[HN Gopher] The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
___________________________________________________________________
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
Author : nicolast
Score : 257 points
Date : 2022-02-17 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| manholio wrote:
| Regarding the throwaway accounts, I wish there was some way to
| delete old comments. I think I have the moral right to control
| their lifetime, and occasional gaps in 5 year old discussions
| will not really matter to anyone.
|
| Without such an option the logical alternative is to periodically
| cycle your username, amassing somewhat of a sockpuppet army if
| you are so inclined.
| tbagman wrote:
| Just to say it explicitly, dang, you're doing a great job.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| 2019. Original discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052
| dang wrote:
| Yes, these threads are starting to get a little less "lonely"
| aren't they. I guess once a year ("or so" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) is ok.
|
| Macroexpanded:
|
| _The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415 - Nov 2020 (291
| comments)
|
| _The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052 - Aug 2019 (777
| comments)
| [deleted]
| GoodJokes wrote:
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Dang.
| nickdrozd wrote:
| > In an Emacs file, Gackle collects a list of contradictory
| statements that people have used to describe Hacker News.
|
| dang, could you please describe your Emacs setup?
| dang wrote:
| I use a vanilla Emacs that I download the binary of and that
| flickers annoyingly on the M1 Macbook I started using recently.
| My .emacs file is 861 lines long and, like anyone else's,
| contains years' worth of accumulated gizmos. Not sure what else
| to say!
| nickdrozd wrote:
| I'm sure it seems unremarkable to you, but you are on the
| borderline of being a prominent enough user that your config
| is ipso facto noteworthy. (Less prominent than someone like
| Donald Knuth, but more prominent than someone like me.)
|
| Anyway, thanks for all the moderating work!
| doublerabbit wrote:
| This thread gave me the sudden urge to backdate HN on WebArchive.
|
| What's amusing is the post on the front-page: "Web 2.0 is a
| bubble for 3 reasons" yet seeing the same for Web 3.0.
|
| HN from 2007
| http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/https://news.ycomb...
|
| Edit: Strange downvotes...
| dqv wrote:
| If you'd like to have a deeper dive, HN has a way to see
| previous front pages:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2022-01-16
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Oh cool, you learn something new every day. Although,
| WebArchive has a frozen-in-time feel to it.
| WaxedChewbacca wrote:
| skyechurch wrote:
| There should be little badges, like employees at nuclear power
| plants wear, except if you exceed a certain threshold of online
| discourse you are quarantined in a wifi free zone until you have
| decontaminated. Irl most people oti are not as weird or insane as
| you would guess from interacting with them, the exceptions are
| those driven insane by internet dscourse.
|
| Tldr Hacker News is seriously the worst moderated forum with the
| worst posters, except for all the other ones.
| bckr wrote:
| This nearly brought me to tears. dang and Scott's story was
| really moving. The humanistic approach, the amount of work to
| make this website so good. Falling off a mountain and realizing
| you need a job & need to give up on your startup... novel-worthy
| stuff.
| redbell wrote:
| Long read but it worth every letter written, well done!
|
| A few bullets..
|
| 1. Does the moderators use some form of automation to extract
| suspicious posts/comments or they go manually scanning all posts
| with the full threads? I'm just finding it to be extremely
| difficult to monitor 24/7 manually.
|
| 2. It's really an interesting story this "SkySheet" and just
| heard about it.
|
| 3. I believe this article would be of another level if it was
| recorded as a podcast where we can hear their natural voices in a
| live discussion.
|
| 4. Am I the only one who find it extremely difficult to
| understand why [some] HNewsers don't and, won't follow the site
| guidelines, go blind and write whatever will fill this gap in
| their ego?!
| dqpb wrote:
| foldr wrote:
| One thing that puzzles me is why HN does not have a policy of
| banning users who post explicitly racist comments. I sometimes
| (unwisely) get sucked into arguing with these people. However,
| this is essentially impossible to do within the site guidelines,
| as you either have to have a respectful discussion with a racist
| (which only legitimizes them) or call them out for being a racist
| (which isn't allowed). I'm aware that racist comments often get
| flagged, but then again, they also often don't. And users who
| post such comments are able to continue contributing to the site.
|
| I won't post links to examples here because, again, that is
| probably not within the site guidelines. But I'm happy to supply
| on request.
| dang wrote:
| We do ban such accounts, and I've personally banned god knows
| how many of them. You're always welcome to email links to
| hn@ycombinator.com if you want us to take a look. Keep in mind
| that we don't see everything that gets posted here--not even
| close. For outrageously bigoted comments, the odds are high
| that we just haven't seen it yet. Any sufficiently large open
| forum is going to get those, and given that we don't know how
| to write software to detect them, there's an inevitable time
| lag before they get dealt with.
|
| Outside that extreme sort of comment, though, the problem is
| not as simple as it sounds, or feels, because there's no
| consensus on how to define or interpret these terms. That means
| any particular moderation call is going to end up feeling wrong
| to a sizeable subset of users--good-faith users, not bigots or
| trolls. Put a few of those data points together and pretty much
| every reader is going to find a pattern to dislike. It's
| literally impossible to avoid this, even if we could see
| everything.
|
| One consequence of this is that we/I regularly get lambasted
| with every horrible label that exists in polite society (a
| clarifying example:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22941387), because most
| people misinterpret a sequence of bad-data-point experiences to
| mean "the mods must agree with and support this kind of thing".
| That alternates between being quite painful and just-another-
| day-on-the-job, depending I suppose on how centered I feel in
| the moment.
|
| I wish I could get across to people how these perceptions are
| unavoidable given the stochastics of the site (HN is a
| statistical cloud) and how our brains deal with randomness (by
| strongly overinterpreting it). I've been writing about this for
| years - a lot of which shows up in these links:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| and
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| - but it doesn't really land. Even if one knows these things
| intellectually, it doesn't change how they feel, and the
| feeling determines everything.
| ebbflowgo wrote:
| In a remote-first/tech world, our lives are lonely, by design. We
| no longer have the social touch points we typically had. Water
| cooler talk, coffee walks, after-work drinks with the team, and
| work sports are no longer a thing.
|
| Vibehut.io is a great solution to get your social fix. Vetted
| video calls based on your existing social platform and crypto
| holdings.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Water cooler talk, coffee walks, after-work drinks with the
| team, and work sports are no longer a thing.
|
| I would take HN over the water cooler talk, after work drinks
| and work sports.
|
| Coffee walks ... probably worth keeping. Possibly an occasional
| workplace lunch too.
|
| But then again, I've worked "alone" at home for more than 20
| years, and so the social side of working life has felt fairly
| foreign to me forever.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| I've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are
| heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech"
| loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hit the back button pretty
| quick.
| robertakarobin wrote:
| Yes, in general "free speech" platforms seem to quickly turn
| into Alt-Right platforms that are, ironically, heavily
| moderated. (Looking at you, Voat)
| optimalsolver wrote:
| I've said this before, but it's particularly notable how free
| speech Reddit alternatives very quickly end up taking a far-
| right tone.
|
| What's really funny is how all discussions they host have to
| be approached from that angle.
|
| So you can't just talk about your favorite TV show. You have
| to first make a nod to how it features a Jewish conspiracy to
| push black-white interracial relationships. Only then can you
| go on to discuss the actual episode.
| fallingknife wrote:
| This is because Reddit was the original free speech
| platform, and you could find anything from any or no
| political leaning. Then they dropped free speech and kicked
| off right leaning content. So of course the alternatives
| quickly go right. If they had kicked off left wing content
| all of the free speech sites would be left, and you
| couldn't talk about your favorite TV show without going
| into the relative representation of different races in the
| cast.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Usenet, mailing lists, numerous BBSes, and any number of
| earlier Web forums look on your assertion with
| bemusement.
|
| Reddit claimed free speech as a value in its early years.
| That sentiment has evolved, for all the usual reasons.[1]
|
| It is possible to host a wide range of significant views
| _without_ becoming overtly hostile to the majority of the
| population, and the viewpoints held by those.
|
| Reddit was in no way "the original free speech platform".
|
| ________________________________
|
| Notes:
|
| 1. TL;DR: it's untenable and spirals into a cesspit, QED.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I should say the last universal free speech platform.
| It's a cesspit anyway. Not sure how you can blame that
| one on freedom of speech.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Pretty sure right-leaning content per se is still
| available on reddit and what's actually banned is
| outright Nazism, racism, violence, etc. Lefty content
| featuring coordinated politcal violence would also get
| banned, if it existed.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Lefty content featuring coordinated politcal violence
| would also get banned, if it existed.
|
| And _that_ last part is the entire point: There simply is
| no mainstream-relevant occurency of left-wing terrorism
| and murders any more in the Western world. The most
| relevant militant group was the German RAF, which has all
| but dissolved in the early 90s (there are three still on
| the run and occasionally robbing a bank but that 's it).
| In contrast, murders and other organized violence and
| terrorism based on right-wing ideology is shockingly
| commonplace.
