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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)

#61

Post by rv-de »

doc_gunthrop wrote: post #52
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #38

When I first came to HN from reddit, I posted some jokey nonsense comment. A moderator gently scolded me. I really disliked it. Now, I see the wisdom of keeping the jokes to a minimum and focusing in thoughtful discussion. So thank you, mods.

That's what impressed me when I first came across HN - the signal-to-noise ratio. The comments sections were always filled with thoughtfully written comments that provided useful insights into interesting topics. Thank you @dang for your diligence and commitment to the task.

username checks out

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

#62

Post by dang »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #51
tptacek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really none of our business.

I spent years of my life working with him, directly and indirectly. I got to know him on a personal level. None of your business, perhaps, but notice not one thank-you in this entire thread has been directed at sctb, and most readers probably have no clue who I’m talking about. That’s how little recognition he got. Scott Bell was instrumental to the business of Hacker News. He contributed in a thousand ways, both sma…

You did not spend "years of your life" working with Scott. You have, though, spent years trying to stir up trouble on HN in an astonishing variety of frankly very creative ways. This misleading story is the latest in that long sequence.

Although we've banned you many times in many incarnations, we've always been generous with letting you back into the community—indeed, generous at a level that most people simply would not believe if they'd seen what you put us through. That generosity is conditional, however, on you keeping this meta/drama fixation out of your posts here. So please stop, and please don't restart, not along this line nor any other.

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

#63

Post by alexashka »

Moderation is great.

Making changes that reduce the need for moderation are even better.

If you were to ask yourself: how much more could we be doing with a big community of people who are mostly highly educated and technical?

Is forums in the form we've had them since 1990 the optimal medium for a community?

I don't think anyone would say yes and yet I don't see any effort on behalf of the people who run this place to experiment and do anything remotely interesting.

The moderators on here do an admirable job but it ultimately feels to me like they're cops who are being asked to arrest people for smoking a joint. The solution to better policing is less policing, more community via better laws, the solution to better moderation is less moderation, more community, via better use of technology.

For a place that talks about new, this place feels exactly like what I had 20+ years ago elsewhere.

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

#64

Post by throwaway4220 »

This place is amazing, and I learned so much about a variety of topics. Most of my MD colleagues use Twitter or Facebook, where the signal-to-noise is much, much lower. I assume there have been plenty of spin-offs from HN (I would LOVE to have a similar forum for discussing medical issues; Can I fork the codebase somehow?), but I do think the secret sauce is moderation.

Also, politically, I'm "an enlightened centrist" lol and nearly all of the political spectrum here is represented well IMO, and even personal attacks/strawman arguments are not immediately banned but first discouraged.

Thanks dang!

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

#65

Post by dang »

alexashka wrote: post #63

Moderation is great. Making changes that reduce the need for moderation are even better. If you were to ask yourself: how much more could we be doing with a big community of people who are mostly highly educated and technical? Is forums in the form we've had them since 1990 the optimal medium for a community? I don't think anyone would say yes and yet I don't see any effort on behalf of the people who run this place…

If you have concrete suggestions about how to reduce the need for moderation, I'd love to hear them.

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

#67

Post by sneak »

iratewizard wrote: post #10
julianlam wrote: post #6

One thing I've always wondered, is whether moderating a forum like HN (or any forum, really) is mentally stimulating enough to do day in and day out. As a web developer, the more I do the more I crave novel challenges. Writing CRUD apps or getters and setters gets old fast. Are there novel challenges with content moderation?

Novel challenges? Feigning impartiality when the topic being discussed impacts a YC startup is up there.

I have written comments here that could be interpreted as harshly critical of specific YC companies, and they stand or fall on their own merits and community votes, not mod bias. They do a good job here.

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

#68

Post by Vaslo »

I’ve put up a bunch of stories, most get no traction. However on the weekend once in a while I get a message from HN that one of my stories is pretty interesting and I should repost it. While every other service relies completely on some algorithm, it’s good to see a place like HN where people are jumping in and trying to stabilize things.

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

#69

Post by alexashka »

dang wrote: post #65
alexashka wrote: post #63

Moderation is great. Making changes that reduce the need for moderation are even better. If you were to ask yourself: how much more could we be doing with a big community of people who are mostly highly educated and technical? Is forums in the form we've had them since 1990 the optimal medium for a community? I don't think anyone would say yes and yet I don't see any effort on behalf of the people who run this place…

If you have concrete suggestions about how to reduce the need for moderation, I'd love to hear them.

Yes, poll people who invest in YC start-ups if they'd be willing to invest in start-ups that improve upon HackerNews forums.

That should generate a few million.

Then hire somebody with a proven track record to oversee proposals for additions to existing HackerNews.

In other words, get money, then crowdsource ideas, then pay people to implement ideas with most votes, then provide beta tests, then provide HackerNews add-ons for a small fee that would cover the expenses. Run it as a non-profit.

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Has this been tried before? Is this the first time you hear of such a proposal?

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I'll throw in two more ideas - make any action taken by a moderator public, with blanked out content that is flagrantly illegal (links to child pornography)

Make it possible to dispute any moderator action for a fee, in other words move from a dictatorship to a democracy.

HackerNews need not be a dictatorship where what moderators think is good, is what's going to be enforced upon the rest.

There can be thousands of HackerNews that are filtered, sorted and moderated differently, based on people's preferences. This would be trivially made possible by asking people who'd be interested in such a service, to pay a small monthly fee.

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Trivial change - please make it possible to block specific users based on name/how long they've been registered on site for X-number of days. For example if I see someone routinely making comments I am not interested in, who does it benefit for me to continue reading their input? It only causes tension, it's like having to live with people you are fundamentally opposed to with no recourse other than leaving (no longer reading the comments section)

I predict this feature alone would decrease tensions among regular readers significantly, making your job easier.

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

#70

Post by saagarjha »

throwaway4220 wrote: post #64

This place is amazing, and I learned so much about a variety of topics. Most of my MD colleagues use Twitter or Facebook, where the signal-to-noise is much, much lower. I assume there have been plenty of spin-offs from HN (I would LOVE to have a similar forum for discussing medical issues; Can I fork the codebase somehow?), but I do think the secret sauce is moderation. Also, politically, I'm "an enlightened centrist…

Twitter can have a very high signal-to-noise ratio if you follow the right people.
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