[HN Gopher] The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
Author : capableweb
Score : 84 points
Date : 2023-07-28 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| gerdesj wrote:
| "I wondered if their work might show that tech really does need
| humanism--that better online communities can be built one
| relationship at a time. Then my eyes moved down the thread, where
| a third user had left a new comment. It read: "King Canute was
| supposed to stop the tide, you couch alluder."
|
| Great article, very well researched. Ms Weiner has clearly put
| some major effort in there ... or spends an inordinate amount of
| time here anyway! Is HN on speed dial in her browser.
|
| The article is pre-pandemic and a lot of other recent events. I'd
| love to diff the older article with one written nowadays, ideally
| with minimal knowledge of the original.
| dang wrote:
| She did do a ton of research, worked through all the materials
| we sent her (I sent a lot, including a thwack of Kids in the
| Hall videos, several years-long email threads with specific
| users, with their permission of course, and god knows what
| else), and even changed her mind--a thing rare enough to always
| deserve respect. We took a risk in trusting her; I felt like it
| worked out, and I'm glad we chose to be open. The article came
| out fairer than we probably had any right to expect. There were
| bits I could complain about, but that's inevitable. I felt seen
| and I think Scott did too.
|
| Re Canute, she missed that pvg was being playful, in the
| context of a longstanding positive connection. I felt bad when
| I saw that. But we did get an amusing, and properly italicized,
| About box out of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pvg.
|
| Come back, pvg!
| motohagiography wrote:
| Forums, like music, love and friendship, die when the
| participants become meta about them, I think. Criticism is what
| we have when we aren't giving or participating, and while it
| opens conversations to people who don't have a stake in them, it
| also invites self centeredness and abuses for other agendas.
| Everything is better when we stop being meta.
| dang wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| motohagiography wrote:
| If we could get Ducksauce or the Kiffness to produce a song
| with a sample of everything is better when we stop being
| meta, we might just be able to save the world. :)
| [deleted]
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Do you think that the recent problems at reddit could be a cause
| of division on HN?
|
| Maybe part of the exodus of reddit users are coming to HN?
|
| It seems like HN has become more political in just last couple
| months.
| duckhelmet wrote:
| [flagged]
| tiffanyg wrote:
| d. None of the above
| duckhelmet wrote:
| > d. None of the above
|
| e. Ok, what personal stuff would you want to talk about?
| narag wrote:
| _The site's now characteristic tone of performative erudition..._
|
| On the other hand, this article is an example of down-to-earth
| prose and empathy.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I suggest we pool our resources and produce a Mexican corrido
| music video for dang.
| belfalas wrote:
| _> Still, as an occasional reader, I have noticed certain trends.
| When stories that focus on structural barriers faced by women in
| the workplace, or on diversity in tech, or on race or masculinity
| --stories, admittedly, that are more intriguing to me, a person
| interested in the humanities, than stories on technical topics--
| hit the front page, users often flag them, presumably for being
| off topic, so fast that hardly any comments accrue._
|
| I have noticed this trend for a long time also, and well before
| this article was first written. It seems to go in waves though
| I'll cautiously say that it seems to have gotten somewhat better
| in recent years. I remember a time in the mid-2010s when these
| kinds of stories would disappear almost instantaneously. Now some
| of these articles and topics get a good number of upvotes and
| occasionally even substantive dialogue.
|
| That said, the comments sections on these articles do tend to
| devolve pretty quickly.
| leononame wrote:
| I agree that the comment sections on those articles devolves
| really quickly. To me, those comment sections are the worst
| part of HN. The normally very civil discourse found in here
| tends to be more "reddity".
|
| Of course, I don't have a concrete example right now. But I do
| tend to stay off those topics in here cuase it feels like a
| shit show. Really makes me sad because the comment sections on
| other non-tech topics like music or literature are always
| interesting to read.
| mxkopy wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34992588
|
| A fun discussion where someone points out that women's rights
| negatively affect birth rates, as if women's purpose is to
| keep them high
| Pannoniae wrote:
| It's understandable that they get flagged because people can't
| talk about these topics without emotions and it almost always
| derails into a flamewar.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| The implications here are interesting -- that discussing with
| emotion is something to avoid or that it's even possible to
| avoid at all. We're human -- as much as doing so has been a
| cultural aspiration for millenia in the West, it is simply
| not possible to decouple ourselves from our physical and
| emotional experiences.