|
| With online-based hate speech, it is just the same
| matter, only a different medium - and there is so much
| more content that draws in right-wing hate speech (such
| as anti-immigration stuff, antisemitism, Islamophobia and
| LGBT hate) than anything that inspires left-wing hate
| speech. The only thing that comes close to hate speech
| from the left wing are the "eat the rich" slogan and
| Stalin/Gulag memes, and _that 's it_.
|
| As a result, it is _obvious_ from the numbers that the
| right wing will always complain about "we are getting
| censored and the lefties are not!!!"... well, duh, how
| about if the complainers would stop _doing_ the things
| they get moderated for?!
| fallingknife wrote:
| If you don't count the CHAZ, or the BLM riots, or the guy
| who shot the Republican congressman at the baseball game,
| or the guy who shot 12 cops in Dallas...
| weberer wrote:
| You're not comparing a heavily moderated site to an a lightly
| moderated one. You're looking at a site that's just as over-
| moderated as Reddit, just in favor of the opposite side of
| the political spectrum. A better comparison would be
| something like /g/
| ciphol wrote:
| Because the only people who feel the personal need for a
| "free speech" platform are the ones whose views are
| considered odious elsewhere.
|
| If people with non-"odious" views end up at such a platform,
| they will quickly notice the unusual concentration of
| "odious" views, and generally find it uncomfortable and
| leave. Thus there is a steady increase in the prevalence of
| "odious" views until they are near-universal on the platform.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Not strictly true.
|
| Those whose focus is _overtly offensive and oppressive_
| speech, however ...
| dundarious wrote:
| And the people who run the "non free speech" platforms
| (i.e., all the popular ones) are operationally "opposed" to
| free speech primarily in the sense that they want a
| pleasant platform for advertisers, and hence must stifle
| the stuff that's unpleasant to advertisers. There is some
| personal ideology at the top of these organizations, but it
| is extruded through a profit seeking filter and often
| barely survives operationally intact.
|
| I don't say this to excuse their actions or say that this
| filter is good, but that seems to be the fundamental
| mechanism.
| zionic wrote:
| Isn't this just more evidence that leftism/liberalism require
| censorship to exist, as they cannot survive in a free market
| of ideas?
| fallingknife wrote:
| In the free speech days of Reddit there was all sorts of
| lefty content that did just fine in the presence of all the
| right wing stuff, so it's definately not not true. But the
| strange part is that a lot of people _on the left_
| implicitly think that it is true. They will never admit
| that to themselves, though.
| weberer wrote:
| Liberalism _is_ the free market of ideas. It is pretty
| distant from leftism and should not be conflated.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| They said those platforms are just as censored, except in
| favor of the other side.
| krapp wrote:
| No, it's evidence that people who claim to believe in a
| free market of ideas rarely do in practice.
| m_fayer wrote:
| Here here. This and metafilter are my two islands of quality,
| both very much moderated.
| mesofile wrote:
| I think what's been even more effective than moderation for
| Metafilter is the imposition of a $5 flat fee to join. I
| would happily pay as much to stay on HN. A very affordable
| and worthwhile purchase for an individual, but a significant
| economic barrier for bot farms.
| bnralt wrote:
| Can't say this has been my experience. Many of the places I've
| found with the best discussions have had little to no
| moderation. The old IMDB boards, for example, were almost
| entirely devoid of moderation, but had some of the best and
| most informative discussions about movies and TV shows. There
| are a number of niche forums I frequent that are similar.
|
| I've even seen a number of subreddits with no
| moderators/inactive moderators which were pretty good, even
| with a few thousand members.
|
| I suppose might be that the forums you're discussing may be one
| of the ones created with the express selling point of having
| low/no moderation, while these other places where created as a
| place to have discussions first and foremost.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > The old IMDB boards
|
| Emphasis on "the old". Usenet in the early to mid 90s was
| pretty great too, but again, emphasis on "the old". Niches
| that haven't been discovered by many people yet will likely
| always function well.
| bnralt wrote:
| Well, they were shut down in 2017. But they seemed to be
| about the same quality at the end as they were earlier on.
| The boards I frequent that haven't closed are still going
| strong with light moderation, however. Actually, I'd argue
| that the quality might even be better now than a couple
| decades ago.
| k__ wrote:
| There are some hidden gems, that's right.
|
| But I had the impression that you habe to ignore a swath of
| racism, sexism, homo/transphobia, and conspiracy theory to
| find them.
| bnralt wrote:
| Personally, I've found that I've had to avoid hate and
| misinformation just about anywhere I go on the internet. I
| think there's a tendency for people to get used to the hate
| and misinformation that's acceptable for their in-group and
| become blind to it, thinking that their corner of the
| internet is devoid of it.
|
| For instance, many posts here about geopolitics appear to
| me as xenophobic and full of false information
| (particularly when they're countries that I'm familiar
| with). But it's hard for people to see that, or even think
| anyone could legitimately feel that way, when it's
| considered by the in-group to simply be "common sense."
| Heavy handed moderation about a subject (rather than simple
| topicality like with Hacker News) can lead to the
| entrenchment of these in-groups, which can both increases
| the level of these comments and leads people to think of
| them as nothing more than common discourse. It also
| increases bifurcation, so you have competing "destroy all
| Pepsi" and "destroy all Coke" forums, both of whom think
| they're merely bring moderate common sense ideas forward to
| oppose the extremists on the other end.
|
| Having said that, the forums I'm talking about seem to have
| a lower level of this in general, since they often focus on
| a particular niche. Similar to how the rules against
| political discussion let's Hacker News have better
| discussions than in general, but when political discussions
| do slip through then tend to be closer to typical internet
| discussions.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Do you seek the truth unconditionally, or only truth that fits
| within your pre-conceived notions of acceptability? Can you
| imagine a society where an objective truth was unacceptable,
| and denial of that truth was harmful to themselves or others?
| hwers wrote:
| On a society level there should certainly be room for every
| type of voice. Governments shouldn't moderate forums. But
| there's definitely value in small communal focused bubbles
| like this as well, that isn't manipulated into derailment by
| some mob hive mind. (Speaking as someone very pro free
| speech.)
| cogman10 wrote:
| To be frank, often when I see this glossy pamphlet cover for
| free speech, you open up the pamphlet and see a bunch of
| child porn, antisemitism and/or racism.
|
| The issue with free speech platforms is they attract a crowd
| of people whose only narrative is one that can't be said in
| other places. It isn't a narrative of truth, it is one of
| hate and bigotry.
|
| I've seen few examples where objective truth is banned. I
| have, however, seen a lot of Nazis get banned.
| zionic wrote:
| That's just a flaw in your brain's logical processing.
|
| I've seen this again and again, people will see an ocean of
| normal content anywhere free speech is allowed and laser-
| focus on the single floating turd.
|
| They'll then mischaracterize the entire ocean as the turd,
| it's like they have no sense of proportionality.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Name a free speech platform where I'm not going to find
| the turd on the front page at this very moment.
|
| I'm happy to be shown to be wrong, but from my experience
| what you are saying doesn't exist.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I think of the sea of knowledge as a bunch of floating
| turds at first sight, which are intentionally provocative
| and noxious but easy to spot, mostly water below, which
| is the context of common knowledge and beliefs, which may
| be the unstated assumption of the material, and then
| nuggets of gold below, which are hard to find because
| they are repressed for some reason, legal, social,
| safety, or otherwise, and therefore potentially valuable
| to a certain set of objectives. But both turds and gold
| nuggets face the same types of moderation pressure by
| their disruptive nature.
| robertakarobin wrote:
| > people will see an ocean of normal content anywhere
| free speech is allowed
|
| Not sure I agree on this one. Forums like
| /r/conservative, patriots.win, and Gab claim to be in
| favor of "free speech," but dissenters quickly get
| banned. 4chan comes to mind -- people do indeed post
| things of all political slants there, and the only
| moderation seems to be removing obviously unlawful
| content. And yet 4chan is almost decidedly covered in
| turds.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I think the proportions are more like an olympic swimming
| pool of "normal" content and a single turd.
|
| And you know what? I don't know many people who want to
| swim in even a 100m pool with a turd floating in it.
| tptacek wrote:
| Why bother making an argument that pretends people can't see
| the difference between 4chan /pol/ and MetaFilter? You don't
| even have to like MetaFilter to see that they're not the same
| species of site, and that the differences have nothing to do
| with a search for the truth.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Do you seek the truth unconditionally_
|
| To truly be open to everything you have to make a lot of
| analysis and filtering effort. If you go to a lot of the sort
| of information sources the GP mentioned, the signal-to-noise
| ratio is so low that unless you have literally nothing to do
| with your day the chance of finding some useful truth is neg
| liable (sometimes even zero, because sometimes the signal is
| not just downed out by noise it is actively beaten away by
| it).
|
| I seek truth as unconditionally as it is practical for me to
| do so.
| m_fayer wrote:
| Of course. Because like you, I am literally Plato himself.
| matsemann wrote:
| Basically the Paradox of tolerance:
|
| _The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant
| without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized
| or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the
| seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant
| society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of
| intolerance._ [0]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| wormslayer666 wrote:
| It depends on what sort of content you're looking for. Reasoned
| discussion on contentious issues demands considerable
| moderation, but anonymous platforms are great for legitimate
| niche/curiosity-driven topics.
