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I mean, i guess i just don't understand, given some of the comments you leave around with absolutely zero outcry, why polite one-sentence statements - even 48 p

I mean, i guess i just don't understand, given some of the comments you leave around with absolutely zero outcry, why polite one-sentence statements - even 48 polite statements - are "vandalism" of HN.

dang 10y ago
Well, they weren't exactly polite (e.g. "Get it off HN") and seemed intended to undermine as opposed to engage in good faith. In that context, 48 posts in a few hours—an extreme number—is abusive. I'd be happy to be wrong about it though; reading intent precisely is impossible and we do get it wrong on a regular basis. Moderation is largely guesswork. FWIW, the behavior I banned that account for is so far outside the community norm here that it didn't strike me as a close call. Edit: reflecting about this, though, I realize that I broke with our usual practice, which would have been first to ask the user to stop, and only ban them if they didn't. Given that, I've unbanned ubernostrum and let him know.
DanBC 10y ago
> given some of the comments you leave around with absolutely zero outcry, dang and sctb don't see every comment. If you see something and flagging it hasn't worked I think emailing hn@ycombinator is a good idea. Especially if it's a pattern from that particular user.
- adrienne 10y ago
  Some of us aren't allowed to flag comments because we don't have enough karma. And we don't get enough karma because we are driven off the site by appalling comments that the moderators don't seem to give a shit about. A little bit of a dilemma, eh?
  - douche 10y ago
    If one engages productively with the site, rather than constantly complaining and accusing everyone else of being terrible, it is rather easy to pass the threshold of being able to flag comments.
    - adrienne 10y ago
      If by "constantly complaining" you mean "turning up every few months to gawk at something particularly awful", then, well, that'd be really stupid, frankly. I am almost never on HN, so "constantly" is a poor description of anything about my behavior here. Also: Why should i "engage productively" with a site full of people who are constantly (i use the word advisedly!) saying awful things?
      - douche 10y ago
        Well, if you're talking about the karma threshold to be able to use the flag and downvote buttons on HN, it's really not that hard to reach that level. One of my main use cases for HN is as a bookmarking service. I find something interesting, I post it with the bookmarklet. Same as I do with OneNote, except HN is faster. That's where the overwhelming lion's share of whatever collection of internet points I have amassed has come from. Frequently from the very least interesting of the articles that I post... Just this week, I wracked up some ridiculous number of points from a throw-away release about Juypiter notebooks supporting F# that came up in one of the newsletters I get.
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      I have enough karma to flag and vouch. I don't bother flagging other than as a protest statement.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Yes, it's not a good situation. Still, the email option is still open and I hope they're receptive and responsive to trying to stop the appalling comments, although I recognise that it's sometimes frustratingly slow for terrible accounts to get banned.

dang 10y ago

Well, they weren't exactly polite (e.g. "Get it off HN") and seemed intended to undermine as opposed to engage in good faith. In that context, 48 posts in a few hours—an extreme number—is abusive. I'd be happy to be wrong about it though; reading intent precisely is impossible and we do get it wrong on a regular basis. Moderation is largely guesswork. FWIW, the behavior I banned that account for is so far outside the community norm here that it didn't strike me as a close call. Edit: reflecting about this, though, I realize that I broke with our usual practice, which would have been first to ask the user to stop, and only ban them if they didn't. Given that, I've unbanned ubernostrum and let him know.

DanBC 10y ago

> given some of the comments you leave around with absolutely zero outcry, dang and sctb don't see every comment. If you see something and flagging it hasn't worked I think emailing hn@ycombinator is a good idea. Especially if it's a pattern from that particular user.

adrienne 10y ago
Some of us aren't allowed to flag comments because we don't have enough karma. And we don't get enough karma because we are driven off the site by appalling comments that the moderators don't seem to give a shit about. A little bit of a dilemma, eh?
- douche 10y ago
  If one engages productively with the site, rather than constantly complaining and accusing everyone else of being terrible, it is rather easy to pass the threshold of being able to flag comments.
  - adrienne 10y ago
    If by "constantly complaining" you mean "turning up every few months to gawk at something particularly awful", then, well, that'd be really stupid, frankly. I am almost never on HN, so "constantly" is a poor description of anything about my behavior here. Also: Why should i "engage productively" with a site full of people who are constantly (i use the word advisedly!) saying awful things?
    - douche 10y ago
      Well, if you're talking about the karma threshold to be able to use the flag and downvote buttons on HN, it's really not that hard to reach that level. One of my main use cases for HN is as a bookmarking service. I find something interesting, I post it with the bookmarklet. Same as I do with OneNote, except HN is faster. That's where the overwhelming lion's share of whatever collection of internet points I have amassed has come from. Frequently from the very least interesting of the articles that I post... Just this week, I wracked up some ridiculous number of points from a throw-away release about Juypiter notebooks supporting F# that came up in one of the newsletters I get.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    I have enough karma to flag and vouch. I don't bother flagging other than as a protest statement.
- DanBC 10y ago
  Yes, it's not a good situation. Still, the email option is still open and I hope they're receptive and responsive to trying to stop the appalling comments, although I recognise that it's sometimes frustratingly slow for terrible accounts to get banned.