3 ms·

There doesn't seem to be any flamewar though, looks like decent discussion. Should the flamewar detector not be turned off when no flamewar is present?

by RyanZAG 10y ago

duncanawoods 10y ago
Yeah, I think its a bit of sly trick from HN admins - they get to plausibly deny suppressing hot button topics because their intervention is to white-list discussion instead of having to be up front and make the tough decision to black-list them. When a negative story about YC emerges and generates a lot of comments so it gets pushed off the front-page and they just say "shame but its just automatic flamewar detector, <shrug>". I'm sure they think they are clever but it just erodes trust over the long term.
- RyanZAG 10y ago
  Ah right, that makes a lot of sense. I was probably just being naive there. Probably best to discuss YC related topics on different forums.
- sctb 10y ago
  The reason we didn't turn off the flamewar detector, and how that relates to moderation of YC-related stories, is explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027515 and further here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13028145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13028145. Trust me, there's no room for feeling clever in this job.
  - duncanawoods 10y ago
    Hah :) What do you think about leaving the penalties open for user customisation? I find its more miss than hit as a flamewar heuristic and would prefer to scroll past real flamewars rather than know that popular topics are suppressed.
    - dang 10y ago
      Just look at https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active (via https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists, linked at the bottom of each page). It's literally the first rule of HN moderation that we don't suppress stories that are negative about YC or YC startups. More precisely, when stories like that appear, we moderate them less than we usually would. The reason is precisely what you said: long term trust is the most important thing. Also, before being moderators of HN, we're users ourselves, and wouldn't want the site to be moderated that way.
dang 10y ago
I've taken to calling it the 'overheated discussion detector' because it's not always about flamewars. And yes, we do turn it off when a story and thread are high-quality. We don't necessarily see every case of that but we do review most of them.
- grzm 10y ago
  I've taken to calling it the 'overheated discussion detector' because it's not always about flamewars. Sounds like an odd cough algorithm.
  - dang 10y ago
    Nah, it's pretty simple and people have mostly figured it out. It works well enough.
    - grzm 10y ago
      O(verheated) D(iscussion) D(etector) (I know, I know…)
- RyanZAG 10y ago
  As duncanawoods says, that seems far too convenient. Is there some list available of which discussions have had the 'overheated discussion detector' turned off on them? Then we could see the number of PRO-YC vs ANTI-YC articles and see if a bias does in fact exist.
  - dang 10y ago
    I don't see that that would make HN better. Do you think anything will stop people from accusing HN moderation of bias? That's not how it works. They will accuse us of that no matter what we do and no matter what the truth is. Publishing more material about moderation would do nothing to reduce this; it would likely just feed it. When people see something they don't like, they don't think, "Well, any even-handed system will put up things I don't like sometimes." They think: Bias! Outrage! And some will rush to post "J'accuse!". Consider that in any large group this will happen to a few people every day (sometimes the same few!), and consider that it takes 100x as much effort to responsibly respond to the j'accuses as to fire them off in the first place. To feed that would be to power a DoS attack on all the resources that could otherwise make HN better. Therefore our goal should not be the impossible one of placating everybody with a litigious bee in their bonnet, but (a) being able to say "no, we don't do that" in good conscience, and (b) retaining the good will of the community as a whole. Actually we like to help users with bees in their bonnets too, but to think it can always be done leads to madness. We're toying with adding vouch links so users can vouch for a story they don't think should be marked as a flamewar. That's something that might improve the quality of HN.

There doesn't seem to be any flamewar though, looks like decent discussion. Should the flamewar detector not be turned off when no flamewar is present?

by RyanZAG 10y ago

There doesn't seem to be any flamewar though, looks like decent discussion. Should the flamewar detector not be turned off when no flamewar is present?

duncanawoods 10y ago

Yeah, I think its a bit of sly trick from HN admins - they get to plausibly deny suppressing hot button topics because their intervention is to white-list discussion instead of having to be up front and make the tough decision to black-list them. When a negative story about YC emerges and generates a lot of comments so it gets pushed off the front-page and they just say "shame but its just automatic flamewar detector, <shrug>". I'm sure they think they are clever but it just erodes trust over the long term.

RyanZAG 10y ago
Ah right, that makes a lot of sense. I was probably just being naive there. Probably best to discuss YC related topics on different forums.
sctb 10y ago
The reason we didn't turn off the flamewar detector, and how that relates to moderation of YC-related stories, is explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027515 and further here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13028145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13028145. Trust me, there's no room for feeling clever in this job.
- duncanawoods 10y ago
  Hah :) What do you think about leaving the penalties open for user customisation? I find its more miss than hit as a flamewar heuristic and would prefer to scroll past real flamewars rather than know that popular topics are suppressed.
  - dang 10y ago
    Just look at https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active (via https://news.ycombinator.com/lists https://news.ycombinator.com/lists, linked at the bottom of each page). It's literally the first rule of HN moderation that we don't suppress stories that are negative about YC or YC startups. More precisely, when stories like that appear, we moderate them less than we usually would. The reason is precisely what you said: long term trust is the most important thing. Also, before being moderators of HN, we're users ourselves, and wouldn't want the site to be moderated that way.

dang 10y ago

I've taken to calling it the 'overheated discussion detector' because it's not always about flamewars. And yes, we do turn it off when a story and thread are high-quality. We don't necessarily see every case of that but we do review most of them.

grzm 10y ago
I've taken to calling it the 'overheated discussion detector' because it's not always about flamewars. Sounds like an odd cough algorithm.
- dang 10y ago
  Nah, it's pretty simple and people have mostly figured it out. It works well enough.
  - grzm 10y ago
    O(verheated) D(iscussion) D(etector) (I know, I know…)
RyanZAG 10y ago
As duncanawoods says, that seems far too convenient. Is there some list available of which discussions have had the 'overheated discussion detector' turned off on them? Then we could see the number of PRO-YC vs ANTI-YC articles and see if a bias does in fact exist.
- dang 10y ago
  I don't see that that would make HN better. Do you think anything will stop people from accusing HN moderation of bias? That's not how it works. They will accuse us of that no matter what we do and no matter what the truth is. Publishing more material about moderation would do nothing to reduce this; it would likely just feed it. When people see something they don't like, they don't think, "Well, any even-handed system will put up things I don't like sometimes." They think: Bias! Outrage! And some will rush to post "J'accuse!". Consider that in any large group this will happen to a few people every day (sometimes the same few!), and consider that it takes 100x as much effort to responsibly respond to the j'accuses as to fire them off in the first place. To feed that would be to power a DoS attack on all the resources that could otherwise make HN better. Therefore our goal should not be the impossible one of placating everybody with a litigious bee in their bonnet, but (a) being able to say "no, we don't do that" in good conscience, and (b) retaining the good will of the community as a whole. Actually we like to help users with bees in their bonnets too, but to think it can always be done leads to madness. We're toying with adding vouch links so users can vouch for a story they don't think should be marked as a flamewar. That's something that might improve the quality of HN.