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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, eve
by 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 agoAka have the patience of a saint?
- Mz 10y agoNo, 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.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago>> 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. While I would agree with this, I would add that banning and punishing people only makes them try harder to continue to be the thorn in your side and make every else just that much more miserable. Multiple accounts, using proxies, and other means to cloak your IP address then leads to spending untold hours trying to track this people down and block them instead of actually doing moderation and even site improvements. It's a zero sum game in the end. source: ran several BBS's in the late 90's early aughts.
- Mz 10y agoYes. Technical tools can be useful, but technical solutions do not solve social problems. Social problems require social solutions, something technically oriented people who run online communities sometimes seem to just not get. Thank you for adding that info.
- chc 10y agoA few people will do this. Most people won't, in my experience, especially if you use hellbanning. I've seen HN accounts full of rude comments that have been hellbanned for years.
- gtirloni 10y agoIs that a different term for "shadow banning"? I only recently came to know this while reading more about moderation techniques. Apparently people will be allowed to say whatever they want but nobody will see it? I wasn't aware HN had this.
- Mz 10y agoCheck your profile settings. There should be one called "Showdead." Turn it to "yes." If it is already at "yes," then you may have just not noticed because it looks similar to when someone's comment has been flagged to death or downvoted into the negatives.
- andrewbinstock 10y agoI also think WRT to Dr. Dobb's is that the tone of the publication was thoughtful and did not invite controversy.
- chongli 10y agoI think half of the reason why HN has succeeded to a degree has to do with the niche subject matter. This approach doesn't work on more general forums such as the large subreddits or twitter.
- kiba 10y agoI don't think that's true. HN is not about some specific subjects. We discussed everything from the Iraqi war to brexit to programming languages, etc.
- wutbrodo 10y agoWhile true, I think it has more to do with the way the relative niche-ness of HN shapes the community. The average person who comments on an Iraq war thread in HN is not selected from the same sample as the average person who comments on an Iraq war thread across all fora. HN consists of enough niche topics that the average person doesn't want to hang out here and make an account just to jump in on random Iraq war or Brexit threads (the current frontpage has about 25/30 tech-focused topics, many of which are beyond esoteric for most people). This shapes the community in a way that affects the make-up of the commenters on even such politically-charged threads.
- ghaff 10y agoRight. And if there is a thread on the Iraq War or Brexit, I'll pretty much guarantee that it's going to be heavily weighted with arguments and comments--mostly reflecting the talking points of a particular political perspective--that have been made a thousand times before. Plus a good smattering of "F so-and-so."
- jonahx 10y agoI agree with your conclusion, but the common thread I see is more the type of person than the subject matter. I don't mean that HN's audience is homogenous across some simple metric, but even among its vastly different members I see a shared respect of logical reasoning and evidence-based argument. That, and just generally smart people, are the hallmarks of the culture here for me (at least the positive part of it).