[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
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Tell HN: Announcing tomhow as a public moderator
Hi all, Tom Howard is going public as HN moderator today. He has
been doing HN moderation work for years already and knows the site
and its practices inside-out, so the only new thing you'll see is
mod comments from Tom showing up in the threads the way mine do.
I'm not going anywhere, so you'll have two of us to put up with
going forward :) I've known Tom since he was sctb's and my
batchmate back in YC W09. Many of you know him as the kind and
thoughtful community member tomhoward
(https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tomhoward). He's still kind
and thoughtful, but he's going to post as tomhow from now on
(https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tomhow), the same way I
switched to dang when I went through this rite of passage years
ago. Below is a bit from Tom about himself. Please join me in
welcoming him to this new status which he was crazy enough to say
yes to! --- _YC and HN have been a huge part of my life for
nearly two decades. I read pg 's essay How to Start a Startup in
2005 after my friend (and later, co-founder) Fenn found it on
Slashdot, and it opened our eyes as to how to go about building
products and companies. I first signed up in late 2007, and since
then HN has been the place I come to find interesting news and
discussions._ _Hacker News gave me a window into the big wide
world of technology and startups, that had previously seemed so
remote and opaque from where I lived (and still live) in Australia.
We were lucky enough to be accepted into the W09 batch of YC, and
since then HN has been a place where we could share announcements
about the startup, but also where I could share the challenges and
struggles I experienced in the startup journey and other aspects of
life, particularly to do with health and wellbeing._ _From the
discussions that have happened about these topics I 've ended up
making enduring friendships with people all over the world, and
have been able to learn many things that have improved my life in
profound ways. I love HN's ethos - of being a place people come to
engage their curiosity. That's what it's always been for me and
what I hope I can help it to be for everyone!_ _--Tom_
Author : dang
Score : 1056 points
Date : 2025-04-02 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
| airstrike wrote:
| I'm not sure if I should say "welcome" or "congrats" so maybe a
| little of both!
|
| Moderation is a huge part of what makes HN so valuable, so it's
| good to hear dang is getting some much needed help as this place
| apparently won't stop growing
| pimlottc wrote:
| "Well, grats!"
| noleary wrote:
| Welcome, Tom! Thanks for supporting this community for so long.
| Your work is much appreciated!
| Natsu wrote:
| Welcome, Tom!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Congrats Tom! Thank you for your service.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| Tom, please fix the flag abuse problem. It's gotten to the point
| where I realize there's no point in commenting on many threads,
| given my opinions, some of which are very normal nationally.
| kstrauser wrote:
| When I've found myself being publicly tsk'ed by the people
| around me, I've taken a moment to try go figure out why they
| disapprove of what I'm saying. It's been a useful life
| exercise.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sometimes you're right, sometimes they are. Sometimes, as the
| Rick & Morty quote goes, "Your boos mean nothing, I've seen
| what makes you cheer."
| kstrauser wrote:
| For sure, but then the followup question is "do I want to
| spend my time and energy around a bunch of people I think
| are wrong?'
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If they're correct, maybe?
| kstrauser wrote:
| If they're correct, and constantly telling you you're
| wrong...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| ... you have an opportunity for self-improvement.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Often times, you comment not to change the mind of the
| person you're replying to, but to provide a rebuttal for
| the readers at home. If nobody challenges problematic
| ideology or corrects misinformation, it can spread like a
| disease.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Shouldn't that be directed to those with an agenda who and
| are flagging certain posts?
|
| Those of us who complain about this highly targeted flagging
| just want to avoid censorship. I can't see how we need to
| reflect on this.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Forums like this are "censored" and that's a really good
| thing. We don't need a steady stream of (for example) hate
| for women, minorities, and trans people that you see on
| truly uncensored forums.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I agree, but when that is abused because of a minorities'
| preference, then it's bad.
|
| That's what's happening here.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I think we need to get specific -- what preferences are
| you referring to, and who is the minority?
|
| EcommerceFlow mentioned opinions that are "very normal
| nationally." I don't want to assume the worst so I'm
| trying not to read in to that.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean, I don't generally like to go over somebody's
| posting history because it feels like stupid very-online
| silliness, but they brought it up.
|
| I see some unflagged center-right political opinions
| sometimes. It is stuff that a mainstream democrat would
| probably disagree with but find, like, not odious or
| offensive. Therefore I think they are just getting
| flagged because any political opinions here have a chance
| of getting flagged. This is how the website is supposed
| to work, if we as a community decided that mainstream
| political opinions were ok, the site would become a place
| to argue about what exactly is considered mainstream.
| cbeach wrote:
| All illegal speech should be hidden from public
| discussion.
|
| However, it would be disconcerting if stating biological
| facts led to censorship on a forum that focusses on
| science and technology.
|
| The definition of "hate" has been stretched a lot over
| the last few years, and if that restricts discussion of
| facts and ideas, then it is harmful.
| Zak wrote:
| "Stating biological facts" is code for an opinion about
| how society should view trans people, which is off-topic
| for HN.
| cbeach wrote:
| If stating certain facts is made illegal (by our
| democratically-elected representatives) then by all means
| HN will need to censor those facts for the sake of its
| own self-preservation.
|
| But until then, we should be free to state facts.
|
| > The old adage "I may disagree with what you have to
| say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say
| it" was once a touchstone of liberal society. Having been
| involved for most of my adult life in areas of social
| debate, it was a phrase I once commonly heard. Not any
| more.
|
| > Instead, public discourse is marked by efforts to find
| offence, destroy the character of opponents or ensure
| reason is smothered by emotional manipulation.
|
| > -- John Deighan
| https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/banning-
| those-w...
| fwip wrote:
| "Stating facts" does not mean you are following the other
| rules of the site.
|
| For example, if you irrelevantly post "My software is on
| sale now for 10% off and here is the link!" on every
| story, everything in it is factual, but it's spam
| regardless.
|
| I'm sure your specific facts that you want to post are in
| service of a particular social or political viewpoint you
| are trying to push, one that the people flagging find
| either off-topic or odious. And, given that you refuse to
| elaborate on what specific facts you think are banned,
| reveals that you think you only can convince people by
| being vague about what specifically you mean.
| cbeach wrote:
| I'd love to be clearer about my common-sense,
| scientifically-backed viewpoints, but if I did so it
| might result in hostile action being taken against me. So
| I choose not to.
|
| Not because I'm insincere about my views, or because I
| believe they are harmful - but because the activists
| pushing the ideological views I oppose have been
| demonstrably violent and destructive.
| kstrauser wrote:
| One major problem is when people presume that their
| simplistic understanding of a subject is factual, and
| that everyone else is going off emotion. For example,
| some people will erroneously claim that the 2 genetic
| human options are "XX = woman, XY = man". Those seem to
| be the most likely combinations, partly because we don't
| collect DNA from 100% of the population and compare it to
| the observed anatomy, but they're clearly and
| documentedly not the only options.
|
| Even without considering trans people, it's factually
| untrue that "XX = woman, XY = man, and those are the only
| possibilities." And yet, people who stopped at high
| school biology will argue until they're blue in the teeth
| that anyone with a more nuanced take is anti-science.
| biddlybop wrote:
| Yes and some people will also make scientifically
| inaccurate claims like "sex is a spectrum" and "there are
| more than two sexes" and "it is possible for humans to
| change sex".
|
| There's a great deal of misunderstanding around this
| topic. Having open-minded, interesting and reflective
| discussion about topics like this should however lead to
| greater understanding. But that is not possible if it
| gets flagged and censored.
| fwip wrote:
| This is correct. For the people who disagree, go read
| Slashdot at -1 for a while. Then pretend that you're one
| of the people who are targeted by that vitriol, and think
| about how much you'd read the HN comments if they were
| like that.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They are flagging posts that they see as pushing an agenda.
| There isn't some official separation of agenda-less and
| agenda-full ideas.
| cbeach wrote:
| Posts that break guidelines should be flagged, and the
| bar should be pretty high.
|
| I don't think there is a guideline that bans posts from
| "pushing an agenda" (which would be very subjective)
| Teever wrote:
| How do you feel about flags being public?
| cbeach wrote:
| That would be very positive IMO. It would expose bad
| actors.
|
| However, the bar for creating new accounts is low, so bad
| actors could create lots of accounts cheaply and use them
| for flagging. That's why I think flagging needs to be a
| privilege that requires a high user "trust level" - see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43559629
| dpifke wrote:
| From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
| "Please don't use Hacker News for political or
| ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
|
| "Agendas" are often ideological battlegrounds. I flag
| comments, even those I agree with, that I recognize from
| experience are going to lead to the same tired, off-topic
| debates and flame wars.
|
| Lately, I've also been maintaining a personal uBlock
| Origin filter list to hide certain prolific rule
| breakers. I would _love_ if HN had an equivalent built-in
| "killfile"[0] functionality for auto-hiding submissions
| and comments. (This has been suggested to the admins, and
| was seemingly received favorably, but I'm sure it's a
| matter of resources.)
