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When I was the editor of Dr. Dobb's, we were very concerned about how to create a lively discussion forum that was free from jerks and unpleasant people. Ultima

When I was the editor of Dr. Dobb's, we were very concerned about how to create a lively discussion forum that was free from jerks and unpleasant people. Ultimately, we settled on two components: treat everyone respectfully even those who seemed to be trolling, and delete all insulting posts. This largely worked. Similar elements seem to work here on HN too. That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests that the problem exists primarily b/c sites are willing to put up with bad behavior.

dang 10y ago
I'm glad to hear that an experienced editor sees HN that way, and also that you see evidence of a repeatable approach. Those are good signs. As I'm sure you know, it's a more complex problem than just being willing or unwilling to put up with bad behavior. There are costs to addressing it—quite a few, it turns out, no matter what approach one takes. Our plan is to move HN toward more community self-regulation. Each step we've taken that way—e.g. when we added vouching for dead comments—has worked well. I doubt the community can become completely autonomous (though a mod can dream), but we're pretty sure it can go further in that direction, especially if we do a good job of specifying what kind of site HN is, and isn't, supposed to be.
- vroombaprime 10y ago
  You guys do a great job with HN moderation and I've always been curious what ratio of mods:numComments is sustainable and still keep quality high and mods not burned out - do you think HN is a good datapoint or just special?
  - eon1 10y ago
    More mods doesn't necessarily mean more moderation, or the ability to moderate more content. From what I've seen it just means the moderation happens quicker and the mods pay less attention because "someone else will pick it up". This does kind of make sense; excepting some special moderation view that allocates posts directly to each mod, they're all viewing the forum in the same way, posts bumped to the top or sinking to the bottom, so things will get the same amount of attention or outrage either way. Speaking again from experience, it's all dependent on how long that fire's burning before a mod sees it. A crappy comment deleted quickly causes little fuss, a crappy comment left to fester for a couple hours then deleted will still have the aftermath hanging over it. Even if the entire thread is purged, it still exists in the memories of users and effects the overall tone/behavioural standard of the forum.
  - dang 10y ago
    Not sure I understand the question. Can you rephrase?
    - aidenn0 10y ago
      It sounded like there were two questions: 1) What is the right number of moderators per comment for HN 2) Do you think that number would generalize to other forums.
      - dang 10y ago
        In that case the answers are I don't know. We don't have many moderators, and I mostly think it would be a mistake to try to solve HN's problems by adding more official moderation.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  IMO the biggest challenge of self-moderating communities is avoiding the echo chamber effect: ideas surviving and spreading due to their popularity, rather than their merit. I'm curious if you agree that this is a problem, and what your plans are to address it, if you do.
  - Retra 10y ago
    I think you're really overestimating the relevance of moderation on that, in lieu of, (for example,) the education level, ages, and number of people and their investments in the community.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Communities run in a tight feedback loop with their populations; when a community goes in any direction, some people who don't like it will leave (and some outsiders who observe it may refuse to join), which pushes a community further into that direction. People within the community like HN are all self-selected, so the education level, ages, etc. depends strongly on the direction the community is going.
  - niccaluim 10y ago
    Indeed, one need look no further than Slashdot to see this in action. 100% community moderation produced a comment section that is all confirmation and no information.
  - ars 10y ago
    You need to moderate based only on civility. And emphatically NOT content (which slashdot does). Say something completely wrong, but you are polite about it? No problem, it stays up. Say something right, but insult those who disagree? Take it down, even if it's right and the others wrong.
    - dang 10y ago
      That's a fundamental point and one we can do more to clarify. It's in everyone's interest not to discredit their own argument by going about it uncivilly.
- jonahx 10y ago
  i'm curious: what are some of the major costs of addressing it that you referred to?
  - dang 10y ago
    It's hard and not always very gratifying work, which means you either have to pay someone to do it (as YC does with HN) or rely on volunteers who will extract other compensation from the system. Then there are many psychological costs. I'll list three. Often the people whose comments are being moderated do not feel that their comments are bad. They can become harsh, which can push your buttons. With the law of large numbers, any button you have will eventually get pushed sometimes, and when that happens it doesn't feel like a mere statistical process that's afflicting you. It feels more like an evil genius or demon that has perfect knowledge of how to drive you crazy. So you literally can feel driven crazy every day. (Edit: more on 'demons' here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=demons%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....) Second, an even harder problem is that people want explanations for why their comments are being moderated. It's hard to provide precise explanations in every case. When you get it right, it's helpful—at least to the general audience, and often to the commenter too—but it takes a ton of energy to get right because there is endless variation and nuance in these things, and the cost of being even a little wrong is high: it causes hurt feelings and a general sense of injustice. On the other hand, if you don't provide explanations, people feel that you're being arrogant and heavy-handed. Third, every mistake you make will be jumped on by lots of people. Their intentions are largely benign, but it's hard to remember that when your mistake is being jumped on. I could continue! There are different strategies you can take to this, but they all involve tradeoffs. When PG was moderating HN he relied on software to do as much as possible and did the human part with a minimum of (i.e. usually no) explanation. That led to complaints about lack of transparency and so on, but given that he was both building YC and raising small children