|
| For example of the second, there was a thread on /ck/ a few
| weeks back where some guy (probably a grad student; I'll never
| know) stumbled on a few $K of food lab equipment. Thread went
| on with a variety of experiments/projects which ranged from
| "reasonable" to "why would you even consider this" (some kind
| of flavored oil distillate from a happy meal, used to make ice
| cream).
|
| If that was on HN, it would be someone's social-climbing
| portfolio blog, or I would have to wonder if it's astroturfing
| by some lab equipment company, or Mcdonalds. I'd question if
| this really was a curiosity-based endeavor, or if it was just
| someone trying to signal to potential employers "look at my
| Relevant Project!" or "look how quirky I am!" to friends.
|
| But none of that was a concern; there is really no way for that
| individual to profit or benefit from this in any context. It's
| an anonymous forum, and there's strong social pressure to not
| subvert that (unless it is simply by virtue of posting similar
| content). It takes the game theory out of the equation; nobody
| is trying to sell me something.
|
| It's not for everything or everyone, and there's definitely
| some effort in filtering out garbage posts. The same goes for
| HN, except the content to manually filter out is the sea of
| sometimes-veiled advertisements and self-promotion rather than
| plain-faced flamebait.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Platforms can be _both_ anonymous (or more usually,
| _pseudonymous_ ) AND moderated.
|
| Schopenhauer's commentary on authorship and intrinsic vs.
| extrinsic motivations should be far more widely read.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| That thread on /ck/ was legendary! I've also seen some pretty
| funny "ITT: Pretend we're HN" threads on /g/. The Overlap
| between 4chan and HN seems to be larger than it originally
| appears...
| andrewfromx wrote:
| I can't wait for https://www.deso.org/ to take off, not just
| for the value of the coin to increase, but to see lots of nodes
| taking over the responsibility of twitter/fb/youtube etc's
| what's okay and what's not. There will be someone willing to
| run a node that has all the stuff blocked or unblocked to suit
| everyone's tastes.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Isn't that how the different Matrix servers work already?
| andrewfromx wrote:
| Incentives! You have to listen to Nader Al-Naji explain the
| vision. It gives me goosebumps.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Incentives! You have to listen to Nader Al-Naji explain
| the vision. It gives me goosebumps.
|
| This isn't a knock on you personally, but when I come to
| HN for discussion, I'd like the discussion to be on HN.
|
| Insisting that I view some YouTube (which I avoid like
| the plague because I hate their business model) content
| in order to understand your point of view, just makes me
| want to ignore you. Not down-vote you, just ignore you.
|
| It sounds like you have a point of view that seems (to
| you at least) important. If it's that
| important/relevant/insightful, then please explain your
| point of view.
|
| I don't know or care who "Nader Al-Naji" might be, nor am
| I going to jump off to another site to find out.
|
| I want to be crystal clear about this: I'm not trying to
| beat up on you (andrewfromx) or anyone else. Rather, I'm
| interested in _your_ point of view not that of some rando
| on the site of some rapacious corporation.
| simias wrote:
| Anybody can run their own platform right now without
| involving any cryptononsense. That's how the net used to work
| after all. Anybody failing to understand what lead to the
| centralization is bound to reproduce the same mistakes. It's
| not a technical issue, it's a social one.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| I'm a believer after watching "The Next Big Social Media
| Network Will Be On the Blockchain. Nader Al-Naji Tells Us
| Why." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFiPVGN3J2M
| axiomsEnd wrote:
| Slate Star Codex put it nicely "The moral of the story is: if
| you're against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own
| little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen,
| your new society will end up consisting of approximately three
| principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It
| will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are
| genuinely wrong."
| [deleted]
| yamrzou wrote:
| Question for the mods (@dang):
|
| Do you not experience some kind of information overload from
| monitoring all those stories and comments on HN? How are you able
| to handle all of that?
|
| Otherwise I just want to say thank you for maintaining this forum
| and making sure it stays interesting.
| dang wrote:
| At first it's like being paid to eat cheesecake: https://hn.alg
| olia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... You stop
| enjoying the cheesecake, and then you stop eating it if you
| can.
|
| Later, it's like having one's brain sandblasted: https://hn.alg
| olia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... I don't
| remember most details but I can pattern-match very quickly.
|
| It's probably not so different from doing any other rather-
| specific thing enough times.
|
| I also wrote a browser extension with a lot of keyboard
| shortcuts that by now has close to 10 years of learning baked
| into it. It doesn't make any decisions but it lets me do
| repetitive things faster. One of these years I want to open
| source it (or make it a profile option to serve as JS) so
| people who like keyboard shortcuts can flip around the threads
| more easily. It just requires surgery to take out the mod-only
| bits, which is a bit like separating conjoined twins.
| jabthedang wrote:
| kuharich wrote:
| Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415
| dekhn wrote:
| I mostly appreciate the mods (well, dang is the only one I've
| interacted with) but I'm pretty tired of being scolded for
| occasionally making one-sentence comments that lack substance,
| while in the meantime, the site tolerates people who write pages
| of absolutely untrue covid vax denialism but don't get any
| comments from the mods.
|
| At this point I'm actively looking for a replacement community
| that focuses much more on ML and Linux, and not on the social
| issues associated with machine learning, or social justice
| warriors messing up tech firms, or people who seem to get their
| "science" from Fox News.
| weberer wrote:
| Try libera.chat. It's supposedly the successor to Freenode.
| cybarDOTlive wrote:
| Don't forget, you're here forever.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > I'm pretty tired of being scolded for occasionally making
| one-sentence comments that lack substance
|
| I went through months of your comment history with
| showdead:true, I could only find a handful of interactions
| between you and the moderation staff.
|
| The most recent example is about 10 days ago and then one 36
| days ago. Both comments were gray from being downvoted and one
| has been flagged.
|
| There was another one about 40 days ago that had a bit more
| content to it but was simply you quoting yourself where you
| call a concept idiotic... on a post that had a pinned comment
| by Dang that said "If you're going to comment, please focus on
| specific, interesting things in the article that you're curious
| about."
|
| Dang exchanged with you politely to explain the issues every
| times.
|
| What more do you want?
|
| Personally, I know that I don't want to see content such as
| your "y'all look like a cult" comment.
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29864386>
| dekhn wrote:
| The "y'all look like a cult" is a spot-on criticism of web3
| promoters that seems consistent with every other rational
| take on it. Would you prefer a few more citations supporting
| my statement?
| tptacek wrote:
| Stop making insubstantial one-line comments, please.
| dekhn wrote:
| My "insubstantial" one-line comments are often more valuable
| to readers of HN than pagelong of pseudointellectual debate
| (I watch my upvotes carefully. Which reminds me: is there a
| tool to track votes and comments on my comments?)
| pvg wrote:
| Lame things get upvoted all the time so watching your
| upvotes is not really a measure of 'value'. Adding more
| lame things to the site just because it already has lame
| things only makes it lamer, not better.
| dekhn wrote:
| I've spent the last several years treating Hacker News as
| a machine learning source and have learned to understand
| upvotes (and downvotes).
|
| If you word things in a confrontationally, overly
| partisan, or ignorant way, you'll get downvoted, even by
| people who technically agree with you. So, go out of your
| way to write more neutrally to reduce downvotes on tone.
|
| If you propose an unpopular idea, or criticize one of
| HN's Holy Cows, you'll get a bunch of downvotes from
| people who disagree with you. Occasionally, I don't
| comment at all if I think my opinion is out of the
| mainstream and not justifiable.
|
| Some folks just downvote people who state the truth
| because they don't like negative naysayers. Make it
| clear, if you're stating How the World Is, that you don't
| necessarily agree with it, but it's a structural problem.
|
| Other folks don't like simple solutionism so avoid saying
| "It's easy. We can solve world hunger by <blahblahblah>
| idea" which will never work, because food production
| isn't the reason people are starving.
|
| Another thing that can get you downvotes is invoking
| Expert Privilege. For example, HN will downvote you if
| you don't provide some sort of pseudo-rational sounding
| argument and instead just say you're an expert. OK, fine,
| ignore the fact that my PhD taught me how to read science
| papers and press releases.
|
| Finally, and this is the most interesting thing, votes
| come in waves. I'll often get -2 on a comment right after
| I post and then it will trend upward for a whole day. I
| suppose my comments age well.
|
| Ultimately, maxxing my karma is generally correlated
| roughly with making good contributions to the site, and
| I've calibrated well enough to interpret downvotes.
| pvg wrote:
| Be that as it may, you should still not post lame one-
| liners. That's still just obviously lame and you get
| sensibly scolded for it because it makes the site worse,
| orthogonal to unified theories of voting you may have
| developed.
| dekhn wrote:
| Disagree. It's not particularly lame. A well written one-
| liner conveys more information and wastes less time.
| Maybe HN could have a "vetted user", somebody who
| generally plays by the rules of the site, so that people
| can see one-liners and know the person making them has
| the authority to say it.
