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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

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Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#731
post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was your experience? I haven't been able to find where we interacted with you.

Of course not. I'm not insane and so I didn't continue using a shadow banned account.

You said we weren't willing to hear you out, but that seems unlikely to me. People sometimes come to HN with stories of how badly we've mistreated them, but rarely provide links or enough information to let readers make up their own minds. Mostly these stories leave out important details about how the account had behaved and how we interacted with them. But we do make mistakes—moderation is guesswork, and we guess wrong sometimes. If there's a chance of that, I'd like to know what we did so we can correct it.

We only use shadowbanning when accounts are new and show evidence of spamming or trolling, or unless there's evidence that the user has been serially creating accounts to abuse HN. It's possible we got it wrong in your case, but again, we can't correct mistakes if people won't tell us about them.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the source of said admonishment wasn't forthcoming, by GP... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19984428 > Ok, but "got any sources for that?" is a rather unsubstantive contribution, and then going on tilt about getting downvoted breaks the site guidelines outright. Would you mind raising the signal/noise ratio of what you post here? It seems the attempt to correct a low "signal / noise ratio", in this…

I'm not sure what you mean, the link you posted showed itself to be 100% accurate with the claim.

The issue in that case was more the added bit about downvotes, which broke the site guidelines.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the meaning has changed, but at the very least that is how the word is used today. As an example /r/skeptic is a large community of people that self-identify as skeptics.

Your arrogance continues to astound me. The guy is an actual professor of philsophy talking about his specialty. The word has been used for hundreds of years. Yes, it has a particular meaning in its community. Reddit is not the whole of the world.

You know what. I can accept that there's a separate meaning in philosophy that this professor uses it in that context. Words often have unique meanings in specific fields.

However the colloquial, general meaning is still that of scientific skepticism. That's what comes up when you search skepticism on Wikipedia, reddit, or various definitions. That's also what is reasonably being referred to in a Hacker News post; a community that often subscribes to the same values expressed in skepticism.

Unless you know this professor and can put his words in their appropriate context, then the whole thing reads as decrying an entire movement of scientifically-minded people.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#734
post #674
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's like saying because we can't fix everything, we should fix nothing. There's no need to include everything. HN is selective. It's in English. The reason it can't have posts about the responsibility of SV towards the tech and social impact they make is because that would pierce the veil of fake narrative that supports SVs continued unexamined influence. The reality is the mods are not the tip of the spear. There…

There are no mods above us and no one intervenes in that way.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#735
post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how everything gets filtered through the Californian perspective. I can't say I know what that is, but are you sure about this? The HN community is overwhelmingly not in California, and comments about California seem to me to skew to the critical and negative.

I'm not sure, but I would eat my hat if it's not the single largest voting block. The influence is not about praise or criticism, but what is easily understandable or what resonates with lived experience. There's a lot of different people on HN. I don't mean to say we're all the same. It's just that voting is a low-pass filter.

I was going to say it's for sure not the single largest voting block (but don't eat your hat! that can't be good for you). But I suppose it depends on how you define "block".

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#736
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t call it strict at all. He’s actually way more liberal about stuff than most over-bearing Reddit mods who think it’s their job to be editors of their own private newspaper rather than helping only when there’s no other option. This is why dang is so good at what he does as it draws a difficult balance.

no, you just don't fall into the cracks that dang dislikes. I've seen him go after people who aren't causing problems because he doesn't like what they're saying. I've seen it multiple times actually. His go to is to call it conspiracy regardless of what's actually being said.

Where did I do this?

When I get something wrong, I'm happy to admit it and correct it. At the same time, people make all sorts of claims about horrid things we supposedly did, and most of those leave out important information.

Either way, if you're going to make claims like this, you should supply links so readers can make up their own minds.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know what you mean by "suspicious." I mean that, maybe you should distrust your own judgement that "HN is the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet". Perhaps other places have environments that you don't like but other people feel that they are "the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet". > I'm part of a ton of other forums and communities, and over time almost all…

What you're saying is 100% true. I personally dislike HN moderation because it stifles discussion in a big way. A perfect example is the other poster who basically got called to task by dang for asking for sources to a claim. Dang characterized it as "unsubstantive" and lowering the signal to noise ratio. For myself, a reasonable discussion is one which it's expected to be asked to cite sources. A community in which…

That's not a perfect example or even an example at all. The comment explicitly broke the site guidelines, as I explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20648370.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#738
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by "suspicious." I'm part of a ton of other forums and communities, and over time almost all of them have devolved into complete and utter dogshit, just an endless stream of memes and screenshots of Twitter posts. The communities that remain successful either have total strict moderation or a "shitposts" section where all of the garbage ends up, but even then the quarantine zone ends up suc…

> I don't know what you mean by "suspicious." I mean that, maybe you should distrust your own judgement that "HN is the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet". Perhaps other places have environments that you don't like but other people feel that they are "the only reasonable discussion forum remaining on the internet". > I'm part of a ton of other forums and communities, and over time almost all…

> I will not disclose it because I do not want to ruin it

I'm glad your favorite community has sustained itself for 20 years, but with this statement you remove it so far from the category HN belongs to that it's incommensurable.

It's great that there's room for lots of different internet communities to thrive with different strategies. I've always felt there's room for many more—there are lots of opportunities for communities to start with different initial conditions and grow into qualitatively different things. I wish people would start them. But let's not pretend that they all have the same problems. HN's category is that of the large, public, anonymous internet forum, and all its hard problems stem from that category.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#739
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 play into stereotypes to disarm the reader That's a nice way to put it. I'd have said it was a way of coloring the audiences' initial impression of the information with the journalist's own racist and sexist views. Edit: And, I'd agree that it is a common practice in journalism these days.

I was particularly struck by the floating above all the rude controversy while pouring the boiling oil of her disdain on those she so-generously tolerated. I'm still not going to wax her balls.

Re: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

#740
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree with what you're saying. But I'm asking why the person posting believes that the HN community overwhelmingly believes X and their evidence for that. I presume they do have evidence and conclusions and I'd like to know about it.

I think that people tend to perceive HN as overwhelmingly believing whatever the opposite of their opinion is any time there is a significant debate on something. Unless there is overwhelming support for our own position, we feel that we are in a hostile environment.

Leave me out of your feelz. I abjure and disdain weaponized fragility.
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