at the time, there wasn't an alternative. By the time he handed HN over, the community had reached the point of needing a different approach. But no matter what approach one takes, there are these sorts of costs. I think the trick for keeping going is to design the system to have rewards as well as costs, but that's a different conversation. (Edit from when I ran across this years later: from a 2020 perspective I would say that of the three psychological costs, #2 is the hardest because it consumes by far the most energy. #1 and #3 can be worked on internally, but #2 requires a lot of careful external communication, often under high-pressure conditions. I'm still thinking about what can alleviate that load. It's a bit of a double bind, because if you answer every objection and protest, it's draining—actually it's physically impossible—but if you don't answer, then people will imagine their own answer, invariably a hurtful one, and go away firmly believing it and feeling aggrieved, which is a bad outcome in its own right and often comes back to bite you later.)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  I can often be an asshole on Reddit. But I never am here because HN is so clean and well kept. The signal to noise ratio is fantastic and I'll be damned if I'm going to be the one to lessen it. Kind of amazing to me how it works that way: once there's graffiti on the wall, suddenly the perception is that it's okay to put graffiti on the wall.
  - eyan 10y ago
    Plays nicely into the Broken Window Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
    - Waterluvian 10y ago
      Thank you for sharing. That's exactly what I was trying to convey, without knowing the term.
- lmm 10y ago
  How are you measuring success? I feel that the quality of HN has declined a lot over the last year or two; we see a lot more one-liners and "couldn't resist" comments, and less technical content. (I think the caustic attitude of old HN helped; people who made jokes used to be shot down very quickly, whereas now people try to be nice about it). I now consciously avoid the site while America is awake.
  - forloop 10y ago
    > How are you measuring success? Being a marketing platform, I would imagine something like the maximum number of people within their target audience engaging. And two: not having facts/discussions which tarnish their company's image on the platform.
  - StevePerkins 10y ago
    > I now consciously avoid the site while America is awake. Is this one of those troll comments to which we should respond by saying something nice? Because if it were an American making a similar comment in reverse, then it would be buried as jingoistic/xenaphobic/racist/etc. You look great today.
    - Mithaldu 10y ago
      Serious answer: Cultural differences DO exist. I come from a place where, confusingly, passive-agressiveness is preferred over direct confrontation, AND sarcasm is used very seldomly and only very obviously. Both of these things put me on edge with americans who, on average, despise passive aggressiveness and use sarcasm as if it were the salt of conversation. The result is that i have to think in a completely different mindset to talk to US people, to avoid misunderstanding them or having them be disgusted by the way i talk.
    - eivarv 10y ago
      I don't see how an American wanting to avoid comments from another continent would make them afraid of a warrior princess. On a more serious note, I too have noticed a shift in the comments on this site; I really enjoyed the fact that HN was a more "serious" place for sober discussion, where most comments were useful (larger signal-to-noise ratio). This culture made me reconcider my own comments on a few occasions. EDIT: Not saying that this is a huge problem - just a development I don't enjoy.
Mz 10y ago
That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests that the problem exists primarily b/c sites are willing to put up with bad behavior. Many people, even people running discussion forums with years of experience, simply do not know how to fix it and often believe it cannot be fixed. It is also common for them to "put out the fire with gasoline." On an email list, I used to say "fighting against the fighting is still fighting." Many people do not know how to address bad behavior that doesn't involve some form of fighting, punishment, etc and this tends to deepen the problem rather than resolve it. You may have figured it out and HN may be doing pretty well with it, but that is not evidence that the problem continues elsewhere merely because people are willing to put up with it. It is far more complicated than that. One of the problems is that absence of a problem does not, by itself, point to effectiveness of a particular approach. In fact, what you will often see is that outsiders will assume you were merely lucky to not have had X thing occur rather than that you did something elegant to kill the problem without overt drama. The lack of overt drama gets read by most people as evidence of lack of a problem, not smoothness in handling it.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Aka have the patience of a saint?
  - Mz 10y ago
    No, not really. I am not a patient person and I am pretty good at certain aspects of this. If you know that doing X will actually make things worse and suck up more of your time and energy than foregoing X, it really does not take patience to sigh deeply at your computer screen and choose to pass on the option of shooting yourself in the foot. Knowledge is power. Having it clear in your mind that certain things simply are not a path forward has nothing to do with patience and everything to do with having the right mental models, knowledge and education. On the other hand, I am also medically handicapped, so sometimes I fall on my face anyway. But when I get it right, it has nothing at all to do with patience because I didn't get that gene. Edit: Let me put that another way: Impatience is why I don't do certain things. If I know what a painful timesuck it is, impatience is my motivator for just not going there.
- 10y ago
duaneb 10y ago