|
| In my mind, it's far less important that we try to address
| these topics "without emotion" (whatever that means) and
| instead focus on cultivating respect and curiosity and
| assuming good faith. This is a bit more congruous with the
| spirit of the site.
|
| There's another Western cultural aspiration involving an
| impossible decoupling, probably more common in American
| culture than European, which is to depersonalize politics.
| But politics is about people, and some people are much less
| immediately affected by political and social issues than
| others -- there's usually a great many layers of indirection
| between the articulation of a regressive point of view or
| support for a particular law or politician, and e.g. a
| minority being squished out of tech or a parent who was a
| victim of a hate crime or a queer person's suicide. There are
| probably especially many layers of indirection when it comes
| to a lot of tech workers, given the demographics.
|
| In any case, when discussing politics and issues of class and
| race it's important to recognize that you're not talking
| about something abstract, but people, and their loved ones
| and families. Given that, it's hardly a level playing field
| if we start with the expectation that folks will leave
| emotion at the door
| wheels wrote:
| I think it's more of an admission that internet discussions
| aren't analogous to in-person discussions, and have a way
| of dehumanizing the person you're discussing with. Combined
| with modern-day tribalism, it means that most online
| "discussions" on a particular set of topics are more about
| virtue signaling and displaying tribal membership than they
| are about convincing others. As such, it's not unreasonable
| shorthand for a forum to avoid such topics en masse, as
| when allowed, they tend to drown out everything else.
| whatshisface wrote:
| "Discussing with emotion" is an euphemism for "saying
| things that you would not normally say unless you were
| thrown off kilter by your reaction to what you had just
| read."
| 1000bestlives wrote:
| If you are emotionally invested in a topic then it's
| probably not technical, or you're drinking someone's
| koolaid.
|
| People who want to discuss these topics on HN are all on
| PIPs or jobless.
| interroboink wrote:
| While I respect your opinion, I can tell you for a
| certainty that you are wrong in your specific claim -- I
| can cite myself as a counterexample (:
|
| For instance, recently there was an interesting article
| about finishing projects[1], which emphasized the
| emotional journey involved, and I rather liked the
| discussion it generated.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36313671
| krapp wrote:
| I take it you haven't seen how emotional people here get
| talking about javascript or systemd or any number of
| other pedantic fence-painting "technical" subjects.
| worrycue wrote:
| What is PIP? Seriously I don't know. I skimmed Wikipedia,
| none of the definitions fit.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I find the topics that are most likely to generate "heated"
| discussion tend to be emotional topics, but also they're
| more broadly important to society and just more interesting
| to discuss. That's why I tend to browse in /active[1]. Some
| JSON parsing command line toolkit re-written in Rust [4
| comments]? Yawn..
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/active
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _people can 't_
|
| If some people are prone to lack of control, that implies
| little for individuals.
|
| Yes some of us can reason.
| lackinnermind wrote:
| Opinions and views likely follow statical patterns like
| everything else.
|
| Systemic reasons are why it's common to see the collective
| responsible for the systemic patterns in society be so fervent
| to deny systemic issues exist.
|
| I myself like the idea of my success being attributed to my
| hard work. I would like to think that I bootstrapped my way to
| success. It's not an easy feeling to accept that in many ways
| by virtue of just being part of the main majority collective I
| by default have an advantage in my community over those that
| aren't a member in that majority collective group.
|
| i.e. if the majority % of users in a forum are belonging to a
| certain category then it's reasonable to believe that most of
| that majority would be against anything perceived as a
| criticism of their group (and by extension themselves).
| dmix wrote:
| There's not a lack of these sorts of discussions on the
| internet by males or tech people or white people or whatever.
| Just go on Reddit or Twitter it's everywhere.
|
| American's love talking about those issues. It's probably the
| biggest thing they love talking about compared to most other
| countries.
| carabiner wrote:
| Yep this happened with my last 3 flagged submissions. All on
| social issues. Really sad because especially first one listed
| below I thought would elicit good discussions, somewhat tied
| other issues like affirmative action.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35867458
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36065735
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36627969
| dang wrote:
| I'd say https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35867458 was an
| interesting submission that probably shouldn't have been
| flagged, although it's doubtful whether a thoughtful, curious
| discussion is possible. Usually we end up with people
| charging in and wielding their priors as a stick, and from
| that point of view I can understand the flags.