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I draw a distinction between posts and comments here.
|
| _Comments_ that are "pushing an agenda" are noticeable
| because they Just. Will. Not. Deviate. From. The. Party.
| Line. Ever. They will _never_ acknowledge an opposing
| viewpoint 's point, no matter how valid. It's not a good
| faith conversation, and it deserves to be both downvoted
| and flagged. When one side (or both!) is like talking to
| a brick wall, this is often what's going on.
|
| Posts are harder. If user X posts articles pushing a
| viewpoint, that's harder to prove that they're intending
| to do that. Or it would be, except that user X will also
| usually be active in the discussion about the article,
| and their comments will fit the above pattern. If you see
| that, then you can say that the post was probably pushing
| an agenda as well.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Despite being a small-ish site, HackerNews does still
| suffer from the Reddit problem of having enough users
| that you often don't get to really know anybody.
| Realistically most conversations here only go back and
| forth for like 3 or so comments on each side. I mean, the
| site is structured to promote that kind of thing; reply
| buttons start getting hidden after a point, right?
|
| I don't think anyone really can be convinced to deviate
| from a strongly held political belief in a handful of
| posts. At this point I think most people with any
| interest in politics have already seen every path through
| 4 or so posts around their opinions.
|
| Standard talking point, standard counterpoint, standard
| objection that the the counterpoint is not back by data,
| request for citations, citation, argument that the math
| was wrong, and by now the thread is a week old and we've
| forgotten about it.
|
| So, I wouldn't say it is an issue of people being bad
| faith or overly obstinate. It's just a bad format. Old
| phpBB boards and those sorts of sites were better for
| this sort of stuff, despite being mediocre, because at
| least you could remember who was who.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| All right, here's an example. X makes a post on one side
| of a position. Y makes a thought-provoking reply on the
| other side. X replies with "So what's your point?" X
| either fails at reading comprehension, or X is trying to
| make it look like Y didn't have a point, because X
| doesn't have a good reply to Y's point, and X wants
| everybody else to not notice that Y actually had a good
| point.
|
| I _hate_ seeing that. It 's a bad-faith argument. It's
| the sign of someone who's just there to argue, not to
| have a curious conversation. That is, it's a sign of
| someone who isn't within the spirit of the site
| guidelines.
|
| No, I don't think this is just my personal bias against
| that style of posting. It's fake and juvenile, and it has
| no place on HN.
|
| Another way you can tell: When they're replying to 20
| comments with the same 2 or 3 talking points. That's
| someone who's there to do battle, not to have a
| conversation. They aren't really replying to the 20
| comments, either - they're just spraying the same canned
| responses all over the place. That's not a conversation;
| that's a tape recorder in transmit-only mode.
| aliqot wrote:
| I don't think the person getting flagged is always deserving
| of the dogpile. Your comment implies "you should take this
| time in timeout to think about your actions" which is just a
| gentler form of rhetorical struggle sessions, and not always
| warranted.
| kstrauser wrote:
| For sure. I've had comments flagged that I thought were
| perfectly reasonable and non-controversial. My first
| reaction was to be angry and annoyed. But then my kinder
| angels suggested that perhaps I phrased my idea poorly and
| people misunderstood that I was largely agreeing with them,
| or at least very respectfully disagreeing. And then I
| decided to be more careful with my phrasing next time.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yeah the flagging is definitely much worse than it used to be.
| I've seen very legitimate LLM critical posts with lots of
| upvotes and comments flagged
| dang wrote:
| Many people feel that flagging is worse than it used to be,
| but they don't agree at all on what should or shouldn't be
| flagged. That makes this feedback less actionable than one
| might assume.
|
| HN gets tons and tons of threads that are critical of LLMs,
| so it's possible that the ones you're seeing get flagged are
| just below median quality and/or overly repetitive of
| previous discussions.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Hey, Dan. I'd be really interested if you could share more
| about the metrics. As the climate of the world around us
| has changed, I think a lot of us at least _feel_ flagging
| has become a cudgel used to silence opposition. Me, for
| criticism of the current administration. Others, for their
| views on topics like gender.
|
| Maybe we just care more and notice it about _that subject_
| now. Maybe it 's always been this way. But while you often
| leave long comments that go into how these systems work and
| the struggles with trying to adjust them or understand of
| it's even necessary (good stuff), I would be fascinated to
| see a blog post or something where you really give us a
| talking to about the state of the community and anything
| y'all have been trying on your end.
|
| Just a thought, obviously, you have a whole job moderating
| already! Have a good day!
| dpifke wrote:
| Dan and Tom can speak to this, but by my reading of the
| guidelines, "criticism of the current administration" and
| "views on topics like gender" are both explicitly
| prohibited:
|
| _" Please don't use Hacker News for political or
| ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."_
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
|
| It has nothing to do with being on the side of "the
| opposition" or "the man," it's because those sorts of
| posts inevitably lead to the same, repetitive, off-topic
| debates and flame wars.
|
| Flagging _should_ be used as a cudgel against posts that
| break the rules. There are plenty of places on the
| internet to debate politics and gender; HN is not one of
| them.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| No, I'm talking about stories that are extremely relevant
| to hacker news and techies.
|
| Which is attested to by Dan repeatedly manually
| unflagging these posts afterwards, which is an _explicit
| approval_ that these posts follow guidelines.
| bee_rider wrote:
| A political talking point can be nationally popular but still
| political, so, outside the scope of the site.
|
| Anyway, which nation? I think we also aren't allowed to push
| Communist party talking points here, despite that party being
| highly supported in some countries (not that I'd want to, just
| saying, nationally popular doesn't mean much).
| eddyg wrote:
| A lot of people don't read the Hacker News Guidelines(1)
| before submitting and deserve to be flagged. Quoting
| (emphasis mine):
|
| 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._
|
| (1) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| nubinetwork wrote:
| You say that, but there was a big thread on Val Kilmer on
| the front page this morning...
| kubb wrote:
| He died, I'm fine with making an exception for it.
| milesrout wrote:
| Why? He isn't relevant to HN at all. Is every celebrity
| death newsworthy _on HN_ now?
| kubb wrote:
| Maybe he was significant to a lot of hackers. The death
| was also untimely, which reminds us to cherish the time
| we have. Many of us are in our 50s or 60s.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This is not really mysterious or anything, though, right?
| They allow bending of the rules for stuff that is not
| likely to devolve into a big stupid political flame war,
| because, like, pick your battles.
|
| Also I'd expect there to be some annoying edge cases if
| they tried to ban that sort of discussion. I mean, Kilmer
| is not a tech person. But tech people die sometimes too.
| Arguably discussing their life as people is outside the
| scope of the site. Maybe we shouldn't have had a
| conversation about how great a guy Mr. Moolenaar was and
| just discussed the technical aspects of his life's work.
| But, come on, that'd not really be a human way of
| responding to somebody's death, right?
|
| If we're going to have these sort of lightly rule
| breaking threads, then I don't think it is necessary to
| ask the mods to adjudicate exactly who's technical enough
| to warrant one. It's a fuzzy spectrum anyway, we have
| tech people, tech policy people, STEM outreach people,
| tech YouTube influencers, celebrities that played beloved
| nerd characters.
| timeon wrote:
| > unless they're evidence of some interesting new
| phenomenon
|
| Maybe time will tell if it was actually OT.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Maybe time will tell if it was actually OT._
|
| When that time comes, if it comes, then you'd be within
| the guidelines to post it.
|
| Preemptively posting it just in case it later becomes
| some new phenomenon is not ideal.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Welcome Tom, thank you and Dan for helping to run one of the best
| corners of the web for many of us.
|
| Curious that you both made new accounts, is that basically a
| similar thing to having a "root" user then? So you can't use a
| normal / previous account or it will ruin it? :)
| dang wrote:
| No, it's just a device to mark the context switch and to avoid
| misunderstandings, since the previous comments were all posted
| without an implicit "mod" bit.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Ah that makes sense! Thanks for the clarification. It's
| always interesting learning how HN operates.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Unsung heroes deserve praise. Cheers mate.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Welcome, and thanks for striving to keep hn the bastion of
| intellectual curiosity that it's been in the ~9 years since I
| joined. I get tremendous value out of this website, and I'm very
| grateful for the effort you all are putting in to keep it stable.
| zachwill wrote:
| Congrats, Tom!
| raphman wrote:
| Welcome, Tom! Y'all are making HN a place that I still love to
| visit every day. I find it awesome how dang et al. not only
| manage to keep spammers and trolls in check but also actively
| improve discussions by merging threads and asking people to
| behave.
| clgeoio wrote:
| Welcome!
| duxup wrote:
| >He's still kind and thoughtful
|
| Me thinks the OP is really trying to dive this point home for
| some reason ...
|
| /s
| dang wrote:
| I was just trying to be funny but it's a point I'm happy to
| drive!
| coldfoundry wrote:
| Congrats! Keep on making HN what it is!
| dskhatri wrote:
| Welcome Tom! I have been visiting this site (almost) daily for
| 17.5 years now thanks to the wonderful technical community and
| diligent behind-the-scenes moderation.
| theoryofx wrote:
| One thing that I appreciate about dang, and PG before him, is
| their intellectual honesty and strong sense of ethics.
|
| On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an
| investment firm as promotion for their business.
|
| But because HN was started by an individual with real values, and
| has been operated day-to-day by individuals that followed in his
| tradition, its been capable of unreasonable greatness and real
| authenticity.
|
| At this point, HN is sort of the tail that wags the YC dog. There
| are a great many seed funds but only one HN.
|
| It would be a good thing for the world if HN was spun out as a
| non-profit and maintained long-term. But in any case, we can all
| hope that it will at least continue to be stewarded by good
| people for a while longer.
|
| Good luck and thanks!
| roflyear wrote:
| I really don't think that HN lets dissenting opinions thrive
| (well, not anything that is truly controversial but not clearly
| hateful). That may feel cozy but it's not a reflection of
| anything pure or good, imo.
| pstuart wrote:
| I'm not sure about that, but a lot of it depends on what you
| consider to be "dissenting opinions".
| roflyear wrote:
| I agree it depends on the definition. Quite honestly my
| vibe, and really that is all it is for any of us discussing
| this, is pretty much anything more aggressive than my
| comment above (or even including my comment above, once
| more people read it).
|
| I definitely DO NOT mean clear hate speech, etc.. that's
| not my point at all.
| alwa wrote:
| I, for one, come here in substantial part for the norms
| against aggression and toward calm substantive
| discussion.
|
| Shouting matches and rhetorical posturing are exhausting.
| There are places for that--most places online, anymore;
| this is not one of them.
| mac-mc wrote:
| So, do you mean you don't like tone policing? You can say
| pretty much anything as long as the tone stays
| intellectual and doesn't go into brain damage politics,
| harassment, or conspiracy zone where it's being banned
| because it's off-topic and, frankly, exhausting and
| unproductive.