> That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests that the problem exists primarily b/c sites are willing to put up with bad behavior. I think there's a little more at play, here. Look at the two subreddits /r/askhistorians and /r/askreddit, which vary about as much as possible in moderation patterns and resulting quality: /r/askhistorians is possibly the best moderated forum on the internet, allowing only high quality top-level comments from a historiographical perspective. OTOH /r/AskReddit is a cesspool of bigotry, puns, and reddit memes so tired they might as well be generated stochastically. However, looking at what differentiates them, it's entirely culture. It's not that the moderators on /r/AskReddit are bad or aren't interested in moderation, they are simply trying to cultivate a much less formal discussion. Similarly, I think you'll see higher rates of success wrt moderation on focused, interest-driven discussion than on "free-for-all" forums where one can e.g. successfully start a blessed conversation with the intent to troll the forum itself. For an example, people arguing for neo-nazi type politics on HN (or Dr. Dobbs) might not be tolerated for obvious reasons. But they're also not likely to comment in either place. On an article discussing controversy affecting the general public, you're going to have an extremely difficult time finding a line between civil and uncivil discussion—the normal for the context is probably not civil by most peoples' standards, but restricting the conversation would look a whole lot like trying to shape it. Tl;dr every community has its own needs and expectations; I don't think there is a moderation panacea without creating isolated communities that self-select towards the conversation they want to have. Thoughts?
- kiba 10y ago
  I keep seeing deleted comments on /r/askhistorians though. Community is so big that they probably get new users all the time that they don't know the rule.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Oh yea, the most popular posts are known as "comment graveyards" because they're cross posted to other reddits. But believe it or not, that's a sign that the moderation is working well. It's the less popular posts that slip past the front page before being replied to that slip in quality—those posts will often have sub-standard replies that never get the moderation they deserve.
ghaff 10y ago
I suspect the answer is something along the lines of: The subject matter and associated demographics of some sites is such that, with appropriate moderation systems and commitment to consistently dealing with bad (or at least the worst) behavior, discussion forums can maintain a reasonable signal to noise ratio. The worst offenders usually get bored and go away after being banned enough times. But a site that deals primarily with political topics? Even on HN, the level of discourse is far lower than with more fact-based technical topics. And even politically-oriented blogs and sites that I consider to have somewhat readable comments, are far more "raucous" than would be tolerated here. And as for comments on controversial topics on truly mainstream sites like your local newspaper? That's pretty much a lost cause. There's so little signal to start with.
- CM30 10y ago
  Yeah, the topic point is a good one here. Some stuff (like the aforementioned politics, religion, controversial issues, anything 'illegal') tend towards lower quality discourse partly due to the demographics that use said sites. Meanwhile, something fairly benign or less popular will tend to draw a much more civil audience.
coldtea 10y ago
>When I was the editor of Dr. Dobb's, we were very concerned about how to create a lively discussion forum that was free from jerks and unpleasant people. I think this seminal essay is required reading on such matters: http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enem...
- dang 10y ago
  Thanks; I just re-read that and it seems to me that HN is mostly pretty well aligned with what he's saying. But let me phrase that as a question: what's the most important insight in the essay that HN does not currently line up well with?
  - r_smart 10y ago
    As a long time lurker, but a brand new user, I think my one criticism, as it relates to the article, would be that HN doesn't facilitate conversations as well as I would like. Or I'm using the site wrong. So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some means of being told, hey, someone posted a response to your comment 'X' would be nice. That and there's a dearth of sex talk. Get us more of that you delicious beast.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      > So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some means of being told, hey, someone posted a response to your comment 'X' would be nice. It used to be that you could put a token for an YC-backed messaging startup, but I think the startup died since you can no longer do so. In the meantime, bunch of HN notification services were created. I currently use HN Replies[0], which sends me an e-mail every time someone responds to my comment. I agree this is a very important feature if you want to facilitate actual conversations; otherwhise, it's hard to track discussions that started more than a day ago. I've noticed a significant positive change in the way I interact with HN since I started using third-party e-mail notifications - I'm more likely to participate in a comment thread over several days, and I now consider it good manners to respond to replies that try to engage me in further conversations. So, tl;dr - 'dang, I strongly second the "comment notifications" idea! [0] - http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/
orionblastar 10y ago
I am working on a project that will eventually reward good users with credits they can sell for Bitcoin. It is not my idea but I got recruited into it. http://kr5ddit.com http://kr5ddit.com but the server might not handle too many requests. I am trying to help convert the software to an open source license. Users earn credits for having comments and posts voted up by others who spend credits moderating content. Downvoting bad content earns credits, upvoting good content earns credits. I exchaged 100 credits for 12 mBTC recently, a small amount maybe enough for a coffee.
- mootothemax 10y ago
  FYI Chrome's telling me that your SSL cert expired a week ago. I think your site could work if it remains small. As soon as it grows large enough to be worth gaming for fun and profit, I can't see any way of avoiding it - very sadly! There's also the opportunity for all kinds of fun with users colluding with each other - and no doubt some fraud with others along the way. If you manage to pull it off, more kr3ddit to you!
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
I wouldn't say that HN moderation is always effective. There is a local groupthink that will get you downvoted fast for rational commentary that runs contrary to the popular consensus. Much like Berkeley students shouting down any opposing viewpoint they've predetermined to be invalid.
- deathanatos 10y ago
  I've heard this several times; I know there are viewpoints that HN tends to lean certain ways on (many of us are similar not only in profession, but that probably leads to similarities in views). Would you happen to have a link to a good comment thread that shows the alternate viewpoint not getting fair treatment or serially downvoted? (or, if not that, is there a particular topic area or debate, s.t. next time it comes up I might know to look?) Perhaps the best I can come up with is the debate around good encryption, network communication, and the government's abuse of people's rights; but in this example, the counter-arguments I've heard have just not been convincing, which I find different from not getting fair treatment.
