission called "Western Academia Helps Build China’s Automated Racism", one comment says,

* There are almost no ethical uses for facial recognition. It is a technology for criminals.

* Is that racist? This algorithm seems to be specifically built to detect non-ethnic Chinese faces to further discrimination.

Also, yesterday's submission of "Can ads on a page read my password?", the top comment harshly criticized targeted ads:

* I really wish awareness of this reached a wider audience, third party advertising is a terrible blight on the web that has been allowed to grow and fester - it supplies no value and compromises both browser security and our peace of mind - being bombarded by these things constantly is training most of us to ignore a lot more and focus on short focused bursts of information...

If the article can add just a single example, it could make the story be more balanced, without affecting the overall theme and tone of the article.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#539

Post by whiteopinions »

nkurz wrote: post #342
whiteopinions wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I like the username. What's wrong with it? >Why a new account? Because I wanted the username.

> What's wrong with it? Well, it's certainly going to cause many people to discount your opinion because they presume you have an racist agenda. It looks like a username consciously chosen to create offense while being plausibly deniable. Please be cautious of causing harm to a community for sake of social commentary. Needlessly creating offense is a negative, but maybe you can figure out how to use the dissonance to…

>it's certainly going to cause many people to discount your opinion because they presume you have an racist agenda

I'm sorry, what?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#540

Post by deburo »

vfc1 wrote: post #493
cowabungacode wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would have left long ago if flagging had continued to be used to kill topics. Flagging is frequently used to kill topics still. Climate change articles are still flagged mercilessly, before any discussion starts and without regard for the high-quality of the articles. dang as a moderator has specifically said that articles about Russia hacking elections are penalized prior to any votes or comments starting (edit:…

This is true, still today I saw a BBC article stating that July was the hottest month recorded - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49165476?intlin... A minute later I go back to the home page and it was wiped out without a single discussion comment. I don't see any reason why this type of articles should be taken down, they are scientific in nature and highly relevant. Things like climate change denial sho…

>If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

There's plenty of climate change reporting about the web. I just don't care to see HN lists articles that are ultra hot topics. You just get the same comments over and over again.

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