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Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

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Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#81

Post by mcguire »

kd5bjo wrote: post #23
saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

I suspect that often the reason for not getting a job is simply that there were more qualified candidates than positions. In that case, there may be no reasons to give; someone else was selected but your application wasn’t deficient in any way.

Well, it would be nice to know how others are more qualified so you can remedy the situation.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#82

Post by Yuval_Halevi »

Comment I saw about the manner from a mod on reddit:

>As a moderator, I will sometimes send a message to a poster whose post is removed. However, if it is "commercial spam," I don't bother because we both know why.

Sometimes redditors comment without understanding that they broke the rules. Sometimes redditors comment using spam and they fully know what they are doing. In the first case, a message to them to tell them why is helpful. In the second case, it's not.

I personally (as an active Reddit user), feel that the interaction with the mods there is always in a negative context. On /r/technology, for example, you can get ban without any specific reason and messaging the mods won't do anything.

A few weeks ago I made a silly comment in HN on a post that reached the front page. My comment got a few downvotes and one of the mods sent me a message with what I did wrong.

I then went one step back, understood that I wrote something that is against the rules of HN and sent the mod an email with an apologie. He replied almost instantly.

That's one of the reasons I prefer HN over Reddit. It seems like the mods are not here to punish, but to create a healthy conversation infrastructure and to lead users who are not into the HN spirit yet, into the right path

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#83

Post by pavel_lishin »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #7

There seems to be a general trend to avoid explanations in a lot of areas. For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Google just canceled my Drive subscription after 10 years without telling why but they offered me to sign up again. No idea why and support wouldn’t tell. How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

> How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

To shove this back into the 'online community' context, there are certain people who have no interest in learning what they're doing wrong; or even who fully understand that what they're doing is wrong, and have no interest in improving.

Examples: spammers, trolls, and the willingly-obtuse-slash-rules-lawyers (who are slightly separate from trolls, but are similarly un-educatable).

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#84

Post by vinniejames »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #83
Ididntdothis wrote: post #7

There seems to be a general trend to avoid explanations in a lot of areas. For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Google just canceled my Drive subscription after 10 years without telling why but they offered me to sign up again. No idea why and support wouldn’t tell. How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

> How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong? To shove this back into the 'online community' context, there are certain people who have no interest in learning what they're doing wrong; or even who fully understand that what they're doing is wrong, and have no interest in improving. Examples: spammers, trolls, and the willingly-obtuse-slash-rules-lawyers (who are slightly se…

The point of the non-disclosure is to prevent people from gaming the system by abusing specific rule sets

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#86

Post by privateSFacct »

saagarjha wrote: post #10
Ididntdothis wrote: post #7

There seems to be a general trend to avoid explanations in a lot of areas. For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Google just canceled my Drive subscription after 10 years without telling why but they offered me to sign up again. No idea why and support wouldn’t tell. How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

The other reason is to avoid long arguments.

We used to give specific details for things (ie, price is going up because x). People INTENTIONALLY misunderstand, selectively pay attention, and argue endlessly.

Same thing with job interviews and hires. Imagine a potential hire for a client facing role with poor communication skills. If asked point blank about any areas of challenge in their application you might say this was a high pressure customer facing role and so communication skills, as described in job post, would be a big factor in the analysis. You might then be repeatedly followed up and both re-assured by them that they have excellent communication skills (with lots of bad grammar, spelling errors and terrible tone) and threatened for evaluating them on their skills in this area (which may overlap various protected classes).

People sometimes take the worst possible interpretation of any action and nitpick every explanation. Read hackernews for plenty of examples here.

In many cases, particularly if someone is not paying you - it's really not worth getting into it with folks who love to argue endlessly. They usually have FAR more time then you do, and if you have 20 people arguing with you an entire day can be lost dealing with them.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#87

Post by privateSFacct »

tashoecraft wrote: post #21
saagarjha wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

I think the liability is so remote as to be a fake reason. It's a cop out to get out of doing it or even to look into doing it.

Employment claims are perhaps one of the top liability concerns of almost any business based in the US at least.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#88

Post by NoodleIncident »

Arnt wrote: post #14
woliveirajr wrote: post #2

It seems so obvious that it's a pitty it wasn't studied before. It doesn't work just online: ask a children to solve some problem in a blackboard and then erase it without telling a thing, while leaving answers from other kids on it. You'll see that nobody likes to be "corrected" without an explanation.

Noone likes to be corrected without an explanation. That part is fine. But explaining takes time for the moderators as well as providing value to the user, and some users try to get past moderation by overwhelming the moderators. Spamming.

> Additionally, explanations provided by human moderators did not have a significant advantage over explanations provided by bots for reducing future post removals. We propose design solutions that can promote the efficient use of explanation mechanisms, reflecting on how automated moderation tools can contribute to this space.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#89

Post by Rebelgecko »

Yuval_Halevi wrote: post #82

Comment I saw about the manner from a mod on reddit: >As a moderator, I will sometimes send a message to a poster whose post is removed. However, if it is "commercial spam," I don't bother because we both know why. Sometimes redditors comment without understanding that they broke the rules. Sometimes redditors comment using spam and they fully know what they are doing. In the first case, a message to them to tell the…

I agree that even though the HN moderation tends to be more heavy handed, it's 100% beneficial for the community. However I doubt that the HN approach would scale well for a site like reddit— once you have dozens or hundreds of people doing moderation it gets hard to vet someone. Eventually you're gonna get a jerk moderator that goes on a power trip. I was a fan of how slashdot did "metamoderation" but I don't know if it was actually effective.

Re: Telling users why their content was removed reduces future issues [pdf]

#90

Post by heavyset_go »

saagarjha wrote: post #10
Ididntdothis wrote: post #7

There seems to be a general trend to avoid explanations in a lot of areas. For example, you often get no feedback after job interviews. Google just canceled my Drive subscription after 10 years without telling why but they offered me to sign up again. No idea why and support wouldn’t tell. How are people supposed to learn and improve without knowing told what they did wrong?

I think the reasons nobody tells you anything anymore is because doing so would open you up to liability. It’s probably a similar thing to why you’re not told the reasons for not getting a job, even though it’s somewhat unfortunate that it means useful context is lost…

I've gotten interview feedback before. It's less about liability, and more about companies not giving enough of a shit to provide feedback.
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