  - tnone 10y ago
    It's difficult to link to shadowbanned comments, so... Basically anything to do with the cult of diversity. The double standards and refusal to acknowledge charlatans is impenetrable. It's no problem to demonize approved groups of people based on hearsay, but considered harassment to point out fraud or lies from protected demographics. That's a holy cow that HN has slowly but surely adopted. The response is usually a kafkatrap: accuse the poster of being dishonest, and treat refusal as an admission of guilt. If no explicit statement can be picked at, you get accused of "dog whistling".
  - sievebrain 10y ago
    Politics related threads have that issue. Downvoting should go: lots of people use it as a way to try and suppress political views they disagree with. For instance, I pretty much accept that pro-Brexit posts will always get downvoted, even posts that state a matter of fact with citations. I don't care, I have great karma scores already and I've noticed that initial negative scores tend to end up slightly positive -> the problem eventually gets corrected, but it's incredibly obvious that lots of people simply downvote posts they disagree with regardless of content.
DHMO 10y ago
> delete all insulting posts This would be ok on HN. I'd rather that than people downvoting because they disagree or because you made an honest mistake. It wounds me every time I get a downvote, and often I just logout and create a new user, so that I don't feel marred by being associated with a past comment that someone didn't like. I had a serious amount of karma about 9 years ago and probably should've just gotten over it, but I said a few things I believed at the time, got seriously embarrassed when others disagreed, and then just started quitting and creating new users, and have been doing it ever since. I'm not proud of it. Really- I'd much rather everything just be anonymous. That would be easier. I also disagree with the rules saying that you can't frame something as "I know I'll get downvotes but..."- really, I don't understand why it matters. I think flagging offensive or spam comments really should be the only control necessary. I know that being a moderator is tough, but the community should be welcoming to all sorts of ideas and comments. I'm not a troll.
- RhodaLs 10y ago
  I agree with you. HN should get rid of the downvotes. They don't really serve a useful purpose. It just adds needless friction and anxiety, puts a certain amount of negativity at the center of the discussion, and reinforces a certain level of groupthink. If someone's factually wrong, a response pointing out the errors is far more effective than a downvote, and encourages further discussion. If something is offensive, flag the comment and move on. Downvotes also encourage some pointless noise in the conversation involving the downvotes themselves. I could see keeping the upvotes as a way of helping to keep things positive (pun probably intended), but I'm not attached to them.
  - niftich 10y ago
    Although I agree with this point, I wonder if the removal of downvotes would alter the usage of 'flag' by a measurable amount, and flag be used by some as a proxy for when they would have used a downvote instead.
    - Bahamut 10y ago
      My guess is that the downvote system is an intentional encouragement of laziness in order to drown unpopular comments for whatever reason (sometimes valid such as noise, sometimes to intentionally suppress challenging viewpoints) while avoiding the heavy burden of moderation. Just like Reddit's system, it is heavily flawed and easily gamed, as seen pretty much all the time here.
Asooka 10y ago
Except that HN hellbans people for seemingly trolling when they aren't. Sometimes. I've learned that in general you should keep your posts as apolitical as possible on HN.
HNerInChina 10y ago
> jerks, bozos and assholes Looks like incivility to me. In my humble opinion, more often than not, when a techie refers to another commenter as an "asshole" they simply mean that they dislike the other commenter's politics or lack of left-leaning political correctness. You see, most techies espouse leftist views, which are rarely challenged in public because most media lean left. When they come across real-world opinions held by a large percentage of the population, they flip out and call the offender(s) "jerks, bozos and assholes." I'm on the other side. I see the entire original post and most of the related comments on HN as examples of intolerance of truly diverse opinions. Those who would flag-kill differing opinions are the "assholes". Those incapable of seeing their own bias are likely "bozos" or "jerks". In short, several of the self-congratulatory commenters on HN fail to understand that the words "asshole", " jerk", "bozo" apply squarely to them. I had a recent post which got 5 quick upvotes then was flag-killed for failing to hew to feminist orthodoxy and the feminine imperative. That's how intolerance is done.
- pjc50 10y ago
  > real-world opinions held by a large percentage of the population Quite a lot of the population believe all sorts of intolerant things about women and nonwhite people. That doesn't make it right. > most media lean left Hahaha no.
  - qu4z-2 10y ago
    Quite a lot of the population believe all sorts of things about all sorts of things, prejudiced beliefs about "others" being fairly high up on the list. > Hahaha no. I know "That which is asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof" and you're totally in the clear here, but it does make me wonder how you'd go about testing that claim (both yours and the GP's)? I mean, from my point of view many media outlets do lean somewhat left but partly because "reality has a left bias" or however the saying goes (although I lean somewhat left, so it may just be my filter bubble). How do you determine it for even one media outlet? You could maybe do it by vocabulary choice. There are definitely some terms that are used primarily by one side or the other. Or the metric of what issues they try to get their readers outraged about? I've noticed sometimes there's bias not in how stories are covered, but in which stories are covered. Perhaps it's not possible to do in isolation, but some sort of clustering technique (percentage of readers in common with another outlet as a similarity measure?) would reveal obvious groupings. Regarding "most", would one weight different media outlets based on their viewership? Or does my local town paper count equally to Fox/whatever in adding "most"? I guess really I'm just trying to have a more useful discussion than "media are biased left!"->"lol no", but it is actually an interesting question I think, and if anyone has resources about this (this question has definitely been asked before) I'd be interested in links.