|
| Perfect example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=302
| 46830&p=2#30247139
| pvg wrote:
| It's totally lame and the example is, indeed, perfectly
| lame. But there's a trivial way to make these good which,
| if you look at dang-scoldings of lame one liners, works
| surprisingly well for a huge number of them, not just
| yours:
|
| Write the one liner and then imagine you got a moderator
| scolding. Then write a comment defending your one liner
| from the charge of 'unsubstantiveness'. Finally, delete
| the one liner and post the defense.
|
| I bet you'd almost never get scolded for these and the
| upvotes would be even bigger.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Collabortive-filtering tends to have a strong brevity bias.
|
| That's only one problem with collective moderation.
| Moderators are a trust and quality backstop.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30376111
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| https://www.hnreplies.com/
|
| Dead simple. Somehow it's also emailed me minutes before
| the reply became visible on HN. I later realized that the
| user probably had a "delay" set in their profile, but HN
| likely publishes the comment to the API even if it remains
| hidden on the site for a few minutes. So it was funny to
| see a secret way to bypass the delay feature.
|
| Upvotes are a terrible proxy for value, by the way. One
| wouldn't say that a Reddit comment was valuable just
| because it was popular. The same standard seems true on HN
| -- particularly for fluff, which tend to be upvote magnets.
| stonogo wrote:
| Is this irony?
| tptacek wrote:
| One-line comments are great, when they're substantial. Omit
| needless words. But also, omit needless comments.
| ciphol wrote:
| OK, I will.
| Tenoke wrote:
| 1. I've never seen a 'absolutely untrue covid vax denialism'
| that doesn't get downvoted to death here.
|
| 2. Just because others make bad comments, it doesn't mean you
| should, too.
|
| 3. Your type of bad comment is the one there's a rule against,
| while there's no explicit rule about being wrong.
| psahgal wrote:
| I'd just like to say "thank you" to the moderators for helping
| make Hacker News such an interesting site. I've been reading
| Hacker News for years and it's really helped me keep on top of
| emerging trends in technology! Sometimes I've seen tech news hit
| Hacker News before even the major news outlets have a chance to
| report. It's pretty impressive. Keep up the good work!
| bennysomething wrote:
| "to make space for a more inclusive, wider-ranging vision of
| technology"
|
| What on earth does this mean!?
|
| Hacker news will probably go the way of Reddit, steady decline in
| quality, and everything infected with politics.
| dang wrote:
| Please see the links at the bottom of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I spent a lot
| of time getting those just right :)
|
| Note that the last one or two actually predate Hacker News,
| because it was called Startup News for the few first months.
| awb wrote:
| Question for the mods:
|
| In the old days I don't remember as much political / world news
| allowed.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports,
| unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
| Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If
| they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
|
| But I've seen more types of TV news stories going through, like
| stories about political protests, stories about politics in
| Eastern Europe, free speech debates, etc.
|
| Without getting into the details of each particular submission
| I'm curious if you think the submission standards have remained
| consistent throughout the years or if your curation philosophy
| has changed at all and if so, in what ways?
|
| P.S. Thanks for all you do as mods and for making HN an a
| valuable and unique community. It's awesome to go to a thread and
| see helpful links or comments that enhance the conversation.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Modern information technology provides the enabling basis of
| the current turnkey infrastructure for a total information
| awareness-enabled authoritarian regime in the US.
|
| As in, it exists now. All of it. Already in the three letter
| agencies and social networks, you know or can extrapolate what
| everyone's opinion and views and compliance and "danger" to the
| regime.
|
| Right now.
|
| All it takes is a strongman from the D or R side to turn the
| key. So the political stakes are being reflected in the current
| capabilities of authoritarian large scale information
| technology for tracking.
|
| Your web3 crypto blockchain will not help, they will own all
| the entry/exit points, and use of crypto will mark you as
| noncompliant and destined for the gulag.
|
| I remember back when Carnivore was dismissed as conspiracy talk
| and I mostly agreed. And then came Snowden, and I remember the
| revelation of "wow I wasn't nearly paranoid enough".
|
| Right now I will be gulag'd if the wrong party turns the key.
| Even if I don't make another political comment anywhere on the
| internet, I have decades of easily breadcrumbed data hoovered
| up that will lead straight to labor camps.
|
| The fragile state of our government means that the existing
| authoritarian abilities of the NSA/CIA/etc are a far bigger
| existential threat to me than nuclear weapons, COVID, war, and
| maybe even on par with heart disease, cancer, and car crashes.
| mistermann wrote:
| > All it takes is a strongman from the D or R side to turn
| the key.
|
| An alternate theory: they have cooperatively turned that key
| together, although I wouldn't expect everyone is in on it, or
| that "the key" is something in particular, other than a
| "general methodology" of how politics is performed, in the
| theatrical sense of the word.
| bin_bash wrote:
| As someone that's been here since the very beginning I think
| that tech has begun to be responsible for a larger portion of
| the world as a whole and this community has moved a small
| amount towards that direction as a result.
|
| I distinctly remember reading articles about major world events
| in the beginning as well so it's not entirely new, but it has
| grown a little.
|
| I don't think it's a problem, and this is coming from a
| centrist that typically doesn't care for political discussion
| on any medium.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _As someone that 's been here since the very beginning I
| think that tech has begun to be responsible for a larger
| portion of the world as a whole and this community has moved
| a small amount towards that direction as a result._
|
| As one of the people who thinks that more (too much more)
| political content has crept in here, I will say that I agree
| with you on the above. That is, I agree that it is becoming
| harder (albeit not impossible!) to disambiguate what is
| "tech" versus what is "politics" when it comes to things like
| the discussions around, eg "social media's affect on society"
| and etc.
|
| And to be fair, talking about tech has always tended to lead
| to a _certain_ amount of political discussion, especially in
| terms of things like encryption policy, DRM, etc. So even I
| wouldn 't try to say we should have _zero_ political content
| here. But it does seem like it 's grown a bit more prevalent
| than I'd prefer.
| vkk8 wrote:
| We tend to reserve the word "tech" for new technology
| especially. Cars, power tools and horse wagons were also
| new sexy technology once upon a time, but no-one calls
| companies making those products "tech companies". The
| categorization from "tech" to "normal stuff" happens when a
| technology becomes ubiquitous part of our society rather
| than play stuff of early adopters and hackers. Arguably
| this has recently happened also to social media, internet
| advertising and many other internet technologies so maybe
| we should move on and recategorize those things as what
| they are instead of "tech".
|
| So what is "tech" now, if we take the definition to be "new
| technology not yet widely adopted by everyone's
| grandmother"? Maybe some of the blockchain stuff? Nuclear
| fusion? Reinforcement learning based AI agents? Self-
| driving cars? Hyperloop? Homomorphic encryption? Nerve
| implants? Robots capable of moving in unpredictable
| environments (like Boston Dynamics has)? Artificial meat?
| Space ships?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Cars, power tools and horse wagons were also new sexy
| technology once upon a time, but no-one calls companies
| making those products "tech companies"
|
| I think I have heard Tesla to be described as a tech
| company, once or twice. And with Bosch, my favourite
| power tool company, the same. I mean I am not a english
| speaker, but it would be really news to me, that "tech
| company" is defined as "brand new tech".
| bin_bash wrote:
| No, this is not simply a change in the way we use the
| term. Literally it's that software itself is used in more
| fields to do more things in 2022 than it was in 2007.
| closetohome wrote:
| > talking about tech has always tended to lead to a certain
| amount of political discussion, especially in terms of
| things like encryption policy, DRM, etc.
|
| Growing up in the era of peak Slashdot it was hard not to
| view politics through the lens of technology. There were
| politicians trying to take away my games, and restrict my
| speech, and put me in jail for downloading MP3s. Fighting
| those battles through the years has definitely formed my
| political views.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Yep, same here. So yeah, definitely not arguing for a
| _total_ separation of "tech" and "politics". That's
| probably not possible. But I do wish HN could move away
| from the more generic "politics with a tenuous (at best)
| connection to tech" and "general world news" stuff a bit.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I personally don't mind (and, in fact, encourage with my
| upvote) political discussion when relevant because I
| believe the attempt to pretend technology is divorced from
| the social dimensions of its use is a dangerous philosophy.
|
| History (particularly twentieth-century history) is caked
| in the blood of people killed by technologies that were
| originally conceived of by people pursuing what they
| thought was innocent (or, at least, amoral) knowledge. The
| Pugwash conference (https://pugwash.org/) grew from the
| need of those who built the atom bomb to wrangle the
| ramifications of their technology.
|
| A hacker without ethics is a terrible risk. We should have
| discourse on the human side of what we do.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _I personally don 't mind (and, in fact, encourage with
| my upvote) political discussion when relevant because I
| believe the attempt to pretend technology is divorced
| from the social dimensions of its use is a dangerous
| philosophy._
|
| I don't disagree. And if somebody started a forum
| dedicated to "the social implications of technology" I'd
| probably join and participate (some). But TBH, when I
| come to HN, I'm more interested in "Check out this cool
| new Erlang library" or "Why Go should or should not have
| generics", or "1001 Neat Regex Tricks" and such-like,
| than the more political stuff.
