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I have often appreciated your quick interventions to stop snark and abuse on this message board. But this doesn't seem right. This thread by its definition is

by tobbyb 11y ago

I have often appreciated your quick interventions to stop snark and abuse on this message board. But this doesn't seem right. This thread by its definition is controversial and lends itself to subjective option and heated discussion, more than others. At what point does opinion become 'ideology' as every single comment can be described as such, who decides the thin line between ideology and opinion and worse cross it to label and dismiss a 'comment' in this context as an 'inflammatory ideological rant'? This is extremely subjective and dangerous territory. Abuse, snark and insult do not lend themselves to subjectivity and are easily flagged. But in this case I think the comment makes a genuine attempt to engage, reason and articulate a point of view, and is not dismissive or abusive but veers slightly to the personal as did the original commentator. But still deserves to be heard and not hidden. The warnings about abuse or bad language is not subjective and hold. But it would be unfortunate to want to hide away articulated and reasoned responses one may not agree with as that inevitably leads to an echo chamber bereft of diversity, pushing away diverse opinions, and in effect making discussion pointless. In my case, rightly or wrongly, it discouraged me from reading the rest of the thread, as it appears anything diverse will be flagged and leave behind a sterile and uninteresting discussion. Perhaps Hacker News is not the right forum for this discussion. How does one discuss violence against people and sometimes entire populations for political or other ends with a distant and dispassionate tone without coming off as passive and unfeeling, unlike a more technical subject in which passion may be misplaced and derail discussion.

tptacek 11y ago
'stdcredzero made a pretty straightforward and neutral point about the interplay between activism, outrage, identity politics and cliques. He didn't single anyone out and was at pains to point the finger up and down the left right spectrum. 'danharaj responded by cherry picking a quote, calling it "fucking garbage", and then writing a short essay about why 'stdcredzero is a bad person. Just because a comment doesn't contain the string "LOL UMAD" doesn't mean it's civil. There are very few occasions where a comment whose purpose is to single someone else on HN out as a bad person will survive, and I'm glad of that. I'm glad I found this weird little thread, though, because I think those 'stdcredzero comments are great.
dang 11y ago
You may be right that "inflammatory ideological rant" wasn't a perfect fit for that comment. And I'm afraid I don't have precise definitions for you. The problem here isn't just one comment, though, but a history of making HN threads more toxic with incivility and inflammatory rhetoric. Doing that doesn't improve discussion; in the long run it destroys it. The whole of HN is organized to try to stave that off. If we have an existential concern, this is it. I don't think bit-flipping arguments are valid here, i.e. arguments that acting to dampen one thing (incivility) will flip the system to its binary opposite (sterility). That's not how complex systems work. There's plenty of room for thoughtful discussion to flourish. On HN this happens when people take up the challenge of remaining civil and respectful, even when others are wrong or provocative. One can do that while still feeling strongly about a topic. Yes, it's hard, but not because of any contradiction in the spec.
- danharaj 11y ago
  If you think I'm a barbarian at the gates then honestly I'll stop. Where you say inflammatory, I probably think polarizing. When you say incivility, I wonder why the top-level comment which just trashes a whole group of unnamed people in the most condescending way possible isn't considered uncivil; but I also don't think the top-level comment was problematic. I haven't thought my posts were toxic because they get good replies and they don't get downvote-hidden. If you're saying I bring the wrong kind of conversations to the threads, then that's fine. Like, I'm not going to tell you how to run this ship because moderation can be a thankless job at the best of times.
  - dang 11y ago
    Thank you for replying so politely. Yes, some of your comments—the riled-up ones—have brought the wrong kind of conversation to the threads. I'm confident that you could change that if you wanted to, and would be happy to discuss it by email (hn@ycombinator.com) if you wanted to. The combination of ideology with indignation is most destructive of the discourse we want here. That doesn't mean your views aren't welcome. If you would err on the side of courtesy, it would probably solve the problem. Many HN users, including some of the most courteous commenters we have, have gone through a similar transformation. It mostly takes willingness, which comes more easily when you understand the problem the community faces. The counterargument that matters of high moral importance deserve to be discussed with strong emotion has some truth to it, but only emotion that isn't contaminated with personal abusiveness qualifies. That takes self-discipline, especially in an online forum like HN, where we don't know each other personally, have only sparse signals to go on, and the bias when disagreeing is to fill in the picture uncharitably. To avoid that requires a conscious effort.

by tobbyb 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

'stdcredzero made a pretty straightforward and neutral point about the interplay between activism, outrage, identity politics and cliques. He didn't single anyone out and was at pains to point the finger up and down the left right spectrum. 'danharaj responded by cherry picking a quote, calling it "fucking garbage", and then writing a short essay about why 'stdcredzero is a bad person. Just because a comment doesn't contain the string "LOL UMAD" doesn't mean it's civil. There are very few occasions where a comment whose purpose is to single someone else on HN out as a bad person will survive, and I'm glad of that. I'm glad I found this weird little thread, though, because I think those 'stdcredzero comments are great.

dang 11y ago

You may be right that "inflammatory ideological rant" wasn't a perfect fit for that comment. And I'm afraid I don't have precise definitions for you. The problem here isn't just one comment, though, but a history of making HN threads more toxic with incivility and inflammatory rhetoric. Doing that doesn't improve discussion; in the long run it destroys it. The whole of HN is organized to try to stave that off. If we have an existential concern, this is it. I don't think bit-flipping arguments are valid here, i.e. arguments that acting to dampen one thing (incivility) will flip the system to its binary opposite (sterility). That's not how complex systems work. There's plenty of room for thoughtful discussion to flourish. On HN this happens when people take up the challenge of remaining civil and respectful, even when others are wrong or provocative. One can do that while still feeling strongly about a topic. Yes, it's hard, but not because of any contradiction in the spec.

danharaj 11y ago
If you think I'm a barbarian at the gates then honestly I'll stop. Where you say inflammatory, I probably think polarizing. When you say incivility, I wonder why the top-level comment which just trashes a whole group of unnamed people in the most condescending way possible isn't considered uncivil; but I also don't think the top-level comment was problematic. I haven't thought my posts were toxic because they get good replies and they don't get downvote-hidden. If you're saying I bring the wrong kind of conversations to the threads, then that's fine. Like, I'm not going to tell you how to run this ship because moderation can be a thankless job at the best of times.
- dang 11y ago
  Thank you for replying so politely. Yes, some of your comments—the riled-up ones—have brought the wrong kind of conversation to the threads. I'm confident that you could change that if you wanted to, and would be happy to discuss it by email (hn@ycombinator.com) if you wanted to. The combination of ideology with indignation is most destructive of the discourse we want here. That doesn't mean your views aren't welcome. If you would err on the side of courtesy, it would probably solve the problem. Many HN users, including some of the most courteous commenters we have, have gone through a similar transformation. It mostly takes willingness, which comes more easily when you understand the problem the community faces. The counterargument that matters of high moral importance deserve to be discussed with strong emotion has some truth to it, but only emotion that isn't contaminated with personal abusiveness qualifies. That takes self-discipline, especially in an online forum like HN, where we don't know each other personally, have only sparse signals to go on, and the bias when disagreeing is to fill in the picture uncharitably. To avoid that requires a conscious effort.