| kccqzy wrote:
| For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good
| for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN.
|
| Personally I hope Tom will bring new moderation policies
| that will truly let unpopular opinions thrive, but I don't
| have high hopes here since this is just an announcement of
| a new moderator, not an announcement of new moderation
| policies.
| otterley wrote:
| "Not thriv[ing]" is not the same as being quashed.
| Minority opinions don't always rise to the popularity or
| acceptance level of majority opinions, and that's OK.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Let us not use the word "thrive" or "quash" to avoid
| misunderstandings. To rephrase, I hope that on HN even
| minority opinions have reasonable rebuttals.
| Unfortunately what currently happens is people flag
| minority opinions with no discussion.
| otterley wrote:
| I agree that that's not a best practice. It's not what
| the downvote mechanism was intended for.
| tracker1 wrote:
| In a way, iirc, it really is. It's as much a "I disagree"
| as it is "I don't like this". That said, I would like to
| see more people actually respond in addition to a
| downvote.
|
| I don't think that's generally a function of the
| moderators though.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Flagging is used by people who have no rebuttal but are
| mad.
|
| That's why I have only flagged one or two posts, ever,
| but not because I was mad, but because the comment was
| just plain beyond the pale.
|
| And my posts against portaying violent rape in film got
| flagged.
|
| Make it make sense, because I understand the failure of
| this system because systems are my trade-in-craft.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| "flag" and "downvote" are two different tools with two
| different purposes.
|
| "downvote" seems more appropriate for for "this is not
| interesting and should be less prominent".
|
| "flag" seems more appropriate for "this should not be
| here at all".
|
| By way of an example, on a political story, if you say
| something merely unpopular, you'll get downvotes and
| replies; if you say something hateful, you'll (usually)
| get flagged.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I agree with you, but that's not what happens for
| polarizing topics that are technical in nature and not
| political. People on HN seem to flag comments rather than
| downvote them.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is
| good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN.
|
| There is a difference between expressing unpopular
| opinions (e.g. "manifest V3 is good"), which receive an
| appropriate level of considered disagreement; and
| expressing opinions that are removed administratively.
|
| In my experience, the former is quite common, while the
| latter only occurs in cases of hateful or off-topic
| comments. That is as it should be. No one is obligated to
| agree with you, and that fact should not dissuade you
| from expressing yourself.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is
| good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN.
|
| That's not a moderation issue. You can post that opinion,
| and people will disagree with it, post responses to it,
| and downvote it. It will not be flagged out of existence,
| unless it's also violating site policy in other ways.
| nailer wrote:
| A polite well worded post that disagrees with the
| mainstream will indeed still exist, but it will be
| moderated to unreadably transparent and hidden by
| default. It's not a great experience.
|
| Meanwhile personal attacks and hyperbole regarding Elon
| Musk and Trump have become very common on HN.
| layer8 wrote:
| Downvoting and flagging is not moderation.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Flagging does seem to primarily be a tool for moderation.
| But for comments, at least, I've _mostly_ not observed
| flagging being used to hide things that shouldn 't be; if
| anything, I think flagging is _underused_ on comments.
|
| (It's still regularly abused on stories as a downvote,
| perhaps in part because stories don't have downvotes. HN
| sometimes "rescues" stories that get over-flagged, but
| it's still a problem.)
| layer8 wrote:
| Flagging isn't done by moderators, it's done by regular
| HN users.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I didn't say it was done by moderators, I said it was a
| tool for moderation. Flagging is the means by which
| regular HN users perform moderation activities, _in
| addition_ to the actions available to the moderators.
| layer8 wrote:
| Ok, I see. I understood "moderation policies" upthread to
| refer to what guides the actions of the moderators.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Fair enough, I can see from the thread how that
| interpretation could arise. I would definitely interpret
| "moderation _policy_ " to be policy implemented by
| moderators. In this case, I was responding to the
| statement that "flagging is not moderation", and I
| thought it was useful to distinguish that flagging
| semantically is a kind of moderation (done by users
| rather than by moderators).
| layer8 wrote:
| For me the difference is that moderation by moderators is
| (usually) guided by some content policy, and one can
| disagree about the biases of the specific content policy,
| or disagree about applying a content policy based on
| topics and themes at all (as opposed to based on mere
| style and civility). With user actions, there is no
| predefined content policy, it's just how the set of users
| who happen to read the specific thread or comment happen
| to feel.
|
| Personally, I'd prefer no up-/downvoting and flagging at
| all (or flagging only to alert moderators), and purely
| chronological threading. But I also think that active
| moderation and crowd-sourced ranking mechanics are two
| different things.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Personally, I'd prefer no up-/downvoting and flagging
| at all (or flagging only to alert moderators), and purely
| chronological threading.
|
| I think that's a very different kind of forum, and it
| needs different tools to be usable, and it more quickly
| fails into unusability.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's how old-style forums work, and I'm still on a couple
| of them. It functions quite well with the right
| moderation.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| It _can_ work, but I think it 's harder to scale to
| something the size of HN without losing some of the
| important properties HN has.
|
| For example, I think it's _useful_ that on balance the
| top few comments and their discussion are likely to be
| interesting, and the last few comments are unlikely to be
| interesting.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > A polite well worded post that disagrees with the
| mainstream will indeed still exist, but it will be
| moderated to unreadably transparent and hidden by
| default. It's not a great experience.
|
| Speaking from personal experience only: I have _mostly_
| not observed "polite, well-worded posts disagreeing with
| the mainstream" get downvoted to oblivion, unless some
| other factor also applies, such as that they're _also_
| things that seem likely to lead to a rehashed old-as-the-
| hills disagreement with no new information that will not
| on balance change any minds.
|
| If you post (by way of example only, please observe the
| use-mention distinction here) a polite version of "ads
| are good and adblockers are stealing", and get a massive
| pile of downvotes, I think that's a reasonable signal
| that _the community isn 't interested in seeing iteration
| 47,902 of that argument_, and has no expectation that
| anything new will come out of that argument. If you have
| something _new_ to say on that topic that is likely to
| lead into _new_ and _interesting_ arguments, at this
| point you would need to signpost that heavily, prefacing
| it with some equivalent of "Please note that I'm aware
| this is an age-old argument, but I think I have a new
| point to make that is worth considering", and then
| actually make a new point, at which point I think you're
| less likely to get downvoted to oblivion.
|
| Personally, I don't downvote "mere" disagreement. I
| downvote (among other things) what seems to me to be
| _uninteresting_ or _thoughtless_ or _insufficiently
| diligent_ disagreement, or factually incorrect
| information, or anything that seems like a discussion
| that spawned from it will not be interesting.
|
| Now, that said, another factor here is that some people
| posting on political topics _in particular_ believe they
| 're making "polite well-worded posts disagreeing with the
| mainstream", and others do not share that belief and flag
| it to oblivion. For example, posts expressing bigotry
| _mostly_ get flagged, no matter how surface-level
| "polite" they are.
| nailer wrote:
| > If you post (by way of example only, please observe the
| use-mention distinction here) a polite version of "ads
| are good and adblockers are stealing", and get a massive
| pile of downvotes...
|
| Sure, I imagine the grandparent poster means arguing
| something like "limiting access for extensons is good
| because they're often used to steal financial assets".
| Old extensions are sold, or cracked and updated to inclue
| malware.
| tptacek wrote:
| As someone who actively believes Manifest V3 is good for
| users, I second this: my opinion is not suppressed by
| this forum. It's simply unpopular among nerds, the
| population to whom this forum is aimed.
| buttercraft wrote:
| > having the opinion
|
| What I see a lot of is this:
|
| User posts "$opinion $generalization $snark $dismissal
| $adhominem".
|
| User gets down voted or flagged. User complains that
| downvotes are for expressing $opinion and that $opinion
| is not allowed on this site!
|
| But we can all see the other things in their post that
| _probably_ brought on most of the downvotes.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I agree. "It's not what you said, it's how you said it.".
|
| Most stuff I downvote is because of the way it's
| expressed, not because of the opinion itself.
| maccard wrote:
| I'm a fairly steadfast holder of the "I like apples
| walled garden, it's my choice to be there" argument, and
| I think as a dissenting opinion on this forum I get a lot
| of flak for it. But that's not a moderation problem, it's
| the fact that my opinion is different and I have 10x the
| number of people disagreeing with me than agreeing with
| me.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| Upvoted, but your opinion is wrong and I didn't want to
| leave without telling you I hate your opinion.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Little ironic considering you're the second comment everyone
| sees on this thread at the moment.
| roflyear wrote:
| Well, let's see how that plays out first, I did just post
| it a few minutes ago (refresh has me at 0 karma fyi)
| Lerc wrote:
| It is a shame that people will downvote a thing that is
| expressing an honest opinion.
|
| I can't really relate to the mindset of people who use
| downvoting as a 'I disagree' button.
|
| I don't think this extends to the way that HN is
| moderated or run. It is worth looking at dang's posts
| every now and again to take in the job that he does and
| how patient he can be, even with antagonism aimed
| directly at HN or himself personally.
|
| From time to time I also have a look at the histories of
| some of those antagonistic people. Frequently there are
| signs that their behaviour was not always like this.
| Recent posts might be outright abusive and sound like the
| postings of angry teenagers. A few years earlier they
| might have been posting reasonable discussions on their
| thesis topic or tutorials on some useful subjects.
| Keeping that in mind helps you realise that these are
| real people and there may be other things going on in
| their life.
|
| I think there are some good things to learn from people
| who work with addicts. You can simultaneously challenge
| bad behaviour and be compassionate to the person who
| committed it. Similarly, this is why I'm not a fan of
| cancelling people or holding them forever accountable for
| past bad behaviour. If they recognise that their
| behaviour was bad and are endeavouring to not be that way
| again, I don't think permanent ostracism benefits anyone.