|
| Maybe, for me, that's a reaction to the amount of time I
| spend on politics in the rest of my life. I'm politically
| active enough to the point that I've run for public
| office before, and spend a not small amount of time
| discussing public policy in other forums. So I guess I
| would prefer to find HN a bit of a refuge from that
| stuff. Of course I understand that other people have a
| different experience and will therefore feel differently
| about the "correct" amount of politics on HN.
| bitwize wrote:
| Everybody who still thinks real-world moral and, hence,
| political concerns are somehow separable from hacker
| interests needs to see Allison Parrish's "Programming is
| Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic" talk (or read the
| transcript) before posting:
| http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-
| forgetting...
| mindcrime wrote:
| _Everybody who still thinks real-world moral and, hence,
| political concerns are somehow separable from hacker
| interests_
|
| Please note that I'm making no such claim. I would just
| prefer to discuss the intersection of "real-world moral
| and, hence, political concerns" and "hacker interests"
| either A. less often and/or B. somewhere else.
| loceng wrote:
| I think "political" content being so heavily suppressed is the
| community abdicating responsibility; and also is a sign of how
| much users here aren't able to emotionally regulate to have
| civil conversation [which is a signal of strength, of health -
| physical and mental health, mastery of oneself, self-control] -
| so much practically everything important - including the
| Emergency Act (war measures act aka martial law) being
| initiated in Canada for the first time ever by our Prime
| Minister who is more and more clearly acting as a fascist.
|
| When I tried posting a technology angle to this - "Ask HN: Do
| we care about our captured systems?" - to point out that it's
| the design of platforms like Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, etc.
| that's allowing propaganda and ideology to easily get to the
| top, while easily suppressing the truth - and where on HN it's
| easy to suppress perfectly valid, well-written, articulate
| comments to prevent the majority from seeing ideas that may
| actually be the truth.
|
| It's a problem.
|
| Edit to add: Thanks for all the fish, enjoy your lazy dopamine
| hit.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _I think "political" content being so heavily suppressed is
| the community abdicating responsibility;_
|
| Presumably every single member of this community is also a
| member of one or more other communities, some of which have
| an overt intention to be "more political". Given that, no one
| is being denied an outlet to share their views, give input,
| discuss, influence, vote, etc. when it comes to political
| events. So what is it so particularly important that _this_
| community be "political" (I'll just hand wave around exactly
| what we mean by "political" for now, for the sake of
| discussion)?
|
| Personally I come here (mainly) to hear about / discuss
| obscure programming libraries, new programming languages,
| startup strategies, new scientific breakthroughs, etc. I get
| enough of "general politics" and "world news" elsewhere...
| I'd really rather not see it here as well. But, that's just
| me.
| mistermann wrote:
| > So what is it so particularly important that this
| community be "political" (I'll just hand wave around
| exactly what we mean by "political" for now, for the sake
| of discussion)?
|
| My opinion: because here you can find arguably the highest
| concentration of powerful and knowledgeable minds, and this
| is the sort of thing that the world needs working on these
| hard problems.
|
| I find the concern over serious issues that is often
| expressed here to be rather disingenuous, as people _love_
| to engage in bitch sessions about the bad behavior of the
| members of their outgroups, but the notion that we should
| consider rising above that level of behavior and think
| about trying to find actual solutions is somehow
| ~inappropriate, as this is a place only for "curious
| conversation" (except for the exceptions to that rule, of
| course).
| optimalsolver wrote:
| I've never seen an online community improved by more object-
| level political discussion.
| loceng wrote:
| Maybe this avoidance by problem solving engineers is part
| of the problem?
|
| Technology is used as political tools/weapons to drive and
| manufacture consent, through promoting hate and creating
| divisiveness - and through captured mainstream media
| channels, and online platforms; this couldn't be any more
| obvious with Trudeau's behaviours and observing the
| mainstream landscape of what the majority of Canadians are
| seeing.
|
| Politics and technology is intertwined, but HN is happy to
| suppress conversation that would arguably lead to
| discussing technological solutions.
|
| The biggest problem is our information
| distribution/propagation (and therefore trust) apparatus is
| corrupted, which does include the issue with low-to-no-
| effort downvotes allowing a person to suppress content
| while getting rewarded via a dopamine hit.
| fuck_dang_2 wrote:
| axiomsEnd wrote:
| Or it may that this community is international, so you either
| have tech talks, or a pile of discussions about politics in
| every part of the world.
| loceng wrote:
| Not really, there's still the rule of "new phenomenon" that
| makes it news/discussion worthy - like Canada's quick turn
| towards fascism, tyranny.
| krapp wrote:
| _interesting_ new phenomenon that _satisfies intellectual
| curiosity._
|
| And by interesting - anything _good hackers_ would find
| interesting.
|
| It's a purposely high bar to filter out almost all
| mainstream news and even most tech news, and definitely
| most politics, which tends to satisfy emotional curiosity
| at the expense of intellect.
|
| Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. These stories tend
| to brute-force their way in.
| danso wrote:
| If there is a greater incidence of seemingly off-topic
| (politics, crime, or sports) submissions, it's likely
| correlated to the fact that tech is more and more inseparable
| from everyday life and policy decisions, and vice versa. One of
| my favorite memories from early 2020 HN was someone angrily
| asking why stories about Covid-19 were making the front page,
| as if they couldn't imagine how a potential pandemic might
| deeply affect the tech sector.
| ksec wrote:
| I "think", _most_ of those debate ties with technology one way
| or another. Say Joe Rogan 's issue may not have been allowed on
| HN if it wasn't for Spotify.
|
| And more broadly speaking, what are the roles of technology in
| an extremely political sensitive climate. Should Telegram do A
| or B, and what about Whatsapp, Facebook moderation, Apple App
| Store disallow certain group, is that a curation problem or a
| political problem? Fake News, Yellow Journalism, none of these
| are "new". But now they happen on Tech rather than traditional
| media, is that a tech problem or a political problem? We just
| dont have any concrete answer.
|
| There are other Geopolitics issues. I mean if WW3 did start
| surely that is important enough for HN submission. Or China
| decide to invade Taiwan, so to speak. Surely the threat of TSMC
| Foundry supply is important enough for submission even if the
| article itself doesn't mention TSMC.
|
| So while the rule is not black and white as zero politics
| discussions. I think the moderation is fairly consistent. Still
| dont know how Dang manages it. To the point I sometimes worry
| about him leaving YC, and HN may never be the same again.
| tlb wrote:
| We should be stricter with requiring a genuine technical
| connection. "Has a podcast on Spotify" or "fundraised through
| GoFundMe" don't count. Journalists throw in recognizable
| names whenever possible because they get clicks, even though
| the topic is completely non-technical.
| greenyoda wrote:
| Or even (non-political) articles like "some web site got
| hacked" or "a Tesla crashed somewhere" or "web site X is
| down". Unless there's real technical detail in such a story
| (which there hardly ever is when the story first comes
| out), it doesn't encourage meaningful discussion, only
| baseless speculation about what _might_ have happened.
| Operyl wrote:
| > I "think", most of those debate ties with technology one
| way or another.
|
| I feel that, if this is the reasoning it's becoming more
| prevalent, then it should be reeled in a bit. Politically
| charged topics seem to rarely bring in good-faith discussion
| I have come to expect from HN.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| They are easy to avoid howerver. Not participating in them
| and upvoting other contents solve the issue at least for
| yourself.
| Operyl wrote:
| I do avoid them, but they tend to crowd the front page
| where I feel like other topics that are more interesting
| and on topic for the site get left on pages 2-4, not
| seeing nearly as much interaction as they would have
| otherwise.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Incorrect. This is what we were told about Reddit as we
| watched it become basically unusable as a platform.
| Voting alone isn't a proper way to guarantee quality
| discussion (the opposite actually.)
| pasadenasunset wrote:
| True, but whatever mechanism takes its place must contend
| with the fact that users vary in the extent they: 1)
| actively think of the larger community vs. themselves as
| a member; and 2) derive individual esteem from it.
|
| As an example, the karma system at Reddit looks fine on
| paper relative to #1, but #2 is what created the
| phenomenon of meandering threads full of single phrase
| bad puns. The users are converging on a local maximum
| gain of esteem via upvotes, per unit of effort as
| measured by post length.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yup. This is the answer. If something political is posted
| its one of many items on the front page. Ignore it and
| upvote content you find interesting. Even better browse
| new posts instead of only the front or first few pages.
| greenyoda wrote:
| > Even better browse new posts instead of only the front
| or first few pages.
|
| Yes! No story makes it to the front page unless enough
| people upvote it on the "new" page. Thus, upvoting a new
| a story gives you much more editorial influence over the
| contents of the front page than upvoting a story that has
| already made it there. (And it takes fewer people to flag
| away an off-topic story while it's still new.)
|
| Another perspective: By browsing the front page, you're
| looking at stories that other HN readers find
| interesting. By reading the "new" page, you have the
| ability to promote stories that _you_ think are
| interesting.
| glup wrote:
| This sort of reminds me of what happened to the Slashdot...
| everyone was playing video games, hacking with Arduinos,
| doing silly things with homelabs, arguing about OS X vs.
