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I occasionally find myself thinking lately that I just don't want to be here anymore. I had no idea. AFAIC, this is the best site on the internet. It is the

by edw519 17y ago

I occasionally find myself thinking lately that I just don't want to be here anymore. I had no idea. AFAIC, this is the best site on the internet. It is the home many of us have been seeking for years. I talk about things here that I have no one to talk to in person and I imagine there are many others like me. I have also noticed that things run in cycles and we seem to be in a bit of a trough lately. My usual response has been either to submit lots of stuff I really like, or just quit and come back the next day. That often works wonders. Whether we like it or not, it is the nature of this site for people to show others how smart they are. That's just the way we are and this is the perfect place to "show off" (for a lot of us, it may be the only place). Many of us never really fit in, didn't play sports, weren't "cool", and didn't get noticed by the ladies as much as we would have liked. But we had passion for other things, exactly the things discussed here at hn. So the nerdosterone runs heavy at times. Accompanied unfortunately by occasional meanness. But I am determined not to let HN go down without a fight. You won't need a fight. Just a little of what we do best: some good old fashioned problem solving. A couple of ideas: - Stop the meanness before it hits the data base with a front end "meanness" filter. When you click "reply", scan the text for cuss words and frequent phrases and give a warning, "Your comment has triggered the meanness filter because of the phrase "xxx". Please take this opportunity to reword it. Say what you want, but please be civil." They could modify it or submit the original anyway, but have to wait a "cooloff" x seconds or minutes. This could easily be gamed, but that's not the point. It would actively establish the expected tone, especially for new people. - Weigh votes by karma. The top 100 get 3 points per vote. The next 1000 get 2 points per votes. Everyone else gets the usual one point per vote. The idea is that those who have the most invested in the community would be more able to slow down out-of-control group think.

pg 17y ago
Unfortunately I'm pretty sure mean spiritedness is too semantic to catch with a filter. Dumb jerks are not the problem. The type who curse a lot get downmodded into oblivion and eventually banned. The problem is smart jerks. And unfortunately these are not uncommon in our world.
- gregwebs 17y ago
  generally, I agree, but I do find, for example, that as programming.reddit.com got worse the swearing went up, and as HN has gotten worse swearing has gone up. Now the swearing is not always mean-spearited, and probably the mean-spirited swearing gets down-modded on HN. But swearing could just trigger a filter that says "swear words are used to get attention in important situations. Do you really think this is that important?". Even if you can find some effective filters to use, most may eventually be worked around by commenters as you are implying. But they could give you more breathing room to find long-term solutions, and may help in that effort by increasing your awareness of what exactly the problems are.
- astine 17y ago
  Maybe a 'jerk' flag? Something that wouldn't effect individual comments, but would aggregate. A user with a high number of jerk flags could be called into scrutiny and possibly be dealt with if he was abusing the site. Another thought... What if we could filter out users who's comment we didn't want to read or we felt were offensive or a waste of time? This would reduce the noise for indivudual users without anything so draconian or subjective as flagging plus moderation. Another less-pleasent thought is more aggressive banning policies. I remember being part of older BB-esque forums that managed to maintain strong communities by enlisting members as moderators and enforcing strict and clearly promulgated discussion policies. It worked because it was transparent and because the enforcers were active members of the community. They had reputations and interest in keeping the quality of discussions high and are bound by the same rules that apply to everyone else. If need be, their rullings could be appealed if they were abusing their authority. I always felt that that system worked.
- bokonist 17y ago
  Create an expanded group of users whose judgement you trust. If they flag a comment for being uncivil, then everyone who up-voted the comment has their voting power reduced (from then on, if their up-vote would count less than everyone else's). I think this would help with the problem of highly up-voted, mean, comments.
tokenadult 17y ago
AFAIC, this is the best site on the internet. It is the home many of us have been seeking for years. I talk about things here that I have no one to talk to in person and I imagine there are many others like me. Hear. Hear. HN is also my favorite general access site. (I am a member of an organization that has members-only email lists that are very, very good, but I still find things here that I share with them.) The guidelines mention "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" as being on topic here, and I am deeply curious, having been an online moderator in various places since 1992, about how to keep an open online community civil and informative. My friendly advice to pg is to stay in the fight and don't give up. It may take a heavier hand in moderation of both comments and persons, aided by some of the crowdsourcing technical means being discussed in this thread, but HN has participants who cherish what HN is and who will be glad to help.

by edw519 17y ago

pg 17y ago

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure mean spiritedness is too semantic to catch with a filter. Dumb jerks are not the problem. The type who curse a lot get downmodded into oblivion and eventually banned. The problem is smart jerks. And unfortunately these are not uncommon in our world.

gregwebs 17y ago
generally, I agree, but I do find, for example, that as programming.reddit.com got worse the swearing went up, and as HN has gotten worse swearing has gone up. Now the swearing is not always mean-spearited, and probably the mean-spirited swearing gets down-modded on HN. But swearing could just trigger a filter that says "swear words are used to get attention in important situations. Do you really think this is that important?". Even if you can find some effective filters to use, most may eventually be worked around by commenters as you are implying. But they could give you more breathing room to find long-term solutions, and may help in that effort by increasing your awareness of what exactly the problems are.
astine 17y ago
Maybe a 'jerk' flag? Something that wouldn't effect individual comments, but would aggregate. A user with a high number of jerk flags could be called into scrutiny and possibly be dealt with if he was abusing the site. Another thought... What if we could filter out users who's comment we didn't want to read or we felt were offensive or a waste of time? This would reduce the noise for indivudual users without anything so draconian or subjective as flagging plus moderation. Another less-pleasent thought is more aggressive banning policies. I remember being part of older BB-esque forums that managed to maintain strong communities by enlisting members as moderators and enforcing strict and clearly promulgated discussion policies. It worked because it was transparent and because the enforcers were active members of the community. They had reputations and interest in keeping the quality of discussions high and are bound by the same rules that apply to everyone else. If need be, their rullings could be appealed if they were abusing their authority. I always felt that that system worked.
bokonist 17y ago
Create an expanded group of users whose judgement you trust. If they flag a comment for being uncivil, then everyone who up-voted the comment has their voting power reduced (from then on, if their up-vote would count less than everyone else's). I think this would help with the problem of highly up-voted, mean, comments.

tokenadult 17y ago

AFAIC, this is the best site on the internet. It is the home many of us have been seeking for years. I talk about things here that I have no one to talk to in person and I imagine there are many others like me. Hear. Hear. HN is also my favorite general access site. (I am a member of an organization that has members-only email lists that are very, very good, but I still find things here that I share with them.) The guidelines mention "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" as being on topic here, and I am deeply curious, having been an online moderator in various places since 1992, about how to keep an open online community civil and informative. My friendly advice to pg is to stay in the fight and don't give up. It may take a heavier hand in moderation of both comments and persons, aided by some of the crowdsourcing technical means being discussed in this thread, but HN has participants who cherish what HN is and who will be glad to help.