| If anything it restricts people to a community that
| amplifies their negative behaviour.
| pvg wrote:
| _I can 't really relate to the mindset of people who use
| downvoting as a 'I disagree' button._
|
| That's a valid use of the button by design, HN is
| literally made to allow for that use. Plus it mimics real
| life interactions - there is a social cost/friction to
| saying things people disagree with or think are outright
| wrong. Most online chitchat places deteriorate because
| they _remove_ such social frictions.
| Lerc wrote:
| I would say it mimics real life interactions of _some_
| communities. I do not think that is universal. I tend to
| think that the communities, in real life and online, that
| permit civil discussion of dissenting opinions are the
| healthier ones.
|
| I think there is a far greater real life social cost in
| violating standards of behaviour, such as aggressive
| engagement, or acting without empathy. I would argue that
| it is those influences that can be lacking in online
| discussions that cause them to deteriorate. There is also
| a lower barrier of entry for joining an online community
| than joining a real life community. A few dedicated but
| detrimental people can always evade safeguards and
| pollute a community to some degree, online communities
| being larger provide the possibility to each individual
| to do more damage, while also increasing the chances of
| there being individuals that would do so.
| pvg wrote:
| _I would say it mimics real life interactions of some
| communities. I do not think that is universal._
|
| I would say this is straight up wrong. It is universal
| since it's fundamental to being a social animal. There's
| a cost to being at odds with a group. We do have all
| sorts of mechanism and rituals, formal and informal, to
| minimize or amortize that cost in all sorts of settings
| but it's still there and it's still essential. You look
| at the faces of your coworkers in a meeting in which
| you're making some unpopular proposal to see how it's
| going over and you feel the slight sting of recognizing
| the smallest hints of disapproval. It's built right into
| all human interaction.
| Etheryte wrote:
| A sample size of one doesn't really tell you anything in
| this context. HN definitely has a pretty heavy bias in some
| directions, it's mostly that the crowd that naturally
| flocks here tends to mostly agree on those topics, so you
| don't see conflict too often.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I feel like I often get into protracted discussions here
| in which I am defending a minority view, but I don't feel
| discouraged from doing so.
|
| A huge part of that is that the tone is almost always
| civil and the arguments are typically in good faith.
| incoming1211 wrote:
| The problem is HN is mainly left leaning so its difficult to
| have discussion at times as dang and the community will shut
| it down quickly as differing opinions are not welcome even if
| its factual.
|
| (chances are people will downvote without comment or scream
| "ThAtS nOt TrUe")
|
| (Love how HN proved my comment as correct)
| roflyear wrote:
| Sure but I'm not even talking politics! My comment itself
| was barely a criticism of HN and, yeah, downvotes don't
| matter - but it's exactly what I am talking about. Any push
| against that coziness/bubble is not tolerated.
|
| I do think it's OK for some forums - if the community
| agrees - to say certain topics (like politics) are off
| limits.
|
| I don't really think it's ok for a community to say
| discussion about what should be discussed is off limits...
| or being critical of policies, the bubble, etc...
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > My comment itself was barely a criticism of HN
|
| Your comment is (a) off-topic and (b) smacks of a
| complaint about not getting enough up-votes. Neither of
| these areas are looked upon positively in HN. If this
| style of comment is your _modus operandi_ , it may
| explain why your work is not well-received, and in short
| it has nothing to do with the popularity of your
| opinions.
| lolinder wrote:
| > HN is mainly left leaning
|
| This is largely an illusion, as can be seen by the number
| of people complaining in the other direction about how
| wacko libertarians or MAGA or whatever dominate on here.
|
| What you're actually observing is that HN is one of the
| more diverse public spaces you participate in and there's
| no personalized algorithm that filters the content to only
| show what you want. When your exposure to left-leaning
| content goes from <10% on an algorithmic feed to ~50% on
| HN, it feels like being overrun.
|
| Just know that it feels just as overwhelming to the left-
| leaning people on here, and they will jump to the same
| interpretation in the opposite direction.
| wordofx wrote:
| If 2 people end up in a civilised debate. It's not
| uncommon for people to flag and downvote the opinion they
| disagree with even if the opinion is valid or backed up
| with facts. Feelings get too hurt here.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| That's why you have to earn down vote and flagging
| privileges here. It's still abused, I agree.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| It's not left leaning, it's establishment leaning. But
| that's only regarding politics and social issues.
| dang wrote:
| > (chances are people will downvote without comment or
| scream "ThAtS nOt TrUe")
|
| > (Love how HN proved my comment as correct)
|
| Please don't do this here. It's against the site guidelines
| (see the bottom:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), which
| guarantees downvotes, and then the combination of help-
| help-I'm-being-repressed and I-told-you-so is annoying to
| pretty much everyone.
|
| As for "left leaning", see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 (Feb 2021).
| The specific examples are old now but there is an endless
| fresh supply from each tap.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Yeah, as someone who has criticized the mod team, saying
| you are biased is just laughable. You go out of your way
| to be as unbiased and user-oriented as possible. My
| biggest criticism is procedural, Dan and friends are
| doing good work.
| otterley wrote:
| Then you're not spending enough time reading the comments on
| controversial stories. Disagreement is alive and well on HN.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I disagree. People will frequently say that downvoting is
| not for disagreeing, but in every controversial thread
| dissenting opinions are quickly downvoted and frequently
| flagged. Some recover, but many die or end up pushed down
| into obscurity.
|
| _Mildly_ controversial opinions sometimes survive and get
| discussion, but anything past that rarely get a reply and
| just get downvoted and flagged into oblivion. This isn 't
| exactly a slight against HN, as this happens basically
| everywhere past a tiny userbase community. But I don't
| think it's particularly right to put HN on a pedestal for
| its ability to handle controversy.
| lordfrito wrote:
| >> Disagreement is alive and well on HN.
|
| > I disagree.
|
| _Head explodes_
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I had a whole paragraph that I removed that was to
| preempt this reply, but I thought it wasn't needed.
| infecto wrote:
| I would also argue that shutting certain posts down early
| is what helps it thrive. Maybe you lose some value of
| topic but you gain the ability to discuss other things in
| depth. You also prevent pollution of discourse.
| Suppafly wrote:
| > People will frequently say that downvoting is not for
| disagreeing
|
| Those people are wrong.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Downvoting pushes peoples comments down and greys them
| out, effectively silencing them. It creates echo
| chambers.
|
| I reserve my downvotes for when arguments are made in bad
| faith, rely on logical fallacies, or present know-false
| information as an argument.
|
| If someone presents an argument on something I disagree
| with, but it's made in good faith and is well-structured,
| it deserves an upvote, even if I still disagree
| afterwards.
| otterley wrote:
| Your very comment is now downvoted but not silenced. We
| all see it, as we do every grey comment, as long as one
| works their way down the comments page. Not every comment
| is going to be agreed with and rise above the fold, and
| that's ok.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| So you understand how echo chambers are created and are
| fine with it?
|
| The problem is that there is no one with power here that
| can come to the "little guy's" defence. There is no will
| around here for that kind of support, because the only
| people hired to wield such power are of like mind. DJT
| doesn't hire democrats, and this is no different.
|
| Look at this comment section, and tell me this isn't an
| echo chamber.
| otterley wrote:
| There are over 1,200 comments on this controversial story
| alone, with plenty of debate within:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43517833
|
| What more evidence do you need that spirited disagreement
| is alive and well here?
| dooglius wrote:
| That seems like a pretty mild controversy to me. How many
| people could even say whether their water has added
| fluoride?
| otterley wrote:
| What kind of evidence would satisfy you, then?
| dooglius wrote:
| I have `showdead` enabled. It should not be the case that
| I find flagged posts that are good -- that are well
| written, don't break rules, etc -- but are flagged
| (presumably) due to expressing a dissenting view.
| pvg wrote:
| That 'presumably' is doing a lot of lifting and would be
| better supported by some examples of such posts.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Feel free to peruse my comments; you'll find all the
| examples you need.
|
| The people here are rather anti-compassion and any kind
| of spirituality.
|
| And how I was attacked for calling David Lynch a
| worthless purveyor of ultraviolence and vapid, wasteful
| lifestyles was unconscionable.
|
| And I am so rate-limited that I can't even respond to the
| attacks.
|
| You have made enough money to create an echo chamber, and
| a necessary part of that is keeping the naysayers out. As
| dang told me once, the algorithm is functioning as
| specified.
|
| I'd love to hear about all the good your companies have
| done for people with the money you've made.
| otterley wrote:
| The person you're responding to is not Paul Graham.
| Similar handle but not identical.
|
| > The people here are rather anti-compassion and any kind
| of spirituality. And how I was attacked for calling David
| Lynch a worthless purveyor of ultraviolence and vapid,
| wasteful lifestyles was unconscionable.
|
| Maybe your problem is not with your opinions but with how
| you choose to express them. My observation is that
| disagreement is rarely downvoted massively if it is
| expressed eloquently. OTOH, emotional and brief
| conclusory opinions that aren't supported with narratives
| or supporting information that are _also_ contrarian may
| be subject to mass downvoting.
| dang wrote:
| Downvoting for disagreement has always been fine on HN.
| People sometimes assume otherwise because they're
| implicitly porting the rules from a larger site, but
| that's a mistake.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It has but I'm not sure this works at the scale HN
| operates at now. When the community was smaller, the band
| of opinion was narrower, so the downvote worked better.
| Now that the community is large I'm not sure if this
| scales well. Just a thought I've had over the last few
| years.
| fossuser wrote:
| Your comment being downvoted for suggesting dissenting
| opinions are not treated well on HN kinda makes your point. I
| agree in general and spend less time here because of it. HN
| is still not as bad as many alternatives, but I wouldn't say
| it's great for ideologically diverse views.