|
| The other two were too sensational and, in the case of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36627969, already a
| heavily discussed theme, so I'd say they were flagged
| correctly.
| eduction wrote:
| [flagged]
| 1000bestlives wrote:
| Have you tried discussing your non-technical pet topics on a
| non-technical forum?
| dang wrote:
| Hey, that's not fair! HN is for everyone's pet topics and
| non-technical stories are welcome. The only criterion is
| that they be interesting and gratify curiosity.
|
| I mean, there's a high-ranking thread about a huge oak
| table on the front page right now:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36912861. As there
| should be.
|
| (You probably already know this but for anyone who doesn't:
| HN is explicitly not just a technical forum - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.)
| rvba wrote:
| Somehow you dont see anyone from HN go to some "diversity
| news" forum to post hacker related stuff there. It's
| always the diversity types that come to other places.
| (arguably to ruin them)
|
| Is there even any real "diversity forum"? I guess not.
|
| There is a type of people who can only corrupt, it cannot
| build.
|
| 500 years ago they would be in inquisition, 50 years ago
| they would be in a hownowners association and tell you
| that you cannot paint your doors the color you want, now
| they are in those diversity groups...
| vhlhvjcov wrote:
| I'm confused, what exactly links the Inquisition,
| homeowners associations and "diversity groups"?
|
| Also what is a diversity group?
| neilv wrote:
| > _That said, the comments sections on these articles do tend
| to devolve pretty quickly._
|
| I might be getting desensitized, but (being pretty socially
| progressive, myself) the comment threads painful to me seem
| much less frequent today than a few years ago.
|
| (Up until a couple years ago, when a comment thread seemed to
| bring out comment threads that were very concerning, sometimes
| I'd go read a little n-gate.com, as an antidote. I'd let that
| person rant about HN, much more over-the-top than I would.
| Unfortunately, during their last installment or two, before
| disappearing, the writer sounded more genuinely upset about
| something. I hope they're OK, and that they didn't absorb too
| much stress, while saving me from blowing a gasket.)
| version_five wrote:
| That kind of stuff has infected so much of modern discourse, if
| people want to talk about it there are plenty of forums for it.
| Why should we all stop what we're doing and prioritize
| discussing a niche political cause who's proponents have been
| blackmailing people everywhere into paying attention to them
| and have now come to dominate all sorts of forums and secure
| power, ironically with no benefit to the people they feign
| support for.
|
| And when people say they want it discussed, they don't mean
| they want to read diverse opinions, they just mean they want to
| see orthodoxy regurgitated.
| dang wrote:
| There's no doubt that political topics and threads often work
| that way, and I understand the frustration. We don't want
| regurgitation--that follows from what we're trying to
| optimize for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&pr
| efix=true&sor....
|
| But the question of how to handle politics on HN is not
| simple. By the same principle of trying to optimize for
| curiosity, some content with political overlap is interesting
| and belongs here. The questions are which forms of it, how
| much, which particular links, etc.. I feel like after 10
| years we arrived at a pretty coherent and stable general
| answer to that. Not that we get every specific call right--we
| don't. But the general principle has held up.
|
| For anyone wondering what I'm talking about, here are some
| past explanations:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 (April 2020)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 (Nov 2019)
|
| and some related points:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 (July 2020)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 (May 2018)
|
| and there are lots more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=
| all&page=0&prefix=false&so... covering this.
| [deleted]
| lackinnermind wrote:
| [flagged]
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Hacker News would be immeasurably improved by removing the flag
| button entirely. That's what the downvote button is for. Flag
| should be a message to a mod if there is something heinous like
| gore on the front page. It's used as a censorship button here
| and that isn't cool, especially in a place that is supposed to
| support well rounded discussion.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The snipers that hit you prove you wrong: you may have looked
| for discussion, you received passing sneers: flagging is
| probably not the critical issue.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| A lot of articles do match the very first thing in the
| guideline's list of what's off topic:
|
| > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports,
| or celebrities, 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.
|
| Specifically, there is this tendency to briefly discuss some
| new social issue, but then filling the rest of the article with
| discussion of the current political situation.