dang 10y ago

I'm glad to hear that an experienced editor sees HN that way, and also that you see evidence of a repeatable approach. Those are good signs. As I'm sure you know, it's a more complex problem than just being willing or unwilling to put up with bad behavior. There are costs to addressing it—quite a few, it turns out, no matter what approach one takes. Our plan is to move HN toward more community self-regulation. Each step we've taken that way—e.g. when we added vouching for dead comments—has worked well. I doubt the community can become completely autonomous (though a mod can dream), but we're pretty sure it can go further in that direction, especially if we do a good job of specifying what kind of site HN is, and isn't, supposed to be.

vroombaprime 10y ago
You guys do a great job with HN moderation and I've always been curious what ratio of mods:numComments is sustainable and still keep quality high and mods not burned out - do you think HN is a good datapoint or just special?
- eon1 10y ago
  More mods doesn't necessarily mean more moderation, or the ability to moderate more content. From what I've seen it just means the moderation happens quicker and the mods pay less attention because "someone else will pick it up". This does kind of make sense; excepting some special moderation view that allocates posts directly to each mod, they're all viewing the forum in the same way, posts bumped to the top or sinking to the bottom, so things will get the same amount of attention or outrage either way. Speaking again from experience, it's all dependent on how long that fire's burning before a mod sees it. A crappy comment deleted quickly causes little fuss, a crappy comment left to fester for a couple hours then deleted will still have the aftermath hanging over it. Even if the entire thread is purged, it still exists in the memories of users and effects the overall tone/behavioural standard of the forum.
- dang 10y ago
  Not sure I understand the question. Can you rephrase?
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    It sounded like there were two questions: 1) What is the right number of moderators per comment for HN 2) Do you think that number would generalize to other forums.
    - dang 10y ago
      In that case the answers are I don't know. We don't have many moderators, and I mostly think it would be a mistake to try to solve HN's problems by adding more official moderation.
enraged_camel 10y ago
IMO the biggest challenge of self-moderating communities is avoiding the echo chamber effect: ideas surviving and spreading due to their popularity, rather than their merit. I'm curious if you agree that this is a problem, and what your plans are to address it, if you do.
- Retra 10y ago
  I think you're really overestimating the relevance of moderation on that, in lieu of, (for example,) the education level, ages, and number of people and their investments in the community.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Communities run in a tight feedback loop with their populations; when a community goes in any direction, some people who don't like it will leave (and some outsiders who observe it may refuse to join), which pushes a community further into that direction. People within the community like HN are all self-selected, so the education level, ages, etc. depends strongly on the direction the community is going.
- niccaluim 10y ago
  Indeed, one need look no further than Slashdot to see this in action. 100% community moderation produced a comment section that is all confirmation and no information.
- ars 10y ago
  You need to moderate based only on civility. And emphatically NOT content (which slashdot does). Say something completely wrong, but you are polite about it? No problem, it stays up. Say something right, but insult those who disagree? Take it down, even if it's right and the others wrong.
  - dang 10y ago
    That's a fundamental point and one we can do more to clarify. It's in everyone's interest not to discredit their own argument by going about it uncivilly.
jonahx 10y ago
i'm curious: what are some of the major costs of addressing it that you referred to?
- dang 10y ago
  It's hard and not always very gratifying work, which means you either have to pay someone to do it (as YC does with HN) or rely on volunteers who will extract other compensation from the system. Then there are many psychological costs. I'll list three. Often the people whose comments are being moderated do not feel that their comments are bad. They can become harsh, which can push your buttons. With the law of large numbers, any button you have will eventually get pushed sometimes, and when that happens it doesn't feel like a mere statistical process that's afflicting you. It feels more like an evil genius or demon that has perfect knowledge of how to drive you crazy. So you literally can feel driven crazy every day. (Edit: more on 'demons' here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=demons%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....) Second, an even harder problem is that people want explanations for why their comments are being moderated. It's hard to provide precise explanations in every case. When you get it right, it's helpful—at least to the general audience, and often to the commenter too—but it takes a ton of energy to get right because there is endless variation and nuance in these things, and the cost of being even a little wrong is high: it causes hurt feelings and a general sense of injustice. On the other hand, if you don't provide explanations, people feel that you're being arrogant and heavy-handed. Third, every mistake you make will be jumped on by lots of people. Their intentions are largely benign, but it's hard to remember that when your mistake is being jumped on. I could continue! There are different strategies you can take to this, but they all involve tradeoffs. When PG was moderating HN he relied on software to do as much as possible and did the human part with a minimum of (i.e. usually no) explanation. That led to complaints about lack of transparency and so on, but given that he was both building YC and raising small children at the time, there wasn't an alternative. By the time he handed HN over, the community had reached the point of needing a different approach. But no matter what approach one takes, there are these sorts of costs. I think the trick for keeping going is to design the system to have rewards as well as costs, but that's a different conversation. (Edit from when I ran across this years later: from a 2020 perspective I would say that of the three psychological costs, #2 is the hardest because it consumes by far the most energy. #1 and #3 can be worked on internally, but #2 requires a lot of careful external communication, often under high-pressure conditions. I'm still thinking about what can alleviate that load. It's a bit of a double bind, because if you answer every objection and protest, it's draining—actually it's physically impossible—but if you don't answer, then people will imagine their own answer, invariably a hurtful one, and go away firmly believing it and feeling aggrieved, which is a bad outcome in its own right and often comes back to bite you later.)
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Waterluvian 10y ago
I can often be an asshole on Reddit. But I never am here because HN is so clean and well kept. The signal to noise ratio is fantastic and I'll be damned if I'm going to be the one to lessen it. Kind of amazing to me how it works that way: once there's graffiti on the wall, suddenly the perception is that it's okay to put graffiti on the wall.
- eyan 10y ago
  Plays nicely into the Broken Window Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
  - Waterluvian 10y ago
    Thank you for sharing. That's exactly what I was trying to convey, without knowing the term.
lmm 10y ago
How are you measuring success? I feel that the quality of HN has declined a lot over the last year or two; we see a lot more one-liners and "couldn't resist" comments, and less technical content. (I think the caustic attitude of old HN helped; people who made jokes used to be shot down very quickly, whereas now people try to be nice about it). I now consciously avoid the site while America is awake.
- forloop 10y ago
  > How are you measuring success? Being a marketing platform, I would imagine something like the maximum number of people within their target audience engaging. And two: not having facts/discussions which tarnish their company's image on the platform.
- StevePerkins 10y ago
  > I now consciously avoid the site while America is awake. Is this one of those troll comments to which we should respond by saying something nice? Because if it were an American making a similar comment in reverse, then it would be buried as jingoistic/xenaphobic/racist/etc. You look great today.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    Serious answer: Cultural differences DO exist. I come from a place where, confusingly, passive-agressiveness is preferred over direct confrontation, AND sarcasm is used very seldomly and only very obviously. Both of these things put me on edge with americans who, on average, despise passive aggressiveness and use sarcasm as if it were the salt of conversation. The result is that i have to think in a completely different mindset to talk to US people, to avoid misunderstanding them or having them be disgusted by the way i talk.
  - eivarv 10y ago
    I don't see how an American wanting to avoid comments from another continent would make them afraid of a warrior princess. On a more serious note, I too have noticed a shift in the comments on this site; I really enjoyed the fact that HN was a more "serious" place for sober discussion, where most comments were useful (larger signal-to-noise ratio). This culture made me reconcider my own comments on a few occasions. EDIT: Not saying that this is a huge problem - just a development I don't enjoy.