| pvg wrote:
| If you think your dissenting opinions should be popular,
| your opinions probably aren't all that dissenting. This
| person's dissenting meta-opinion is unpopular, it's still
| there and it's still being discussed. Discomfort is
| inherent in dissent, it's not people putting a lot of likes
| on your NormanRockwellFourFreedomsPainting.gif.
| fossuser wrote:
| It's not that they need to be popular, it's that voting
| them down leads them to be dropped off from view (and
| makes it less likely dissenting views will be shared).
| Reddit is the extreme case of this where anything outside
| the majority group consensus is heresy to be voted
| down/hidden/banned.
|
| Better sites don't do this and have in-good-faith
| discussion despite disagreement.
| pvg wrote:
| Can you link some of these better discussions on better
| sites?
|
| Dissenting views are regularly highly visible, often as
| replies to consensus views. Even better - well-argued
| counter-narrative/counter-conventional wisdom views
| regularly appear as top or highly ranked comments. That's
| because the people making those arguments do what
| sensible people do when making an unpopular argument -
| they put in the work to make their case more persuasive.
| They don't sit around complaining that the other kids
| don't listen to them, they care about their issue enough
| to try to work _with_ human nature rather than hoping
| some magical technology will change human nature for
| them.
| megadata wrote:
| I think the fact that you're being downvoted for your comment
| proves your point.
| layer8 wrote:
| There is a difference between downvoting and flagging, and
| between flagging and moderating.
| megadata wrote:
| I said nothing about that.
| rectang wrote:
| The effect is the same -- the comment becomes unreadable.
| megadata wrote:
| And me pointing it out is also being downvoted.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Probably because a single example at a single time point
| can't really be extrapolated to the entire platform
| across all times. The comment being downvoted proves
| nothing (as evidenced by the fact it's now upvoted to the
| 2nd top comment!)
|
| And this comment of yours I'm replying to will probably
| get downvoted because it's a complaint about votes that
| contributes literally nothing to the conversation (in
| fact, detracts from it).
| dang wrote:
| Yes, because the comments are offtopic and against the
| site guidelines (see the bottom of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
|
| "I the noble freethinker, standing bravely against the
| mob" comments are boring and repetitive, and therefore
| always off topic.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Is that a moderation issue? Because to me that's more of a
| system / culture issue.
|
| You can't argue in people's stead. If most dissenting
| commentary is hurtful, inciteful, manipulative, generally
| demagogue, etc., it's going to get culled, and you get a
| situation where "dissent _isn 't thriving_".
| Teever wrote:
| Moderation drives culture and should in the very least
| offset the worst tendencies of culture.
|
| Otherwise, what exactly is moderation for?
| perching_aix wrote:
| Moderation does participate in the culture of course, but
| I disagree that it would drive it necessarily. You can
| only do so much by reminding people to align with the
| posting guidelines and removing ill fitting posts and
| individuals.
| Teever wrote:
| This place would look like 4chan if it wasn't for the
| moderation.
|
| Moderation absolutely drives the culture, by setting a
| tone that drives away certain users while attracting
| others.
|
| In other words what ever issues a site has are inherently
| due to moderation whether it be a choice on the part the
| moderators or a lack of resources to moderate as they
| would like to.
| perching_aix wrote:
| I don't think we're actually disagreeing. Yes, moderation
| is key, but ultimately people post the content. As you
| say, it's a matter of attraction. But if the target group
| of attraction is empty, there's no amount of moderation
| that can help that.
| iambateman wrote:
| I'm like 80% sure this is trolling as a tee up for all the
| people responding with "HECK YEA DISSENT IS HAPPENING." :D
| airstrike wrote:
| On the one hand, I think it's a bit unfair that this comment
| is currently downvoted as it's discussing moderation on a
| topic about moderation, so very much on-topic in this
| particular submission.
|
| On the other hand, I think it needs to be more specific in
| order to be valuable feedback. Which dissenting opinions? Can
| you provide specific examples of comments you think got
| unreasonably flagged?
|
| There's been an uptick in political posts which are off-topic
| per the guidelines, so an uptick in the absolute number of
| flagged submissions would just mean the community is properly
| enforcing the guidelines, which is good. However, as a
| consequence of that uptick in political submissions and
| flagging, there's also an uptick in the number of users
| complaining a post is unjustly flagged, because they
| incorrectly conflate enforcing the guidelines with political
| opinion, and that is not good.
|
| I think a lot of users are tired of this back and forth, so
| my guess is they are reading between the lines of what you
| said (since you didn't provide specifics) and filling in the
| blank with what _they_ think you mean about undeserved
| flagging, with the topic of politics being top of mind at the
| moment. This shows that being specific helps both by
| providing actionable feedback while also increasing clarity,
| which is your responsibility as a communicator.
| layer8 wrote:
| My understanding is that flagging does not imply
| moderation. When enough people flag a comment, it becomes
| dead automatically. There is, separately, the case that a
| moderator "kills" an unacceptable comment, but then it only
| appears as [dead] I believe (unless it was also being
| flagged by people). Someone correct me if this is wrong.
| airstrike wrote:
| Moderation by the community is still moderation.
| layer8 wrote:
| Well, you can call it that, but there is not a singular
| will or policy behind what is getting flagged, and the HN
| "community" isn't homogeneous. HN users can also "vouch"
| to counteract flagging. It only takes a single vouch to
| un-kill a comment.
| ttepasse wrote:
| The value of "enough" is a moderation decision made by a
| human.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's not a decision made per individual submission or
| comment, I think. Of course, the specific automated
| mechanism exists because some human decided to implement
| it. My point is, in the case of the flagging mechanism,
| it's not the moderators who are deciding based on the
| contents of the submission or comment.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Strong disagree here... While there are definitely those that
| will bury some opinions with downvotes, there are others that
| will upvote. Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive, Liberal
| and even outright Communist views get expressed in varying
| comments and that's just political leanings.
|
| I only really recognize this because I'll be actively
| reading/replying sometimes and see comments go +/- 2-3 up or
| down votes back and forth on the same comment. While you may
| be at say -2, that's just the aggregate. I sometimes wish I
| could see the total up/down votes just out of curiosity.
| jdoliner wrote:
| My experience is that HN's Overton window is probably on
| average 15-20% larger than most forums. That's not uniform
| across all topics though. So if you skew toward a particular
| set of topics it may feel like a typical forum, or even in
| some ways more constrained.
| layer8 wrote:
| My feeling is it also depends on weekday vs. weekend, and
| on the time of day (or night).
| hbn wrote:
| My issue is it seems like something has to only be a bit
| controversial to be completely hidden from everyone. There
| was the recent DF article about how Gruber thinks his
| articles are being artificially shitlisted and I can't help
| but agree? I don't necessarily think the mods have their
| fingers on the scale, but I wouldn't be surprised if the
| algorithm works in a way where if enough people flag
| something it gets automatically hidden, and there's enough
| people who see DF and automatically flag it that those blog
| posts get hidden every time.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| I follow the HN subreddit and routinely see very active
| threads that aren't in the feed.
| dang wrote:
| That site had 11 major frontpage threads in the last
| year, which is a lot.
|
| Every single one of them set off the flamewar detector.
| That's extremely unusual. If it were one or two I'd call
| it random, but 11 in a row, whatever the reason, is not
| random. We turned off that software penalty on about half
| of those threads.
| yorwba wrote:
| In his article https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_web
| site_hacker_news_i... he mentions several times that he
| is aiming for "comment traction," treating articles with
| more comments than upvotes as successful while
| complaining that recently there haven't been as many
| comments.
|
| It does make sense that DaringFireball would consider
| starting a flamewar a job well done, but of course HN is
| optimizing for the opposite.
| roflyear wrote:
| Or - he's critical of SV and large tech companies?
| pvg wrote:
| He's known as an advocate for and analyst of (sometimes
| critically, often less so) one of the biggest, richest
| technology companies in the world. That's his whole gig.
| infecto wrote:
| I think it's a tough balance because you want discussion but
| certain topics have diminishing returns.
| altairprime wrote:
| HN does not welcome dissenting opinions in certain areas of
| tech where the individual freedoms of techies come into
| conflict with status quo social harms to non-techies; so, for
| example, you won't see many HN articles about the ethical
| dilemmas of working at Palantir, how our industry's
| libertarian foundations obstruct labor organizing today, what
| advantages the 'bros' receive in return for their misogyny,
| and so on. HN is a light-touch moderation site -- as
| libertarian as possible, in keeping with our roots -- so I
| certainly don't hold the mods as responsible for the
| _community's_ defensiveness in that regard. In general,
| whether tech or otherwise, it's not possible for a community
| to welcome uncomfortable dissent against its own
| underpinnings _without_ a heavier hand on the moderation
| wheel than is cultural acceptable for HN and for our
| community. That doesn't mean that HN rejects _all_ dissent --
| certainly they may be other pillars of obstinance I haven't
| personally identified and studied over the past fifteen or
| twenty years participating here -- but, yes, absolutely, HN's
| community has zero tolerance for certain dissent.
| jdoliner wrote:
| > On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned
| an investment firm as promotion for their business.
|
| I think it's at least as plausible that this is part of the
| magic that makes it good. HN is sufficiently "on the margin"
| that they don't have to do things like placate advertisers with
| their moderation policies. The mods like dang, tomhow and pg
| mostly care about HN as users rather than owners.
|
| > It would be a good thing for the world if HN was spun out as
| a non-profit and maintained long-term.
|
| That sounds good in theory... in practice it might be the
| beginning of the end. Once there's a non-profit behind it the
| non-profit has a mission of its own. Although I'm actually not
| sure of the legal status of HN right now, maybe it's already
| something like that.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Before even the "has a mission of its own" part, an
| independent non-profit needs to pay its bills. I suspect that
| dang & Co. aren't working for free. Similar for servers &
| internet connections & etc.
|
| And I'd bet that few people here want to see ads, or start
| paying for their accounts.
| tomcam wrote:
| I hope dang and tomhow get rich doing this job. I'd happily
| pay for HN too.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| I imagine 90% of users here would just block any ads
| anyways.