| leononame wrote:
| Just cause they are related to humanities or discuss
| masculinity, minorities or race in tech doesn't make them
| political by default.
|
| A topic being discussed a lot in politics doesn't necessarily
| mean that that topic is political imo
| woooooo wrote:
| Sturgeon's Law, though. The average article on all of those
| topics is a pile of political flamebait.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| You don't appear to have read what I wrote very carefully.
| The problem is that they fill most of the article with a
| general discussion of politics, making the article mostly
| about general politics.
|
| People are naturally going to flag such an article.
| leononame wrote:
| Right, I'm sorry. I misread that
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Thank you Dan.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Annual submission? Forever props to Dang and the mods of course.
|
| Some previous discussions:
|
| _A year ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040
|
| _3 years ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415
|
| _4 years ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052
| 1000bestlives wrote:
| "Hey guys! Ready to discuss touchy-feely stuff all day,
| everyday yet? No? Well, see ya next year!"
| hoofhearted wrote:
| Daniel is the man! I can't express how grateful I am for his
| openness and honesty when you interact with him.
|
| I'm working on a fun side project now that was inspired after
| emailing him.
|
| When YC asks me to come out for a demo, I'd be most excited to
| finally meet him in person lol
| antigonemerlin wrote:
| Trust only answers from domain experts.
|
| I think it is unreasonable to expect that hackers are expert
| assyriologists, material scientists, or sociologists, despite
| what we may think about ourselves. Some of us are fortunate
| enough to know many things and master a few more disciplines. Few
| of us have mastered everything.
|
| I know that I'm a glorified glue monkey. On all other subjects, I
| am ignorant, and rely on the opinions of others.
|
| After leaving reddit, I'm trying not to relapse into karma
| farming and speculating about topics which I have no expertise
| in, which just about leaves my own personal anecdotes about
| growing up Canadian. That, and asking the beginner's question.
| That's probably for the best for the health of the forum at
| large.
| throwanem wrote:
| Welcome to Hacker News, where you curate your experience mostly
| the old-fashioned way - in your brain.
|
| It doesn't always work out great, but no one ever promised it
| would. About three days in five, I look at the front page and
| shake my head. But the other two, it's worth more to me than
| any of the newspapers I actually pay for.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| HN is one of the few communities where I've had scenarios where
| I've gotten into a spirited discussion, been gently told to cool
| off (or gotten a temporary rate limit), taken a step back and
| realized, you know what? I was not interacting in the spirit of
| the community.
|
| Of course, the community is no more immune than any other
| regarding group think or rough edges. But on the whole, I've
| found the level of discourse to impressively high quality over
| time, and I've been posting and reading here on one account or
| another for over a decade. It's not just the level of discourse
| that is impressive, but its prolonged longevity. I think it can
| only have occurred from a very thoughtful approach to moderation;
| something I immediately miss when I step into other less curated
| forums such as Reddit and Twitter, where I can find the
| interesting content in the discourse, but laden with
| significantly more noise and significantly less thoughtfulness.
|
| Thanks dang!
| [deleted]
| noir_lord wrote:
| That the moderators are so unnoticeable is a testament to their
| skill.
|
| We have to do heavy content moderation at work and the people
| requiring that moderation would test the patience of a literal
| saint.
| Given_47 wrote:
| I especially love Dan aggregating previous discussions on
| <topic>. Equally appreciate the other users that do the same.
| It's nice to go and check out how perceptions have changed (if
| it's a thing with longer time horizon) or just additional
| discourse
| chasd00 wrote:
| I agree, the fact that I haven't noticed significant moderation
| on HN is a sign of really good work by that team. Also, it's a
| sign of a community, while not perfect, is at least trying to
| be a community.
|
| I would like to read the moderators take on getting through the
| pandemic on HN. The toxicity here hit new highs for me during
| that period. God help you if even dared to muse that you may
| consider thinking about lockdowns as maybe not the perfect
| answer. Further, even whispering "lab-leak" is still a crime
| although not as punished as it once was.
|
| Even through that period though i will say HN is the best
| large-scale forum i've ever found.
| DANmode wrote:
| As if to prove this, the other day I saw some clown with a
| multi-year account chastising dang, as if he was a self-
| appointed moderator!
|
| Great work, mods.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done
| anything at all." https://youtu.be/edCqF_NtpOQ
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