Mz 10y ago

That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests that the problem exists primarily b/c sites are willing to put up with bad behavior. Many people, even people running discussion forums with years of experience, simply do not know how to fix it and often believe it cannot be fixed. It is also common for them to "put out the fire with gasoline." On an email list, I used to say "fighting against the fighting is still fighting." Many people do not know how to address bad behavior that doesn't involve some form of fighting, punishment, etc and this tends to deepen the problem rather than resolve it. You may have figured it out and HN may be doing pretty well with it, but that is not evidence that the problem continues elsewhere merely because people are willing to put up with it. It is far more complicated than that. One of the problems is that absence of a problem does not, by itself, point to effectiveness of a particular approach. In fact, what you will often see is that outsiders will assume you were merely lucky to not have had X thing occur rather than that you did something elegant to kill the problem without overt drama. The lack of overt drama gets read by most people as evidence of lack of a problem, not smoothness in handling it.

digi_owl 10y ago
Aka have the patience of a saint?
- Mz 10y ago
  No, not really. I am not a patient person and I am pretty good at certain aspects of this. If you know that doing X will actually make things worse and suck up more of your time and energy than foregoing X, it really does not take patience to sigh deeply at your computer screen and choose to pass on the option of shooting yourself in the foot. Knowledge is power. Having it clear in your mind that certain things simply are not a path forward has nothing to do with patience and everything to do with having the right mental models, knowledge and education. On the other hand, I am also medically handicapped, so sometimes I fall on my face anyway. But when I get it right, it has nothing at all to do with patience because I didn't get that gene. Edit: Let me put that another way: Impatience is why I don't do certain things. If I know what a painful timesuck it is, impatience is my motivator for just not going there.
10y ago

duaneb 10y ago

> That the efficacy of this approach is repeatable suggests that the problem exists primarily b/c sites are willing to put up with bad behavior. I think there's a little more at play, here. Look at the two subreddits /r/askhistorians and /r/askreddit, which vary about as much as possible in moderation patterns and resulting quality: /r/askhistorians is possibly the best moderated forum on the internet, allowing only high quality top-level comments from a historiographical perspective. OTOH /r/AskReddit is a cesspool of bigotry, puns, and reddit memes so tired they might as well be generated stochastically. However, looking at what differentiates them, it's entirely culture. It's not that the moderators on /r/AskReddit are bad or aren't interested in moderation, they are simply trying to cultivate a much less formal discussion. Similarly, I think you'll see higher rates of success wrt moderation on focused, interest-driven discussion than on "free-for-all" forums where one can e.g. successfully start a blessed conversation with the intent to troll the forum itself. For an example, people arguing for neo-nazi type politics on HN (or Dr. Dobbs) might not be tolerated for obvious reasons. But they're also not likely to comment in either place. On an article discussing controversy affecting the general public, you're going to have an extremely difficult time finding a line between civil and uncivil discussion—the normal for the context is probably not civil by most peoples' standards, but restricting the conversation would look a whole lot like trying to shape it. Tl;dr every community has its own needs and expectations; I don't think there is a moderation panacea without creating isolated communities that self-select towards the conversation they want to have. Thoughts?