| Linux, etc. and then suddenly so many people in the community
| moved up through the ranks and started to interface with
| politics, policy, and international business, just as those
| things started to really change with tech. So ya, tech
| overflows itself.
|
| In light of this pretty natural scope creep, I agree with the
| above point that the moderation feels pretty consistent, and
| am, for one, extremely appreciative of Dang's work.
| jq-r wrote:
| I think slashdot went down with users when they introduced
| the massively unpopular "web 2.0" redesign. It was unusable
| in that layout and they never reverted it back. I think the
| only users there are the ones using the old layout and know
| how to turn it on.
|
| Shame really as it it was the best automoderated system
| I've ever seen.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| inb4 HN stories about Canadian truckers are just gorilla
| advertising for self-driving trucks! New marketing slogan:
| "Self-driving truck don't need to get vaccine" /s
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Canadas moves on bank accounts and how that ties to crypto
| robustness is already being discussed :)
| barbacoa wrote:
| Even there many of the stories have been about tech company
| involvement; GoFundMe, data leaks, social media bans, etc.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > I "think", most of those debate ties with technology one
| way or another.
|
| Nah. Yesterday's political topic (there's almost always at
| least one per day) was about the WWII Tokyo firebombing.
|
| I think the real answer is even simpler: I think dang (or
| whoever is on duty that day) asks themselves "is this topic
| going to lead to an interesting conversation, or will it
| devolve into a shitshow?" Shitshows generally get canned, no
| matter the subject. It's benign dictatorship at work.
| mistermann wrote:
| > I think the real answer is even simpler: I think dang (or
| whoever is on duty that day) asks themselves "is this topic
| going to lead to an interesting conversation, or will it
| devolve into a shitshow?" Shitshows generally get canned,
| no matter the subject. It's benign dictatorship at work.
|
| You're not wrong, I suspect....but as always, I am
| fascinated by how Dang and most people here seem to have
| utterly no curiosity about why the big brains at HN News re
| unable to engage in conversation about ~politics without it
| melting down into chaos like you'd find on most any other
| forum.
|
| We often have these "serious" discussions about the dangers
| of climate change, fake news, etc, how it's super duper
| important that humanity gets its shit together, but is
| humans being able to communicate with each other in a
| skillful manner about difficult topics not plausibly a
| prerequisite for accomplishing these things that we talk
| about humanity "must" do? And if we not only can't do it,
| but refuse to even consider discussing the matter, then
| what shall become of the world?
|
| I have been sternly warned about this message before, which
| I believe illustrates the validity of my point.
| samstave wrote:
| I "think" you both are missing the point of HN ;
|
| HN, to me (and I am long in the tooth on this site), is
| about that which is fascinating to the mind, with a culture
| of good, meaningful content which is relevant to said
| minds...
|
| Politics permeate our lives - and especially moreso now.
| (FB was never a thought re politics when it was born, but
| it has so much mindshare now that its inexcusable to not
| think of FB as a political force (even though its literally
| a revolving door with government security apparatai)
|
| Also, @Dang is a fucking bad-ass... He is probably the best
| mod I have ever encountered...
|
| He has on multiple occasions put me in my place, gently, as
| I tend to post heavy handed comments when drunk and we have
| gone at it and agreed about when we both posted drunken
| rage comments...
|
| Yet @Dang ALWAYS replies to my emails and helps me when I
| ask for it...
|
| I've been on HN/YC for a long time -- @Dang has never
| failed being just an awesome mod of this forum.
|
| ---
|
| The culture of HN posting is golden, thus far, and this
| forum is something to be protected. @Dang needs a mod
| protege to take the reigns when he decides to go live his
| fuck-you money on an island.
| ksec wrote:
| > was about the WWII Tokyo firebombing
|
| My opinion is that as a topic belongs to "History" rather
| than politics. But I understand why people might disagree.
| I mean even my reply above is getting a lot of upvoted
| _and_ downvoted at the moment.
|
| But I do agree with the interesting conversation and
| shitshow being the simpler answer.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I think there are too many:
|
| -posts about nostalgia, how the 'old' world wide web was
| better, retro computing, reliving the past, etc.
|
| -quanta magazine math articles, because the concepts are too
| difficult or abstract for anyone to debate or discuss them
|
| -posts about privacy, big tech bashing (gets tired, repetitive
| after while)
|
| I would like to see fewer of those kind of posts. I would like
| to see more:
|
| -personal blog posts
|
| -posts about economics findings (instead of just the 'hard'
| sciences)
| stickfigure wrote:
| How far back do you consider the "old days"?
|
| In the decade-plus I've been around, there has always been a
| small but steady stream of nontech political content. Despite
| the policy. My perception is that hasn't increased or
| decreased, though it does have periodic surges (say, US
| election season). I personally think it adds to the appeal of
| HN - in moderation, of course. Political conversations here are
| _generally_ better informed and more polite than they are in
| other places, and I tend to learn more than I would by solely
| reading formal news sources.
| dqv wrote:
| Another thing people might not realize is that a lot of
| political comments die. With showdead enabled, you can see
| all sorts of junk that sounds more like the comment sections
| on political sites. Short comments that parrot the same
| talking points seen on TV die rather quickly.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I would not say they are more polite. they get heated here
| like anywhere else. I have noticed a lot of green accounts, I
| think people are using second accounts to post stuff that
| they do not with to tie to their main account.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I don't see political posts here getting traction very often.
| The ones that do usually are angled towards the community
| (anytime censorship bills come up, you get 500+ comment HN
| threads). Meanwhile, browsing the new section I found that
| articles that are just blatantly political ("you won't
| believe what AOC did in Florida!" to make up a title), often
| linger with few comments and votes.
|
| And even in those rare political posts I find, the discourse
| is very different from other places. I think that boils down
| to the golden rule of comments: "thoughtful and substantive".
| I've noticed the culture of HN is to downvote any comment
| that does not adhere to this rule, regardless of whether you
| agree with it or not. Even in comments I've posted about
| China that ended with a sentence about how I disliked the
| leader got knocked for being counterproductive.
|
| At the end of the day, you can have the most frought and
| divisive thread here and the comments are going to all be far
| more civil and thoughful than on Reddit or Facebook because
| even thought everyone might be up in arms, all of them are
| going "well I'll show them! _types long thoughtful comment
| that addresses everyone 's grievances_"
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Even in comments I've posted about China that ended with
| a sentence about how I disliked the leader got knocked for
| being counterproductive.
|
| I think one issue with approach by up/down voters is that
| sometimes the "thoughtful and substantive" thing to say is
| inherently ideological, and I notice that being explicitly
| ideological (for example, making it clear that you regard a
| long term trend in the economy as serving the interests of
| a particular group of people) is viewed as
| counterproductive.
|
| This mirrors a dilemma out in the "real world" where people
| find it hard to bring up substantive political ideas
| because just doing that is viewed as divisive and
| antagonistic. Unfortunately, sometimes (maybe even often)
| this is actually what is required to have "thoughtful and
| substantive" discussions.
| grujicd wrote:
| We come here not for the news, but for the comments. This kind
| of high quality community can't be found anywhere else, and
| that also applies to world/politics themes. Yes, you can read
| about that stuff elsewhere, but you won't find balanced views
| and rational arguments without ad hominem attacks. There are
| traces of that on HN too, but in vast majority of cases it's
| very civilized, opposed views are discussed and not downvoted
| to death. At least not as much as on other platforms.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I don't mind the political discussions coming through as long
| as they don't dominate the front page.
|
| However, I am saddened with the diminishing engagement with
| actual hard tech stories (not tech opinion pieces) that reach
| the front page. Lately, it seems like links to stories about
| people doing cool software or hardware things with complete
| write-ups can barely muster enough upvotes to stay on the front
| page very long, if at all. The comments occasionally yield some
| fun further discussions, but not like they did 5+ years ago on
| HN. It seems the interests of the average HN upvoter (who
| ultimately shapes what we see on the front page) are shifting
| more toward the political and controversy type pieces.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| IMO, it's because it's easy to understand and upvote non-tech
| stories compared to actual tech discussion. Even if you're a
| technical person, the article may be about a niche on the
| opposite side of the industry from where your knowledge lies,
| so you can't parse whether it's brilliant or nonsense. Non-
| tech stories are typically much easier to form opinions over,
| for better and worse.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| You can use the classic frontpage:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/classic
|
| It uses the same algorithm, but only counts upvotes from
| accounts created before 2012 (iirc).
|
| EDIT: I was slightly off, the deadline is 2008:
| https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
| undocumented#hacker...
| pydry wrote:
| I was expecting that to be markedly different from the
| current front page but it looks very similar to me.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is an interesting point, it would be cool if HN allowed
| arbitrary hidden tags to be added by users.
|
| By definition, as the site becomes more popular, more obscure
| technologies/projects will be pushed to the edges, especially
| when it comes to the front page.
|
| Having a more robust search and tagging system would help
| with that, it's analogous to how Reddit had to move to a vast
| number of sub-Reddit's once it got popular.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| Everyone wants to talk, no one wants to listen.
|
| But it's pretty obvious on "hard tech stories" that few
| people have the knowledge to meaningfully contribute.