| sanswork wrote:
| People here see ads regularly which is how hn pays the
| bills. YC hiring posts and company launches are all paid
| ads in the sense that being allowed to post them is why YC
| funds hn.
| foobarian wrote:
| It seems a lot like the Emperor Joseph II - Mozart
| situation or countless others like it through history. You
| could ask Mozart to start a nonprofit, find customers etc.
| but it sure is convenient when there is a Joseph II around
| who appreciates the arts.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I was there since around 2015 and the evolution of that forum
| and its population/opinion has been very interesting, to say to
| put it mildly...
|
| Remember when the biggest disagreements were about ORM &
| Frameworks? I miss those days. I didnt even mind the discussion
| about the ethics of Uber or Airbnb, but now, now it is
| different, & not for the better.
| djhn wrote:
| I've been here since around that time and to be honest, I
| haven't noticed much of a change for the worse. The world
| around us has changed, political life may have gotten
| slightly more complex, but the community feels just as
| friendly, curious and insightful.
| mettamage wrote:
| Yea same for me. Nothing much has changed here. I guess it
| used to be a bit more technical? But just a bit (I miss the
| Dolphin emulator status updates - they got me hooked on the
| technical content posted on this site)
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| The whole western world is different and not for the better
| since 2015. Erosion of public trust since then is tremendous
| and regrettable so it is not surprising that we miss the
| communities that once were.
| sanswork wrote:
| So been here slightly longer and the only shift I can recall
| is a shift away from business to tech.
|
| Early days had a lot more discussion about the business side
| of startups and vc. Then it started shifting more towards
| tech too the point now where startup/business discussion is
| mostly limited to Show/Ask posts.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| The loss of chatter around the soft skills around tech (so
| business but also UI/UX design, design patterns,
| organizational approaches (like holocracy), planning
| processes, etc) has made HN a lot less interesting IMO. If
| I just wanted the usual tinfoil hat FOSS BOFH content, then
| I can go literally anywhere else. Reddit, Matrix, IRC,
| Telegram, Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, they're all full of
| it.
|
| Then there's the widening of scope to big social issues
| that's a different matter altogether.
| basisword wrote:
| Is this because many of the soft skills you mention were
| in flux/being 'disrupted' 15 years ago and since then
| they've become the accepted norm? I enjoyed that content
| too but feel like it was a time where startups were
| changing the face of how companies operated and now most
| businesses follow those models and they're not yet ripe
| for change again.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I honestly don't know. On the one hand you're right, we
| were in a time when startups were doing things like
| experimenting with holocracy. On the other hand,
| companies and cooperatives are still today experimenting
| with more efficient, equitable ways to get things done. I
| feel quite disappointed that so much of the anger over
| inequality in this community gets aimed at US or
| international politics rather than discussing things like
| corporate or cooperative structures which is both more
| grounded and more easy for many of us as practitioners to
| action.
|
| To me it feels more emotional catharsis than intellectual
| discussion; getting mad at politics is getting mad at
| something you can't control and so is more of a way to
| air out your emotions. Getting mad at corporate structure
| or envisioning a cooperative is something we can control
| and requires more rigor to engage with.
| basisword wrote:
| Been here since 2011 and reading for a few years longer than
| that. I don't think the site has changed, more that the world
| has changed (a lot). There isn't that general excitement
| around consumer tech and programming that there was 15-20
| years ago. We've gone from talking about how we need to start
| teaching coding in schools to how we shouldn't bother because
| AI will be doing it anyway.
|
| The fun has been sucked out of it all. It wasn't all that
| long ago that we were excited by simple but fun devices like
| the iPad Nano and Flip camera. Now we all have phones that
| can shoot Hollywood films, we can access all art every
| created on them, and we have watches that can save our
| lives...and we've got a bit too used to it.
|
| On top of that around here we used to get excited about
| scrappy startups raising funding and trying to change the
| world. Unfortunately because a number of those companies went
| on to dominate the world in negative ways, exploit users and
| hoard wealth, people have become jaded and scrappy startups
| are less exciting because we assume they'll eventually do
| something loathsome 10 years from now.
|
| I'd love more framework debates, excitement, and creativity -
| but until the wider world is happy and positive again I'm not
| going to hold my breath.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I think HN has been gradually losing what makes it unique.
| The net is filled with BOFH-style pro-FOSS tinfoil hat tech
| content and has been since the early '90s. The joke among my
| college cohort about Slashdot was that IT Helpdesk 1 will
| have strong opinions on how MSFT execs were engaged in crazy
| conspiracies. You can find that kind of content anywhere that
| tech people talk. HN's value proposition for me has always
| been _informed_ commentary; industry insiders, academics, and
| practitioners weighing in based on their domain expertise.
| Today 's HN feels a lot more like a rumor mill for random
| people interested in tech. Along with this shift has been a
| widening of scope where we don't just talk about tech but
| also general politics. In general, HN has been gradually
| trending to be just another big tech subreddit.
|
| These days HN reminds me a lot of Reddit r/programming in the
| early 2010s. To me this isn't a good thing because I used to
| come to HN to specifically get _informed_ commentary. But
| there 's no way for a site as big as HN to be dominated by
| informed content anymore because there just aren't that many
| people working on interesting tech in the world. So I do what
| most others do I suspect which is talk with friends from my
| alma mater and old jobs in group chats and share HN links and
| laugh at the unhinged, uninformed comments.
|
| I do think at this point HN has changed its appeal. I feel
| that people today are attracted to HN because of its raucous,
| rumor-mill feel rather than informed commentary.
| frereubu wrote:
| > It would be a good thing for the world if HN was spun out as
| a non-profit and maintained long-term. But in any case, we can
| all hope that it will at least continue to be stewarded by good
| people for a while longer.
|
| If it ain't broke, don't fix it...
| ddingus wrote:
| Thanks Tom your work is appreciated and I'm sure will be
| appreciated going forward. There's a whole lot of us here who
| really value this place, and the many fine minds who share time
| with us in it, and you're a big part of that.
| YZF wrote:
| Congrats!
| cbeach wrote:
| Welcome Tom!
|
| One thing I'd really like to see is less tactical flagging of
| content.
|
| Hopefully with your additional help, people who suppress content
| they disagree with will be kept in check.
|
| Open discourse is something that used to be sacrasanct in
| scientific and engineering circles. Over the last decade or so,
| free speech has been on the decline, and discussion is now very
| polarised along political lines.
|
| For example, it's nearly impossible to discuss technical progress
| made by Elon Musk's companies without brigading by leftwing
| commenters, and I've seen positive news about Musk and his
| companies get quickly flagged and squirreled away. This is self-
| serving behaviour by bad actors and should be addressed in order
| that HN is a politically-neutral forum for discussion, and not a
| leftwing echo chamber.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Flags are issued by regular users like us though. What do you
| expect a moderator to do, except maybe manually intervene to
| "un dead" something if it seems like a case of overly biased
| flagging? That's assuming mods have the ability to do that
| (I've always assumed that they do).
| cbeach wrote:
| Flagging content should be a privilege that comes at a
| certain level of trust, and the privilege should be revoked
| by moderators for people that use flags to further an agenda.
|
| Trust in forum users can be measured by various metrics - The
| Discourse forum software is a good example of how to do this:
| https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-
| discourse-t...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Since it's such a powerful action, it would be nice if
| flaggers had to _at least_ justify the flag. Is it breaking
| a site rule? Is it spam? Is it not the original source?
| Does it actually violate the rules, or are you just using
| "Flag" as a mega-downvote for articles you don't personally
| like?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Frankly, I'd also love to see this for downvotes.
| pvg wrote:
| Yeah, that's the 'receipts for everything' idea and if
| you think it through, you'll realize it's at a minimum
| impractical and more likely just an outright bad idea.
| Where are these 'reasons' going to go? Who is going to
| read them or act on them? It sort of wants to stick it to
| those bad flaggers and misinformed downvoters or whatever
| but think about it applied to you. Do you not recoil at
| being asked by some random web app to justify your
| actions? Like, we're ostensibly here for conversation not
| to fill out TPS report cover sheets.
|
| This is 'drink verification can' but for messageboards.
| tptacek wrote:
| A lot of HN mechanism makes more sense if you can accept
| the idea that the goal is to promote good threads, and
| not, as so many people believe, to promote one set of
| opinions over another. Requiring justification for flags
| would immediately crud up threads with meta-debates.
|
| A hard thing for people to accept, something that I think
| is an unstated part of the HN ethos but nevertheless
| real, is that it's almost always better to have no thread
| at all than a shitty one. Important topics will
| inevitably get an airing in one thread or another.
| pvg wrote:
| _Requiring justification for flags would immediately crud
| up threads with meta-debates._
|
| That is true and I used to say it but the receipts people
| evade it with non-public receipts (which can maybe later
| somehow be audited). So I'm switching to dunking on the
| thing for its martinetism and pointless bureaucracy. It
| feels more self-indulgently righteous to boot!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| [delayed]
| philipkglass wrote:
| People do get their flagging powers revoked for misuse.
| There was a time when I went on an overly aggressive
| flagging spree and my flags no longer had any effect.
| Months later I sent an email to hn@ycombinator.com to
| pledge more judicious use of flagging and to request the
| restoration of that power. I got it back then.
| Etheryte wrote:
| How do you know that people use flags to further an agenda?
| I for one both downvote and flag pretty often, but it's
| largely because I don't like the tone of the discourse, not
| because of some overarching ploy.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I've seen positive news about Musk and his companies get
| quickly flagged and squirreled away.
|
| Huh, I always thought it was the other way around. Anything
| negative about Musk also gets quickly flagged and buried. I
| guess we can agree that Musk is currently a lightning rod, and
| brigades on both sides are acting to hide (positive and
| negative) coverage of his actions.
