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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#721

Post by billfruit »

candu wrote: post #718
billfruit wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private entities can put restrictions on their private space, but doing so implies that they no longer provide the same freedom of speech guaranteed to citizens on public spaces, so they are indeed restricting the freedom of speech.

...and now we've touched on a fundamental philosophical question: is freedom of speech a natural right or a legal right? There's also potentially an assumption here that free speech is overall reduced through restrictions on it. As a thought experiment: suppose that, within a society of _n_ people, some small _k_ of them are "louditarians": they believe that part of the right to free speech is the inalienable right t…

Yes may be for vocal speech, but for platforms build around written forms of speech like most online forums, how does that analogy hold since then the right of one to say a thing does not restrict another body's right to say a different thing at the same time.

Generally freedom of speech issues arise largely for written word, than the spoken word.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#722

Post by chipotle_coyote »

noobermin wrote: post #628
ckris wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a pretty common way to setup these stories, to play into stereotypes to disarm the reader (basically acknowledging their fears) and open them up to something else. It just isn't written for this audience or from its perspective.

To be clear, I'm aware of the device your talking about. They did that for sure for dang and sctb's character to highlight how they in particular buck the stereotype but throughout the piece the author makes it clear their focus was essentially on the fringe of comments that occur on this site and how they fit into a larger narrative about silicon valley culture. I provided the quote because it is specific evidence t…

The author is certainly bringing her own expectations about HN's common biases and attitudes into play, but some of those biases and attitudes are on slightly ironic display in this discussion, aren't they? For instance, there's a clear subtext -- sometimes open text -- of "this author knows nothing about the HN culture!", basically dismissing the opening where she mentions how she learned about Hacker News originally from her coworkers at the tech startup she'd moved to San Francisco to join. The bias of "I expected the moderators to be a couple of middle-aged white guys" doesn't come from her lack of knowledge of this industry and the HN crowd, it comes from her immersion in it. Also, the moderators are in fact a couple of middle-aged white guys.

It's true that HN readers are not the intended audience for this -- she's writing for the large set of people who have little to no idea what Hacker News is. But the story she's telling in the article is not "here's how cool HN is," nor is it "here's how terrible HN is." It's a story of how HN reflects the tech culture in Silicon Valley and beyond, how politics and our current culture war intersect with the tech sector whether or not we like it, how declaring a space to be non-political has become an implicitly political statement. And I think in that light, it's a pretty good article.

(And dang, I think getting a third moderator in who's non-white and/or non-male might not be a bad thing -- regardless of their level of balding.)

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#723

Post by chipotle_coyote »

PaulHoule wrote: post #698

One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not limited to Silicon Valley. For instance, the person who has the highest karma is in Brazil. Very few of the people I have met on Hacker News are in the Valley and San Francisco, but I have met people from North Carolina, Philadelphia, Portugal, India, Singapore, ... If you're interested in both technology and business and you've had enough of th…

> One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not limited to Silicon Valley.

From the sixth paragraph of TFA, while we're still in the introduction:

The site has become a regional export: ninety percent of its traffic comes from outside the Bay Area, and a third of its users are in Europe.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#724

Post by overcast »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #695

It doesn't really seem to do justice to the problem that all moderation has: 1) Moderators always assume the worst of people. I remember asking one time about car repair online, and at the time, I had a repair that needed to be made to make driving at high speeds safe. But moderators and others seem to assume that when you can't do something 100% right immediately, you are therefore going to do something wrong. I sim…

Voting, since DIGG popularized the entire idea, will always be an agree/disagree button. Not the intended see more of / see less of.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#725

Post by amyjess »

tptacek wrote: post #673
dang wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One has tatts.

You know you want "Please don't do this here" on your arm. Maybe in, like, kanji characters or something.

Probably not the best phrase to get done in Japanese. There's no kanji; you'd write all of it in hiragana.

ここでしないでください。 [koko de shinaide kudasai]

Or maybe if you wanted to emphasize the "this": ここでこれをしないでください。 [koko de kore o shinaide kudasai]

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#726

Post by tptacek »

amyjess wrote: post #725
tptacek wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you want "Please don't do this here" on your arm. Maybe in, like, kanji characters or something.

Probably not the best phrase to get done in Japanese. There's no kanji; you'd write all of it in hiragana. ここでしないでください。 [koko de shinaide kudasai] Or maybe if you wanted to emphasize the "this": ここでこれをしないでください。 [koko de kore o shinaide kudasai]

Seriously, what's the number we'd have to hit in a charity Kickstarter to make Dan do this?

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#728

Post by scott_s »

thwythwy wrote: post #499

This reads like a mediocre college admissions essay full of breathless, overdramatic characterizations of minor, anodyne exchanges. I had to stop reading when a two word response from a user gave the author "a small rush of triumph." The tone and word choice is just nauseating. Examples abound: > "Commenters . . . . bickered about the word 'soul.'" > "Conversation spiralled, with users making arguments about Cartesia…

I'm at a loss at what word choices you object to; people bickered over the world "soul" in that thread, and talked about Cartesian metaphysics and quoted Socrates. Perhaps your real objection is someone else taking their work seriously.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#729

Post by intentionalmeta »

tptacek wrote: post #726
amyjess wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not the best phrase to get done in Japanese. There's no kanji; you'd write all of it in hiragana. ここでしないでください。 [koko de shinaide kudasai] Or maybe if you wanted to emphasize the "this": ここでこれをしないでください。 [koko de kore o shinaide kudasai]

Seriously, what's the number we'd have to hit in a charity Kickstarter to make Dan do this?

Please don't do this here.

> Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#730

Post by pvg »

tptacek wrote: post #726
amyjess wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not the best phrase to get done in Japanese. There's no kanji; you'd write all of it in hiragana. ここでしないでください。 [koko de shinaide kudasai] Or maybe if you wanted to emphasize the "this": ここでこれをしないでください。 [koko de kore o shinaide kudasai]

Seriously, what's the number we'd have to hit in a charity Kickstarter to make Dan do this?

It's been a while since someone's made good use of the HN poll feature.
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