|
| As I get older, the saying "it's better to remain quiet and
| be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt"
| resonates more and more.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| On the other hand, it is difficult to learn anything if you
| are unwilling to make mistakes, that is, to be thought a
| fool sometimes. And on the gripping hand, I find that
| intentionally asserting something you think might be wrong
| in an effort to provoke someone into correcting you is
| often much more effective than asking a question.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
|
| Good luck with that. One person's apolitical feel good story is
| a nefarious propaganda piece in another person's eyes.
|
| (Interpreting "about politics" to also encompass "political".)
| mbesto wrote:
| I've noticed they (TV news stuff) get upvoted pretty quickly,
| but also they get eliminated pretty quickly when flagged.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics_
|
| A key problem is that these days a lot of
| techie/nerdy/geeky/hackery news has a potential political
| angle. Advances in cryptography, drones, medical matters, and
| many other things, increasingly touch on politics because they
| touch the wider world not just techie people and often do so in
| decisive ways.
|
| Take face recognition and similar tech: all cool as the tech on
| its own, but there are scary implications that we see forming
| already so even if the original post is a purely technical &
| politics free look at a new development the comment threads
| resulting from it often won't be.
|
| Conversely, political issues affect technical ones: free speech
| or the lack there of both has an impact on the use of current
| tech and drives ideas for future systems, so while seen as a
| political matter by some (a philosophical matter or both by
| others) there are valid interesting technical discussions that
| can be had relating to changes in those issues around the
| globe.
|
| _> In the old days_
|
| I think some of that is that in the old days the connection
| wasn't as "real" because the tech being discussed was not
| widely used, or was in fact still only theoretical. Now the
| tech is out there, and many are using it including many who
| have no specific technical bent because these things are
| becoming part of normal life. Once tech touches real life, it
| touches the sticky subjective messy aspects of real life:
| politics & morality. Also even when things are still
| theoretical, the developments are more open to the general
| public for better or worse because access to information (and,
| of course, misinformation) continues to become increasingly
| ubiquitous.
|
| Take cryptocurrency as an example. A decade or so ago it was
| just a techie plaything really. People were talking about what
| wider impacts it could have, but it wasn't having them yet and
| it wasn't clear that it actually would in the end. It is easy
| to be dispassionate and unpolitical at that point. Now though
| some of those impacts have happened and continue to happen, and
| can affect lives in significant ways, so new stories on the
| subject can't help but attract some political discussion as
| well as going over the technical developments, or in fact are
| news stories about developments that are happening because of
| (to aid or circumvent) political concerns.
|
| For another collection of subject matter that has seen a
| massive change in public and political interest, you only have
| to look at the last couple of years development in certain
| fields of biology.
|
| There is little moderation here or elsewhere can do about this
| significant set of changes & movements. The mods and the
| community can nudge things in a certain direction, but they
| can't fully control them.
| dang wrote:
| I spent a few hours a while back writing up a reusable answer
| for this question, with lots of links from years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.
|
| The short answer is that not much has changed, including these
| perceptions of change (e.g. "HN is becoming 2005 Slashdot" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6157485 - August 2013.)
|
| If anyone wants to understand our thinking about political
| topics on HN, here are some links:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490
|
| or you can search for "political overlap":
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
|
| p.s. In case anyone's worried, no, we're not letting (or going
| to let) HN be taken over by politics. The proportions are
| stable and carefully regulated, although there is fluctuation,
| as with any stochastic process.
| sveno wrote:
| Hacker News's biggest problem is the chilling effect. The
| long-timers know that if you write too well and people start
| inquiring about a "follow" feature with you in mind, it's
| only a matter of time before you get banned because you're
| "too young" (well, he isn't anymore) to have that kind of
| "success" and less articulate people feel bad about
| themselves.
|
| On politics, Hacker News itself isn't right-wing, at least
| most of its users aren't, but the fact that anything more
| than a standard deviation to the left gets you hammered
| through that passive aggressive rank-altering and "slowban"
| has really put a damper on the ability for people to indulge
| their intellectual curiosities. Simply asking whether we, who
| "hack" in service to corporate capitalism, are doing the
| right thing, is enough to get you in trouble.
|
| There are some absolute top-notch people posting here, but
| there are far too many corporate shills, and the good ones
| know they have to be careful.
| dang wrote:
| I'm finding this a little hard to follow but I'd love to
| see an example of anyone we banned for writing well or
| being "too young".
| Mezzie wrote:
| Y'all never banned me and I was definitely an articulate,
| immature asshole with a victim complex.
|
| I'm REALLY glad I don't remember my username from my high
| school years.
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| "...there are far too many corporate shills, the good ones
| know they have to be careful."
|
| Huh. Today I learned I'm not one of the good ones.
| sveno wrote:
| You only have 258 karma. You don't have to worry yet.
| When you get into the mid-thousands, that's when things
| get dicey.
|
| Tech is like card counting. If you actually figure the
| game out, you get punished and flushed out. If you keep
| gambling and losing and don't know why (because you're
| bad at what you're trying to do) there will be a seat at
| the table until everything is squeezed out of you.
| laurex wrote:
| Though I am reasonably active on HN, I actually have no
| idea what you mean. Could you go into more detail about
| 'the game' and what one should worry about?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)
|
| ...and I just lost.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > You only have 258 karma.
|
| And you only have 1 karma, so you're not qualified to say
| what you said in your previous post. Of course, my point
| is that I know how much karma _you_ have, as much as you
| know how much karma any other person has, which is...you
| don 't. And I've been here long enough to know that your
| original comment is getting downvoted, because it's
| largely full of false statements. Sure, you can cherry
| pick a few examples here and there, as you could on any
| site, but to say that is is HN's "biggest problem" is
| demonstrably false.
| awb wrote:
| > I know how much karma you have, as much as you know how
| much karma any other person has, which is...you don't
|
| FYI, clicking a username tells you have much karma
| someone else has.
|
| For example, you have 4,258 karma:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=stronglikedan
| WalterBright wrote:
| I have 51000 karma. I am not playing any game. I just
| enjoy posting here, and try to make interesting comments.
| I far prefer it to Reddit and Slashdot, and rarely bother
| with them anymore.
|
| Probably all thanks to dang!
| WalterBright wrote:
| I also have many unpopular views, and know I'm going to
| get downvoted plenty for them, but post them anyway.
| awb wrote:
| I have ~12k karma and never experienced anything getting
| dicey. I've never been affiliated with YC or the mods.
|
| In my experience it's a pretty fair community and I've
| been downvoted many times.
| dctoedt wrote:
| Ditto what 'awb said, every word.
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| Maybe. I don't invest enough time and emotion here to
| have anything substantial to lose.
|
| I consider myself a tradesman who, naively or not time
| will tell, leverages a rarified skill set at market rate
| trying to deliever value to clients as best as I can.
|
| Millenial enough to have no expectations of a charmed
| future, despite earning an annual income in the top
| decile, but not jaded enough to put a price tag on my
| soul, principles nor well-being.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| > Tech is like card counting. If you actually figure the
| game out, you get punished and flushed out.
|
| Wouldn't this dynamic that you describe from your
| perspective exist in every industry?
| awb wrote:
| Assuming there's a "game" to be played, and you get
| pushed out, you probably didn't understand the real game.
|
| In the card counting example, the game isn't blackjack,
| the game is the house always wins. If you're card
| counting and losing money, no one cares.
|
| I've been reasonably successful in tech and don't know of
| any games besides the free market.
| pasadenasunset wrote:
| At least no games with underlying dynamics you would like
| to share, and I say that with a grin.
|
| The discussion of moderation policies and topics in
| posting usually derive from a shared understanding of a
| forum as a group of people, rather than a trajectory
| where current community opinions in turn, create the
| future community.
|
| There is also the origins of Hacker News as Startup News,
| which immediately creates a covariance constraint between
| seniority and topic. The only way this dynamism can be
| managed is having temporal aspects (e.g., boundaries,
| limits on accelerationism toward specific topics),
| included in moderating policies.
| lgregg wrote:
| how do you manage all these replies? is it just bookmarked or
| do you keep a spreadsheet? I see you do this often.
| exolymph wrote:
| I can call up specific tweets from years ago by searching
| keywords that I remember (or at least I used to be able to
| before Twitter nerfed search). Just sticks in the brain.
| dang wrote:
| I guess they're engraved into my brain like a wax recording
| by now.
|
| I have keyboard shortcuts to bring up the most common ones,
| but otherwise I just go find them in HN Search.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| For those not familiar with it, HN's search, provided by
| Algolia, has syntax for searching posts, comments, by
| author, within date ranges, and (for posts) above or
| below thresholds, and more.
|
| See: https://hn.algolia.com/help
|
| It's also accessible as a DDG bang, !hn
|
| I also make heavy use of search. Often searching for
| dang's comments ;-)
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >I have keyboard shortcuts to bring up the most common
| ones
|
| More evidence that dang is a superhuman form of life.
| redbell wrote:
| > I guess they're engraved into my brain like a wax
| recording by now.