kiba 10y ago
I keep seeing deleted comments on /r/askhistorians though. Community is so big that they probably get new users all the time that they don't know the rule.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Oh yea, the most popular posts are known as "comment graveyards" because they're cross posted to other reddits. But believe it or not, that's a sign that the moderation is working well. It's the less popular posts that slip past the front page before being replied to that slip in quality—those posts will often have sub-standard replies that never get the moderation they deserve.

ghaff 10y ago

I suspect the answer is something along the lines of: The subject matter and associated demographics of some sites is such that, with appropriate moderation systems and commitment to consistently dealing with bad (or at least the worst) behavior, discussion forums can maintain a reasonable signal to noise ratio. The worst offenders usually get bored and go away after being banned enough times. But a site that deals primarily with political topics? Even on HN, the level of discourse is far lower than with more fact-based technical topics. And even politically-oriented blogs and sites that I consider to have somewhat readable comments, are far more "raucous" than would be tolerated here. And as for comments on controversial topics on truly mainstream sites like your local newspaper? That's pretty much a lost cause. There's so little signal to start with.

CM30 10y ago
Yeah, the topic point is a good one here. Some stuff (like the aforementioned politics, religion, controversial issues, anything 'illegal') tend towards lower quality discourse partly due to the demographics that use said sites. Meanwhile, something fairly benign or less popular will tend to draw a much more civil audience.

coldtea 10y ago

>When I was the editor of Dr. Dobb's, we were very concerned about how to create a lively discussion forum that was free from jerks and unpleasant people. I think this seminal essay is required reading on such matters: http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enem...

dang 10y ago
Thanks; I just re-read that and it seems to me that HN is mostly pretty well aligned with what he's saying. But let me phrase that as a question: what's the most important insight in the essay that HN does not currently line up well with?
- r_smart 10y ago
  As a long time lurker, but a brand new user, I think my one criticism, as it relates to the article, would be that HN doesn't facilitate conversations as well as I would like. Or I'm using the site wrong. So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some means of being told, hey, someone posted a response to your comment 'X' would be nice. That and there's a dearth of sex talk. Get us more of that you delicious beast.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > So far as I can tell, there is no way for me to know when a person has responded to a comment of mine other than keeping my account page opening and refreshing to see if anyone has posted a response to me. Some means of being told, hey, someone posted a response to your comment 'X' would be nice. It used to be that you could put a token for an YC-backed messaging startup, but I think the startup died since you can no longer do so. In the meantime, bunch of HN notification services were created. I currently use HN Replies[0], which sends me an e-mail every time someone responds to my comment. I agree this is a very important feature if you want to facilitate actual conversations; otherwhise, it's hard to track discussions that started more than a day ago. I've noticed a significant positive change in the way I interact with HN since I started using third-party e-mail notifications - I'm more likely to participate in a comment thread over several days, and I now consider it good manners to respond to replies that try to engage me in further conversations. So, tl;dr - 'dang, I strongly second the "comment notifications" idea! [0] - http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/

orionblastar 10y ago

I am working on a project that will eventually reward good users with credits they can sell for Bitcoin. It is not my idea but I got recruited into it. http://kr5ddit.com http://kr5ddit.com but the server might not handle too many requests. I am trying to help convert the software to an open source license. Users earn credits for having comments and posts voted up by others who spend credits moderating content. Downvoting bad content earns credits, upvoting good content earns credits. I exchaged 100 credits for 12 mBTC recently, a small amount maybe enough for a coffee.

mootothemax 10y ago
FYI Chrome's telling me that your SSL cert expired a week ago. I think your site could work if it remains small. As soon as it grows large enough to be worth gaming for fun and profit, I can't see any way of avoiding it - very sadly! There's also the opportunity for all kinds of fun with users colluding with each other - and no doubt some fraud with others along the way. If you manage to pull it off, more kr3ddit to you!

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

I wouldn't say that HN moderation is always effective. There is a local groupthink that will get you downvoted fast for rational commentary that runs contrary to the popular consensus. Much like Berkeley students shouting down any opposing viewpoint they've predetermined to be invalid.

