8 ms·
> If we notice abusive vouches, we'll take away vouching rights That might scare some people away from vouching. Could you clarify whether it'll be more like,
by raldi 11y ago
> If we notice abusive vouches, we'll take away vouching rights
That might scare some people away from vouching. Could you clarify whether it'll be more like, "If you wrongly vouch for even one single thing, we'll silently and permanently remove your vouching ability forever with no possible recourse" or more like, "If you show a repeated pattern of bad vouching, we'll reach out to you and explain what you're doing wrong, and only if it continues, take away your vouching privileges as a last resort, perhaps only temporarily" (or somewhere in between those extremes)?
P.S. I couldn't be happier to hear about Dan's promotion. He has an expert touch for community management, and (I learned after an opportunity to join him for beers one night) some deep wisdom on the subject, too.
- strangecasts 11y agoI read it as the latter - I don't think it's unreasonable to interpret it as "we may take action if you're using separate accounts to unkill your own posts/repeatedly vouching for obviously abusive comments".
- dang 11y agoPlease don't worry about this. It really is just like flagging. We only take away flagging rights if someone repeatedly misuses them—never for one random thing. I wouldn't have even included the bit about taking away vouching rights except I know that the question "What if people just vouch for all the bad comments" was going to come up otherwise. (Also, I don't think I've been promoted? But thanks—that's particularly meaningful coming from a seasoned veteran of the early Reddit...)
- raldi 11y ago> I don't think I've been promoted Editorial independence is a big vote of confidence; they don't toss that set of keys to just any old schmuck.
- samstave 11y agoFor whatever reason, I read this in Rodney Dangerfield's voice and it made it all that much better. But I agree, this is a huge vote of confidence
- larrys 11y agoWell if there is editorial independence, will we still see posts for when YC companies are looking to hire people, where you can't leave a comment, I am guessing for fear of creating noise that is not helpful to the hiring process? And will YC companies still get what appears to be preferential placement ("appears to be") for stories? [1] Some "more equal" than others? If this is true independence then those benefits would be extended and/or eliminated. [1] Or do stories about YC companies simple get more upvotes because of the balance in the community here toward people working at YC companies?
- dang 11y agoYou shouldn't see anything change, because we haven't been subject to editorial pressure in the first place. The job ads will still be a thing but in my mind they're off to the side. We're not going to open them to comments because HN comments are for discussing intellectually interesting stories, which job ads aren't—they're job ads. If you want to make claims about preferential placement (and yes I realize you're just saying "appears", but still, people are quick to believe these things), I'd appreciate concrete links so we can look into them. We try hard to be even-handed and when there are marginal calls, err on the side of not playing favorites. YC founders and current/former employees are a large and valued part of this community, stories about YC startups often are interesting (by HN's definition), and lots of HN users like to follow them in particular, so of course you'll still see plenty of YC-related stories on the front page. It would be weird not to. Of course those stories are subject to upvoting and flagging as much as the others are.
- kragen 11y agoAre you saying you'll be more reluctant to take away flagging rights than to take away commenting rights? Or do you feel that everyone who's been shadowbanned has in fact repeatedly misused their commenting rights?
- dang 11y agoThose feel like gotcha questions.
- kragen 11y agoWell, I didn't want to just contradict you and say that you are proposing that we do something that we don't in fact have the capacity to do. I wanted to give you the opportunity to explain how we do in fact have the capacity to do it, despite the appearance that we don't. Best wishes.
- dang 11y agoIt sounds like I might have misread your intention (sorry), but I still don't understand the question. If you want to try again, I'll try to answer.
- strangecasts 11y agoOr do you feel that everyone who's been shadowbanned has in fact repeatedly misused their commenting rights? That's a little uncharitable, considering this feature is acknowledging that the moderators can make mistakes.
- lambda 11y agoIn the original article here, they discuss how the reason for this feature is that some people get shadowbanned a little too aggressively. "Banned accounts sometimes post good comments, software filters sometimes have false positives, and users sometimes flag things unfairly." It seems to me the whole point of the vouch features is to have an easier recourse for other commenters to respond to people being shadowbanned (or otherwise dead for mistaken reasons, like tripping a filter or unfairly flagged by other users), rather than actually having to find the mod email and send an out of band message.
- dangrossman 11y ago> We only take away flagging rights if someone repeatedly misuses them—never for one random thing. My flag link disappeared one day without notice or explanation, and stayed disappeared for a year or so. I continue to fear using the flag link, even when I think something should be flagged. There's no chance I'm going to vouch for something other people have flagged: I'd never have enough certainty that I'm more right than they are in your eyes. I value my ability to participate in this community too much to help moderate it under threat of punishment for doing so poorly. Re: the replies below, the worst that can happen is not losing the vouch button, it's being silently shadowbanned for something else, when that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't put yourself on the admin's vouch review list for extra scrutiny. I already fear that happening any time I participate in one of those "what are you working on / what are your side projects" threads and include a link to my site.
- sp332 11y agoOh hey, my flag button is back! It had been gone so long I stopped looking for it.
- steveklabnik 11y agoIs that flagging on stories or on comments? For example, the flag button on comments only appears when you're on the comment's page, for example, I can see it right now, but when I was reading your comment, no flag button.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jcr 11y agoTo prevent abusive flagging by making it too easy to flag comments, the 'flag' link on comments only appears when you're on the /item?id=... page of the comment, or the /reply?id=... page.
- steveklabnik 11y agoAh thanks I forgot about the reply page, kind of silly given I was writing a reply... I like it as a feature, personally.
- larrys 11y agoIf I may ask, what is your last name, Dan?
- Mz 11y agoDaniel Gackle (pronounced Gackley) https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hacker-news https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hac...
- nkurz 11y agoThis is a question better solved by Google than by asking here: http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hacker-news http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hack... That said, Dan Gackle (pronounced Gackley, like the town in North Dakota: http://www.gacklenorthdakota.com/ http://www.gacklenorthdakota.com/) should consider adding his full name to his HN profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang And much as I like the opacity of the Bruno Schulz quote, it probably would be a good idea for him to also mention there that he is the moderator of the site, and thus the likely recipient of those questions emailed to hn@ycombinator.com.
- tptacek 11y agoI agree. I'm a weirdo who reads all of 'dangs moderator comments and I think he should have a [mod] tag in his comment datelines, too. It seems like people pretty regularly confuse him for just another busybody user.
- edanm 11y agoPeople might also confuse non-"dang" users for him if they have a similar username. I think a "mod" tag makes sense.
- jessaustin 11y agoPeople who make that mistake are just outing themselves as newbs. Not that there's anything wrong with newbs, but it is useful to be able to just ignore their opinions about how HN should be.
- debacle 11y agoHow would I know if I've lost flagging rights? Would excessive flagging cause that? Some days I might flag half a dozen things on the front page. Do you think we could maybe work towards removing hellbanning/shadowbanning of site features for non-spam users at some point?
- nightpool 11y agoWhen your flagging rights go away, the link disappears. St that point you can reach out to the mod team to try to figure out why/if it was a mistake.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jrochkind1 11y agoYou're not going to vouch... becuase you're scared if you do, they'll take away your vouching rights... which you weren't using anyway out of fear.... so you're scared of something that wouldn't matter to you anyway?
- raldi 11y agoSee this reply for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298834