|
| Because you had frequent access to these
| resources/links/texts as a part of your job, I believe
| they live in your brain's RAM.
|
| Keep up the good work @dang!
| [deleted]
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _Without getting into the details of each particular submission
| I'm curious if you think the submission standards have remained
| consistent throughout the years or if your curation philosophy
| has changed at all and if so, in what ways?_
|
| There was a change a while back that made the front page less
| volatile, around that time you started seeing stories merged
| more often, and traditional news creeping in a bit more. I
| think it is sort of like a lightning rod to keep the rest of
| the front page pure. Before that stories would show up and get
| flagged constantly, and the front page would change multiple
| times an hour.
|
| One thing that I have noticed is that 2020 was a bit of an
| eternal september for hn. Many times I see people posting
| things that don't really seem to work with the hn style, but
| they have a fairly high karma count and an account that was
| created in or after 2020. I think maybe a bunch of people
| suddenly working from home felt safe to use the internet
| without a boss over their shoulder, and needed a bit of
| community they were missing from not going in the office. This
| influx has watered down the ability of hn to aggressively
| flag/downvote politics, dumb jokes, etc.
|
| Though, all in all it's still mostly the same it has been in
| the last 10 years or so.
| vikingerik wrote:
| I've noticed that same increase in Reddit-style one-liner
| jokes and references here too. Not enough to become a problem
| yet, but just enough to worry about setting precedent for
| more. One good one-liner in a thread can be alright, but it
| tends to attract a train of similar low-content responses.
|
| I hadn't connected that to a pandemic-induced demand
| increase, but that could well be true.
|
| As for submissions (rather than comments), it does feel like
| HN has shifted more towards broader industry and politics
| news, rather than just tech and programming. I'm okay with
| this, in fact HN has displaced Reddit for me thanks to the
| much higher standard of discourse, although I do worry a bit
| about marginalizing the crunchy tech content for those who
| come here for that.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > I've noticed that same increase in Reddit-style one-liner
| jokes and references here too.
|
| I think the guidelines might be right, in that this hasn't
| really seemed to change in the ~10 years I've been here.
| codewithcheese wrote:
| I think it's quite different now, the gap between HN and
| lobste.rs content is growing wider and wider, lobste.rs to me
| represents more closely what "old" HN was like
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I'm still annoyed I couldn't find someone I knew to give me
| an invite to lobste.rs 9 years ago. I remember asking
| former coworkers, and people at local tech meetups, and
| getting blank stares like I was making something up. Though
| I suppose that is how they managed to keep things under
| control
| [deleted]
| walterbell wrote:
| Software (some made by HN contributors) ate the world.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| Seriously, it's all on-topic. That's why I went into
| software. It appealed to my cross-disciplinary interests.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Would you consider, for example, Musk moving to Texas, or that
| same state's power grid failing to be political stories?
|
| Both these ostensibly tech-related stories have strong
| political undercurrents.
| netcan wrote:
| I almost think this is a moot question, though interesting to
| think about.
|
| The world, technology & online culture have changed so much
| over these years. I don't think submission/curation standards
| _could have_ remained consistent throughout.
|
| Google, FB and internet companies becoming $>trn companies
| happened in that time period. Crime, sports & politics have
| become intertwined with the stuff that was on topic back in the
| day. FB or Twitter's policies are a major factor in elections
| worldwide. That's inevitably political. Cybersecurity,
| infosecurity and even (silly as it sounds) meme-wars are
| playing a big role in the current eastern european affair.
|
| TV news came to us, moreso than we went to it...I think.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| It's very hard to define specific political content as separate
| from technology.
|
| I remember a single Covid scientific paper turning into a 500
| post political discussion.
|
| Or tech giants and censorship and privacy. How does one
| separate tech from politics in this sense?
|
| Maybe society has become more political and it's making it's
| way to link aggregator sites?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| I think it is more that tech (and tech companies) become more
| subjects of political debate.
| iqanq wrote:
| People want to debate politics, but submissions about
| politics get killed. Therefore people end up using any
| excuse to debate politics in any thread.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| I see tons of threads without political debate. I
| actually think the majority of threads are not political.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Still better than being unregulated.
|
| I don't come here to have political discussion, I want to
| find out what's interesting in tech, not to engage in
| flame wars (except the vim/emacs kind, that I fight).
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Are there subjects of political debate that aren't
| political?
| eldaisfish wrote:
| the reality is that almost everything has an element of
| politics and it is good to understand the relationship
| between politics and technology in particular. Tech, in many
| ways, has been adept at skirting existing laws because tech
| transcends barriers that were show-stoppers in the past.
| AirBnB, Uber are good examples. Google, facebook and spying.
| Clearview and their immoral data gathering.
|
| There is the additional issue that tech has crept into
| everything and the internet is where modern state-sponsored
| disinformation and misinformation campaigns are being fought.
|
| Tech is maturing and a consequence of that process is that
| politics develops. It's not necessarily a bad thing as the
| cynics say.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| I think it makes sense that more political discussions
| occur on hacker News because tech and the world in general
| possibly is becoming more political.
| loceng wrote:
| Technology is used as political tools/weapons to drive and
| manufacture consent, through promoting hate and creating
| divisiveness - and through captured mainstream media
| channels, and online platforms; this couldn't be any more
| obvious with Trudeau's behaviours and observing the
| mainstream landscape of what the majority of Canadians are
| seeing.
|
| And so you're correct - politics and technology is
| intertwined, but HN is happy to suppress conversation that
| would arguably lead to discussing technological solutions.
|
| The biggest problem is our information
| distribution/propagation (and therefore trust) apparatus is
| corrupted, which does include the issue with low-to-no-effort
| downvotes allowing a person to suppress content while getting
| rewarded via a dopamine hit.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| You're preaching to the choir here about mainstream media
| being super corrupt.
|
| Puts a lot of pressure on one or two hacker news mods to be
| the purveyors of neutrality for the entire media landscape
| if that's what's expected.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Tech and political ideologies have collapsed, and especially
| in areas of interest to HN. Climate change, when a fetus is a
| baby, etc... these are areas where science has intersected
| politics before HN existed, but they also don't intersect HN
| regularly.
|
| But now some of the hot topics in tech are also hot topics in
| politics-- privacy and mass surveillance, platform
| censorship, vaccinations/medicine(which were a little
| political, became super political), affirmitive action in the
| tech industry, etc...
|
| I don't know if we'll ever go back to where we were as tech
| plays a larger and larger role. And if you think we're
| intertwined now, just wait until the metaverse!
| fartcannon wrote:
| Eternal September maybe?
| hammock wrote:
| >In the old days I don't remember as much political / world
| news allowed.
|
| In the old days, politics and world news were not as
| intertwined with technology as they are today.
| awb wrote:
| > It's awesome to go to a thread and see helpful links or
| comments that enhance the conversation.
|
| Without fail :) Thanks @dang!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| blurker wrote:
| I appreciate the repost. It's quite timely for me, because I had
| recently been reading and participating in a post about HN's
| apparent toxicity. This has helped me to gain some more
| perspective on the topic. Especially about how moderation is
| done. I'm really impressed by the moderators, I honestly had no
| idea how many people were moderating HN or how they did things. I
| admire the patience and care it sounds like they put into the
| community.
| password4321 wrote:
| I missed it, thanks for the heads-up.
|
| I love you, Hacker News, but you're toxic
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349222 2022-02-15
| worik wrote:
| Loved this.
|
| A peek behind the curtain, and what I see is what I expect.
|
| What a fantastic job you all (both? still?) do.
|
| Truly anarchism in action. A wonderful thing. Nothing should last
| foever - long may you run!
| e40 wrote:
| This article made me appreciate dang and anyone that has anything
| to do with the site so much more. Big thanks to all.
| gpas wrote:
| In this site I've learned to be careful of what I write on the
| internet. I keep returning because almost everyone follows the
| same rule: write if you have something interesting to say
| politely, otherwise read and move on. It's quite the opposite of
| other famous communities (except for some subs on reddit) where
| everyone is fighting for karma points with memes and copycat
| comments or evidently pushing their agendas. Thanks to you dang
| and to everyone involved for moderating such an interesting
| place.
| alphachloride wrote:
| > The site's now characteristic tone of performative erudition--
| hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative ...
|
| Reading this, I felt the description hit very close to home with
| regards to a substantive amount of discourse here. I also learned
| a new word!
| tgv wrote:
| It's very meta, because "performative erudition" could be the
| subtitle of The New Yorker.
| krapp wrote:
| They should know it when they see it.
| adenverd wrote:
| And just using the phrase "performative erudition" is itself
| an example of performative erudition!
| ProAm wrote:
| Good ol Dang, hero to some, voice of reason to others [1]
|
| [1] http://cosmonautdreams.com/images/dang.jpg
| dqpb wrote:
| Also a bully and an autocrat.
| summari wrote:
| ciphol wrote:
| Cherrypicking comments from a discussion forum with thousands of
| participants and no barriers to entry is a pretty weak way of
| criticizing the forum.
| pkilgore wrote:
| I missed this the first time around, thanks for posting!
|
| Mods, probably don't say it enough, but most of us deeply
| appreciate you!
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