deathanatos 10y ago
I've heard this several times; I know there are viewpoints that HN tends to lean certain ways on (many of us are similar not only in profession, but that probably leads to similarities in views). Would you happen to have a link to a good comment thread that shows the alternate viewpoint not getting fair treatment or serially downvoted? (or, if not that, is there a particular topic area or debate, s.t. next time it comes up I might know to look?) Perhaps the best I can come up with is the debate around good encryption, network communication, and the government's abuse of people's rights; but in this example, the counter-arguments I've heard have just not been convincing, which I find different from not getting fair treatment.
- tnone 10y ago
  It's difficult to link to shadowbanned comments, so... Basically anything to do with the cult of diversity. The double standards and refusal to acknowledge charlatans is impenetrable. It's no problem to demonize approved groups of people based on hearsay, but considered harassment to point out fraud or lies from protected demographics. That's a holy cow that HN has slowly but surely adopted. The response is usually a kafkatrap: accuse the poster of being dishonest, and treat refusal as an admission of guilt. If no explicit statement can be picked at, you get accused of "dog whistling".
- sievebrain 10y ago
  Politics related threads have that issue. Downvoting should go: lots of people use it as a way to try and suppress political views they disagree with. For instance, I pretty much accept that pro-Brexit posts will always get downvoted, even posts that state a matter of fact with citations. I don't care, I have great karma scores already and I've noticed that initial negative scores tend to end up slightly positive -> the problem eventually gets corrected, but it's incredibly obvious that lots of people simply downvote posts they disagree with regardless of content.

DHMO 10y ago

> delete all insulting posts This would be ok on HN. I'd rather that than people downvoting because they disagree or because you made an honest mistake. It wounds me every time I get a downvote, and often I just logout and create a new user, so that I don't feel marred by being associated with a past comment that someone didn't like. I had a serious amount of karma about 9 years ago and probably should've just gotten over it, but I said a few things I believed at the time, got seriously embarrassed when others disagreed, and then just started quitting and creating new users, and have been doing it ever since. I'm not proud of it. Really- I'd much rather everything just be anonymous. That would be easier. I also disagree with the rules saying that you can't frame something as "I know I'll get downvotes but..."- really, I don't understand why it matters. I think flagging offensive or spam comments really should be the only control necessary. I know that being a moderator is tough, but the community should be welcoming to all sorts of ideas and comments. I'm not a troll.

RhodaLs 10y ago
I agree with you. HN should get rid of the downvotes. They don't really serve a useful purpose. It just adds needless friction and anxiety, puts a certain amount of negativity at the center of the discussion, and reinforces a certain level of groupthink. If someone's factually wrong, a response pointing out the errors is far more effective than a downvote, and encourages further discussion. If something is offensive, flag the comment and move on. Downvotes also encourage some pointless noise in the conversation involving the downvotes themselves. I could see keeping the upvotes as a way of helping to keep things positive (pun probably intended), but I'm not attached to them.
- niftich 10y ago
  Although I agree with this point, I wonder if the removal of downvotes would alter the usage of 'flag' by a measurable amount, and flag be used by some as a proxy for when they would have used a downvote instead.
  - Bahamut 10y ago
    My guess is that the downvote system is an intentional encouragement of laziness in order to drown unpopular comments for whatever reason (sometimes valid such as noise, sometimes to intentionally suppress challenging viewpoints) while avoiding the heavy burden of moderation. Just like Reddit's system, it is heavily flawed and easily gamed, as seen pretty much all the time here.

Asooka 10y ago

Except that HN hellbans people for seemingly trolling when they aren't. Sometimes. I've learned that in general you should keep your posts as apolitical as possible on HN.

HNerInChina 10y ago

> jerks, bozos and assholes Looks like incivility to me. In my humble opinion, more often than not, when a techie refers to another commenter as an "asshole" they simply mean that they dislike the other commenter's politics or lack of left-leaning political correctness. You see, most techies espouse leftist views, which are rarely challenged in public because most media lean left. When they come across real-world opinions held by a large percentage of the population, they flip out and call the offender(s) "jerks, bozos and assholes." I'm on the other side. I see the entire original post and most of the related comments on HN as examples of intolerance of truly diverse opinions. Those who would flag-kill differing opinions are the "assholes". Those incapable of seeing their own bias are likely "bozos" or "jerks". In short, several of the self-congratulatory commenters on HN fail to understand that the words "asshole", " jerk", "bozo" apply squarely to them. I had a recent post which got 5 quick upvotes then was flag-killed for failing to hew to feminist orthodoxy and the feminine imperative. That's how intolerance is done.

pjc50 10y ago
> real-world opinions held by a large percentage of the population Quite a lot of the population believe all sorts of intolerant things about women and nonwhite people. That doesn't make it right. > most media lean left Hahaha no.
- qu4z-2 10y ago
  Quite a lot of the population believe all sorts of things about all sorts of things, prejudiced beliefs about "others" being fairly high up on the list. > Hahaha no. I know "That which is asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof" and you're totally in the clear here, but it does make me wonder how you'd go about testing that claim (both yours and the GP's)? I mean, from my point of view many media outlets do lean somewhat left but partly because "reality has a left bias" or however the saying goes (although I lean somewhat left, so it may just be my filter bubble). How do you determine it for even one media outlet? You could maybe do it by vocabulary choice. There are definitely some terms that are used primarily by one side or the other. Or the metric of what issues they try to get their readers outraged about? I've noticed sometimes there's bias not in how stories are covered, but in which stories are covered. Perhaps it's not possible to do in isolation, but some sort of clustering technique (percentage of readers in common with another outlet as a similarity measure?) would reveal obvious groupings. Regarding "most", would one weight different media outlets based on their viewership? Or does my local town paper count equally to Fox/whatever in adding "most"? I guess really I'm just trying to have a more useful discussion than "media are biased left!"->"lol no", but it is actually an interesting question I think, and if anyone has resources about this (this question has definitely been asked before) I'd be interested in links.