| kubb wrote:
| I hope people don't get punished for flagging Musk appreciation
| content. There's a lot that can be wrong with such submissions
| (cultism, uncritical praise, excessive volume, lack of
| substance, etc.).
| dmix wrote:
| Some valid threads will get flagged because the comment section
| will be extremely predictable flame wars and have nothing to do
| with the article. That's the nature of social media. People
| can't help themselves. There's plenty of other social media
| sites for that sort of sports team drumbeating, so not much is
| lost by flagging some news article off the frontpage.
| tomhow wrote:
| I understand, and lament, that the world is so polarised these
| days. There's a limit to what we in this little corner of the
| web can do to correct such powerful global macro trends, but
| we'll continue to try our best.
|
| If you see comments that are unfairly flagged, you can email us
| and we'll look at them. As long as comments/submissions are
| within the guidelines, we'll restore them.
|
| We want HN to be a place where people can discuss contentious
| topics. This is a major reason why I've moved into an expanded
| role here. I think HN has been, and can continue to be, one of
| the better places on the internet for discussing contentious
| topics.
|
| The thing to remember is the guiding principle of HN is
| curiosity. This place is not meant to be for ideological
| battle, or for trying to win arguments. It's for conversations
| where we can learn from each other about things we're curious
| about.
|
| I've always liked to learn about the opposing side of whatever
| position I hold. That's why I've found HN to be so valuable,
| and I want it to be a place people to come to for that reason
| for many years into the future.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| How effective are vouches in this regard?
|
| I'll do that reasonably frequently on both posts and
| comments, though I'm not sure how effective that is.
|
| One sec, let's look at the endpoint ... First page (30
| entries) for each shows:
|
| - 13 dead of 30 vouched, submissions.
|
| - 26 dead of 30 vouched, comments.
|
| The endpoints for the uninitiated: Posts:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/vouched?id=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE
| Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/vouched?id=YOUR_USERN
| AME_HERE&kind=comment
|
| I'll also admit that at times that's a protest vote against
| mod interactions as well.
|
| (The URLs are only visible to the owner of the UID, and I
| presume, moderators as well.)
| Vaslo wrote:
| I will assist in reporting brigading leftist commenters. There
| are many of us that want to see politics out of commentary when
| unnecessary.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Welcome! Excited to be under your wing Tom! Thank you Dan!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Good Morning Oz! Congrats, you're on overnight duty
| blatantly wrote:
| G'day! 24/7 SRE coverage. Yay! R stands for respectability.
| kiddico wrote:
| A: Welcome!
|
| And B: Just curious, what was dang's old longname?
| mondobe wrote:
| I would guess some version of "Daniel Gackle", as seen at the
| very bottom of https://www.ycombinator.com/people.html
| tptacek wrote:
| 'gruseom
| internetter wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gruseom
| catinblack wrote:
| Congratulations!
| joe_hills wrote:
| Congrats, Tom! I'm glad to hear there's more than one moderator
| here so you can share the workload and hopefully relax well on
| your time off.
| rurp wrote:
| Welcome Tom! I want to add to the chorus saying how excellent HN
| has been for so many years, in large part thanks to the excellent
| moderation. I dove into forums early on and they have always been
| one of the favorite and most treasured parts of the internet.
| It's not an exaggeration to say that HN is one of the best ever.
| The longevity is commendable, especially in an industry full of
| fads and flameouts.
|
| Dang and Tom, please keep doing what you're doing.
| hakaneskici wrote:
| Congrats Tom!
|
| Thanks dang and other mods for protecting this sacred corner of
| the web for so long. You're the guardians of the best no-BS tech
| news community. It is truly an under-appreciated effort.
|
| Best wishes.
| replwoacause wrote:
| Are mods on HN paid or do they just do it for the love of the
| game?
| internetter wrote:
| Dang is paid: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/meet-the-people-
| taking-over...
| dang wrote:
| We're both paid.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Welcome, Tom. Are you a Neal Stephenson fan? There's a memorable
| character in Cryptonomicon who shares your name...
| sctb wrote:
| Welcome, Tom! Sometimes I can't believe how good we have it here.
| Thank you both very much.
| tomhow wrote:
| Sincere thanks to you too, Scott.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Good luck Tom. I do not envy the people that take on the work
| required to moderate this site while remaining unbiased and I am
| glad you are ready for the challenge. I am sure you will do a
| fantastic job.
| eddyg wrote:
| Congrats Tom! And thanks Dan! _(Yes, I 've been around long
| enough to know the "G" is for your last name! :)_
| ddingus wrote:
| Observation:
|
| How lucky are we that our contributions here warrant two fine
| moderators?
|
| I just read Tom's brief story on how he arrived here and what it
| means and felt... I don't really have a quick word for it.
|
| I know I am better for having spent time here.
|
| Oh, I got it! A tiny bit spoiled, but in the best of ways. Yeah,
| that is what I felt.
|
| How lucky we are indeed. :)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Right on! Thanks and good luck and please keep the ethos / vibe
| going the way it improbably has for all these years. I've been
| active online since about 1998, and HN remains unique in my
| experience. Kudos as always to dang for the huge role he's played
| in that.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I don't envy any referee who hopes to keep politics and
| technology in separate corners and playing by Queensberry Rules.
| But good luck all the same.
| blatantly wrote:
| When the technologists enter politics it is even harder!
| EGreg wrote:
| Welcome, Tom. Not easy shoes to fill! Moderation can be tricky.
| edgineer wrote:
| Great! Look forward to not noticing anything in particular
| changing around here. Seriously appreciate this site.
| aemre wrote:
| Welcome Tom, it is great that you came to Dang's aid because I
| was starting to worry how much longer one person could do this
| great job brilliantly alone.
| Teever wrote:
| I think it's great to see more moderation from non-Americans.
|
| My biggest critique of this site is that the user base and
| moderation seems very biased with American perspectives to the
| detriment of the non-American user base and the quality of
| content as a whole.
| mkl wrote:
| dang is Canadian.
| Teever wrote:
| I say this as a Canadian -- So he's basically Canadian-lite
| culturally.
|
| I want to see more moderation from people around the world,
| with less geographic and cultural proximity to the Bay area.
| bredren wrote:
| Welcome, Tom and thank you Dang.
| nailer wrote:
| Tom what was your company in YC W09? And how did it go?
| tomhoward wrote:
| This is what it became:
|
| https://volantio.com
|
| https://amadeus.com/en/airlines/products/volantio
|
| https://amadeus.com/en/blog/articles/creating-a-private-resa...
| layer8 wrote:
| I always wondered how HN manages to do moderation 24/7 around the
| clock. Australia makes sense.
| raverbashing wrote:
| A lot of it boils down on dang being oversubscribed. And having
| some automations to help him
| layer8 wrote:
| What do you mean by "oversubscribed"?
|
| Automation, sure. But people need to sleep sometime, and
| maybe also have some life outside HN, for mental health. ;)
| qwertox wrote:
| Hi, I'm excited. I'm really wondering if you'll do such an
| excellent job like dang is doing. This is a really special
| community, and now it's in your hands as well.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Welcome Tom! Thanks for helping to make this the highest signal-
| to-noise ratio forum in the general technology/business space.
| jedwhite wrote:
| Congrats and welcome to the new public status! Forgive the non-
| substantive comment but that's awesome :-)
| altairprime wrote:
| Oh hey. Congrats, tomhow!
| hhcoder wrote:
| nice to meet you tom
| https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.profigh...
| motohagiography wrote:
| you (few?) do one of the biggest jobs on the internet. it's been
| a bit of a vice, but sufficiently rarefied that it doesn't lower
| anyone for indulging it. thank you.
|
| it's said that perfect means lacking nothing essential to its
| whole. I've often speculated about the mechanics behind it, but
| really, it's a product that I think achieves today what apple and
| a lot of others aspire to be, where it does something well enough
| that almost nobody stops to question how. even if - or
| especially, when - that's probably the most interesting question
| of all.
|
| how do you replicate it? you can't. that's the point.
|
| may the odds ever be in your favour!
| mpaepper wrote:
| Moin Tom,
|
| Thanks for putting up with the work - let's go!
| ksec wrote:
| I want to say Welcome but Tom has been on HN for so long.
|
| I want to say Congrats but moderating HN must have been a painful
| job.
|
| So I guess enjoy, have fun and see you around. :)
| codetrotter wrote:
| In the classic tradition of thinking that "dang" is pronounced
| "dang" and not "Dan G." I propose that we read "tomhow" as "Tomh
| Ow".
| DistractionRect wrote:
| If you torture it a bit, you can make it "tomorrow" said with a
| weird accent. To mh ow
| justsid wrote:
| That is exactly what my brain auto completed it into when I
| read the headline
| gameshot911 wrote:
| > dang" is pronounced "dang" and not "Dan G."
|
| WAIT WHAT?!?
| wildzzz wrote:
| I just assumed his name was actually "Dang" like he was
| Vietnamese or something.
| vpribish wrote:
| same. and when I learned it was Dan G I didn't accept it
| entirely. now it's a sort of superposition of them - and
| mostly a nebulous entity that maintains civil discourse -
| like something from a Miyazaki movie
| foobarian wrote:
| I too realized this only like a year ago.
| dang wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463012
| frainfreeze wrote:
| How comes your karma points halved?
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| I pronounce it dong.
| youainti wrote:
| I think tom(a)how would work too.
| sebringj wrote:
| Congrats Tom. I wonder if a particular model could be used as a
| baseline for these values or if they are already doing that to
| check first level prior to a human in the loop? I myself have
| been using AI for this purpose and have found it getting pretty
| good. I know its not a replacement for thoughtful moderation
| however, a tailored model for HN would also promote the tradition
| of HN in terms of having it not just be about who is there and
| have it more trained on its best practices to promote
| consistency, possibly as an aid.
| somelamer567 wrote:
| As somebody who's seen communities come and go over the last
| couple of decades, I cannot praise Hacker News highly enough. And
| we can thank the moderators for that. HN is like an oasis for me:
| polite, sane, and informative, and your values and principles
| really shine through, especially below the fold.
|
| Thanks for keeping the standards so high here!
| picafrost wrote:
| Great news and best of luck during this period of high tensions.
| tomhow wrote:
| Many thanks for the warm welcome, everyone.
|
| It's been a privilege to help support this community and to work
| alongside dang, who has been a great friend and mentor for many
| years. It's a great responsibility, to keep HN a healthy and
| thriving community, and I'm continually amazed to see all the
| ways dang puts thought and energy into it.
|
| One final note is that it was never part of the negotiations that
| I was expected to know or learn Arc, yet somehow in the
| onboarding process the HN Arc repo has found its way onto my
| machine, so it feels like the bait and switch is on...
| frainfreeze wrote:
| One more welcome from another Tom o/
|
| Nice to hear someone else is looking at Arc now as well! Any
| chance we might see some issues on anarki resolved now? Perhaps
| https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki/issues/89 would be a good
| starting point :grin:
|
| Jokes aside, its good to see YC cares about community, and
| looking forward to seeing your nick in the comments. Good luck
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Thanks in advance, Tom. Never a better time for more smart work
| in this area.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Welcome, Tom!
|
| Thanks for your moderation work so far, and welcome as an
| official moderator. Glad you'll be helping Dang keeping this an
| awesome community.
| babuloseo wrote:
| Welcome tom, as a fellow moderator its not easy haha, I am sure
| its easier than Reddit.
| dmit wrote:
| Welcome! And also I am so sorry
| zormino wrote:
| Thank you for doing what you do! I'm sure it isn't easy keeping
| this place healthy and thriving, but me and so many others
| really appreciate the blood, sweat and probably a few literal
| tears it takes :)
| OzzyB wrote:
| Thank you for taking up the mantle!
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Do people in an echo chamber think they're in an echo chamber?
| Of course not.
|
| Do people in an echo chamber want to hear that they're in an
| echo chamber? Of course not.
|
| Are y'all in an echo chamber?
|
| Does anyone here care?
|
| Look at the stream of comments in this thread. I'm not saying
| they're the work of an LLM, but they are indistinguishable from
| the output of an ELIZA-like pseudo-intelligence. It looks like
| a Kim Jong Un political rally.
|
| Self-awareness is not a strong character trait in this kind of
| community. You have made a ton of money and that is your sole
| measure of success.
|
| Can anyone here point to a YC project that made the world a
| better place? Has any YC multi-millionaire created good with
| that money? Where are those stories? If there are any, I doubt
| they are many because that is simply not the purpose of people
| attached to this endeavor, as far as I can see.
|
| Congratulations, you have made enough money to create your echo
| chamber!
|
| But what is life without compassion? Is this an inappropriate
| forum for that question? Why?
|
| I can find no worse fate than finding myself in the majority in
| a world with America turned into a kleptocracy, a world cooking
| by creating and using pseudo-intelligences, a world where the
| poor are shunted further from happiness by the greed and
| callous cruelty of the powerful.
|
| I mean, look at this comment section. It looks like TheOnion,
| but y'all're serious.
|
| And, now, should you downvote my honest opinion? I have
| opinions about "should", but I have a strong feeling about
| what's gonna happen.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| That's the spirit!
|
| ETA: Remember: you can grey down the truth in your mind's
| eye, but the truth remains, unchanged. Willful ignorance is
| why the world is heating, friends.
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| Tom, what a small world. Seems just like yesterday we were at
| Inspire 9 together!
| adamdennis wrote:
| Welcome Tom!
| insin wrote:
| Welcome, Tomho W
| vessenes wrote:
| Welcome Tom!
|
| Thanks (in arrears and advance) for all the work here; this is
| the best forum on the Internet, and we owe much of it to you
| guys.
| jimmyechan wrote:
| Congrats Tom!
| MortyWaves wrote:
| What's the purpose of having a less clear username?
| dang wrote:
| It's about as clear as mine is. Weak binding between user
| handle and real identity has always been part of internet forum
| culture--at least in the deep section of the pool that HN likes
| to swim in.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Warm welcome Tom! Hope it's an easy gig.
| jedberg wrote:
| Welcome Tom! Wishing you good luck from this former Reddit mod --
| I know how hard the job can be!
| interestica wrote:
| > He's still kind and thoughtful, but he's going to post as
| tomhow from now on
|
| I laughed at this phrasing. Welcome tomhow!
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Welcome and courage tomhow.
| tux1968 wrote:
| Hi, Same Tom Howard from osnews.com ??
| genezeta wrote:
| That's Thom Holwerda.
| tux1968 wrote:
| Well, that's an embarrassing mistake.
|
| Thanks.
| genezeta wrote:
| Well, it is kind of similar. And for a split second you
| really made me think it was him, so it's not that big a
| mistake :)
| palmotea wrote:
| > He has been doing HN moderation work for years already and
| knows the site and its practices inside-out, so the only new
| thing you'll see is mod comments from Tom showing up in the
| threads the way mine do.
|
| I wonder if there are any other secret moderators.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| We're all secret moderators except you.
| hakaneskici wrote:
| This would have been an epic April 1st joke :)
| diggan wrote:
| If you flag, downvote, and/or vouch comments, you're basically
| already a moderator-lite yourself :)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Upvoting posts has a moderation-like effect (opposed to that
| of downvoting).
| Raed667 wrote:
| If you reach 160'000 karma you can see the secret mods
| Full_Clark wrote:
| was really hoping the threshold is 65,535 because I'm much
| more likely to reach it counting backwards.
| milesrout wrote:
| There are many, I think? Dang has mentioned other moderators
| (plural) before, I believe.
| KolenCh wrote:
| I thought it is an April fool joke about having Tom Holland as
| moderator.
|
| My bad.
| jdjdjdjdjd wrote:
| Any comments on this post regarding moderation at hacker news:
|
| https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_i...
| ofirtwo wrote:
| Good luck tom in your new role!
| aberoham wrote:
| May we please have another mod based within GMT to round out this
| follow-the-sun pattern that's slowly rising
| jgruber wrote:
| I'll bet this will fix HN's transparency issues.
| burnished wrote:
| Nice! Thanks for the good work.
| rmason wrote:
| Welcome aboard Tom. Thanks to the efforts of dang HN has become
| an incredible community. I've learned a lot on here and made some
| great friends.
| jonbaer wrote:
| Good luck Tom.
| d-moon wrote:
| Welcome! Just do your best.
| liamwire wrote:
| Congrats mate, hope it's a smooth transition into the limelight
| for you
| scrapcode wrote:
| I've (mostly quietly) enjoyed the "vibe" of HN for well over a
| decade now. It's certainly a major contribution to maintaining
| enjoyment in the crazy world of tech. Thank you for your
| contributions to this community which remains so special to an
| entire industry.
| bisRepetita wrote:
| >I'm not going anywhere, so you'll have two of us to put up with
| going forward :)
|
| I thought that sctb was another one? No longer I guess?
| dang wrote:
| Alas, not for a few years. He is greatly missed.
| neom wrote:
| Now that we have an Australian, suppose I'll have to change my
| tactic of waiting for dang to go to bed before being naughty, how
| annoying.
|
| Nice to see another helper. Dan, you are truly wonderful and I
| hope you never leave us, however, I also hope this affords you
| some much deserved "time off". Welcome Tom, and how.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Dang, and Tom: I think it would be useful for you two moderators
| to use a "special" color, instead of the light gray that is used
| for any other username.
| deckar01 wrote:
| I believe the standard for annotating the utterance of deities
| is red text.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I propose it should be based on the specified accent color
| ("topcolor").
| dang wrote:
| I've always resisted that, and I suppose it's fair to say pg
| did too. It feels like an unnecessary barrier between us and
| others.
| Rendello wrote:
| I agree, it helps make HN feel like a special place.
| carstenhag wrote:
| It does feel very natural on Reddit (where mods can enable a
| flag/green user name when it's a mod response).
| metadat wrote:
| The best way to provide feedback is by emailing
| hn@ycombinator.com. I've received a reply to literelly every
| email I've ever sent (all credit to Dang and Co for being
| extremely kind and consistent in supporting my inner troll
| rehabilitation effort).
|
| There is no site mechanism to alert moderators about @mentions,
| and due to sheer volume of messages the site operators will
| typically never get to see your well-intentioned message.
|
| This thread does have better odds of being read than most,
| though :) cheers
| koolba wrote:
| Would it be possible to give him a new username for this role
| like "darn"?
|
| Then we can continue confusing the beginnings of comments that
| appeal to authority as interjections.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Yes, and then the next two mods could be "heck" and "gosh"!
| Maybe "dadgummit" if the powers-that-be are feeling spicy. :-)
| danbrooks wrote:
| Welcome Tom!
| the_arun wrote:
| Congrats Tom!
| vpribish wrote:
| Welcome! can we call you tang?
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Welcome Tom, all the best with your new role and thanks for being
| a moderator along with Daniel :-)
|
| It's good to see MGR (Moderator Geographic Redundancy) being
| implemented on HN ;-)
|
| Using RAID as an analogy, we now have RAID 1 moderators so let's
| hope to have RAID 6 soon :-P
|
| Ok ok, enough with the silly tech jokes and the smiley's.
| skeptrune wrote:
| Welcome welcome! It's crazy to think of how relatively long-
| lasting HN's influence on startups and tech has already been.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| Thanks for being a crucial part of this crucial part of my life,
| Tom.
| sramsay wrote:
| The question is, who among is willing to be the object of
| tomhow's first official Unsportsmanlike Conduct penalty? ;)
| adamc wrote:
| Thank you for what has to be a tough job.
| elorm wrote:
| Welcome Tom, Thanks for all the hard work you've done in secret
| and in advance for what you're about to do in open.
| broost3r wrote:
| Congrats and welcome!
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