7 ms·

Is there any reason you chose to compare these rules to HN's rules? HN's moderation is one of the best I've ever encountered, I'm not sure there's much of a nee

Is there any reason you chose to compare these rules to HN's rules? HN's moderation is one of the best I've ever encountered, I'm not sure there's much of a need to improve it.

tptacek 10y ago
HN's moderation works only because Scott and Dan patrol threads flagging and banning people who are (for instance) openly anti-Semitic on threads. It would be better to have simple, coherent rules against these things, rather than unstated rules that require enormous amounts of effort to enforce. Again I want to be clear that most of these rules seem silly or even puerile. Just the beginning of it made sense.
- nl 10y ago
  It would be better to have simple, coherent rules against these things, rather than unstated rules that require enormous amounts of effort to enforce. Would it? It would certainly require less effort, but we know from other places that blanket rules are pretty easy to game (eg, see the games people play on Wikipedia with the 3RR rule). Once people know them, the rules themselves become weaponized.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- striking 10y ago
  Ah, I might have misunderstood then. That makes sense. Do you have any suggestions for rules, just off the top of your head?
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Unfortunately, "more coherent" doesn't mean "better", it just means "more fleshed-out". The problem with formalizing rules of human behaviour is that the latter is generally too fuzzy, so you either end up with a very complex system of rules, or with a simple system that has tons of edge cases (like the one in the post). I think you were attracted to the improvement of writing rules down, but that has a host of other problems, including the fact that you are then forced to enforce the rules, even where they don't make sense (e.g. you have to remove some comment because of the letter of the law, even though it wasn't actually inflammatory, it just ran into an edge case). I moderate(d) a large reddit community (millions of subscribers?) and you pretty much can't win. If you don't have rules, you're "murky" and "wanton". If you have rules, you get "these rules suck" or "you're only enforcing the rules whenever you feel like it" when you try to go by the spirit of the law rather than the letter.
  - gvb 10y ago
    To illustrate your point, Facebook censored the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken June 8, 1972 with crying children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places. That photo violates a several of Facebook "ban" rules, but is an exception to the rules. After much outcry, Facebook reversed their rule-based ban.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Yes, this happened, and yes, it's dumb, but so what? Who here thinks HN would end up with that policy?
      - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
        To be fair, Im sure the person who posted it on facebook might have thought something similar.
        tptacek 10y ago
        This seemed clever the first time I read it but now I'm not sure what it really says.
      - StavrosK 10y ago
        It probably wouldn't end up with that specific policy, but I'm reasonably certain it would end up with a policy that would have comparable edge cases.
        tptacek 10y ago
        Why? What makes you certain of that? I'm not suggesting that Dan and Scott stop moderating, just that it's possible to make a clear, coherent statement about bigotry in the moderation guidelines.
        StavrosK 10y ago
- lisper 10y ago
  > HN's moderation works Frankly I think it's starting to fray a little around the edges. Downvotes and flags are supposed to be used to suppress non-constructive comments and submissions but I see them being used more and more to express disagreement (or, to be more precise, I see more and more comments being downvoted and stories being flagged that seem to me to be constructive and respectful but which express unpopular points of view.)
  - aaron695 10y ago
    > Downvotes and flags are supposed to be used to suppress non-constructive comments and submissions. This is not actually true for downvotes. Or if it is true it's currently ambiguous, it's not in the FAQ. But I find it rare that an unpopular opinion will get downvoted if it's well justified. Where as I think upvoting of popular opinions is an issue.
    - duncanawoods 10y ago
      For the downvoters of the parent, here is the citation: PG: "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
      - lisper 10y ago
        He wrote that back when downvoted comments didn't get greyed out the way they do today. Because of the grey-out, a downvote today is effectively a vote for, "No one should read this." IMHO, disagreement should not have that effect. There really ought to be a way to distinguish between "I disagree" and "This comment is not constructive and should be suppressed" -- and there is. If you disagree, you can post a comment to that effect. But whether PG intended it or not, a downvote today is suppression because of the way HN works.
        grzm 10y ago
lazaroclapp 10y ago
It is. But compared with FB, HN has two distinct advantages: a) The scale is small enough that most content can be manually reviewed, or reviewed after it reaches any significant number of views. b) People in HN are expecting a professional discussion forum and are largely ok with a relatively active moderation. People posting in FB often assume that any moderation by Facebook the company must comport to freedom of the press or freedom of speech laws. This is of course legally nonsense, but it might not be an unreasonable expectation over all. In some ways, because of the scale of online platforms, the societal effects of FB/Twitter/Youtube content policing norms is closer to say, a code about what is allowed or not on-air in radio/TV in a country than a particular set of editorial policies for a particular newspaper.

Is there any reason you chose to compare these rules to HN's rules? HN's moderation is one of the best I've ever encountered, I'm not sure there's much of a need to improve it.

tptacek 10y ago

HN's moderation works only because Scott and Dan patrol threads flagging and banning people who are (for instance) openly anti-Semitic on threads. It would be better to have simple, coherent rules against these things, rather than unstated rules that require enormous amounts of effort to enforce. Again I want to be clear that most of these rules seem silly or even puerile. Just the beginning of it made sense.

nl 10y ago
It would be better to have simple, coherent rules against these things, rather than unstated rules that require enormous amounts of effort to enforce. Would it? It would certainly require less effort, but we know from other places that blanket rules are pretty easy to game (eg, see the games people play on Wikipedia with the 3RR rule). Once people know them, the rules themselves become weaponized.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
striking 10y ago
Ah, I might have misunderstood then. That makes sense. Do you have any suggestions for rules, just off the top of your head?
StavrosK 10y ago
Unfortunately, "more coherent" doesn't mean "better", it just means "more fleshed-out". The problem with formalizing rules of human behaviour is that the latter is generally too fuzzy, so you either end up with a very complex system of rules, or with a simple system that has tons of edge cases (like the one in the post). I think you were attracted to the improvement of writing rules down, but that has a host of other problems, including the fact that you are then forced to enforce the rules, even where they don't make sense (e.g. you have to remove some comment because of the letter of the law, even though it wasn't actually inflammatory, it just ran into an edge case). I moderate(d) a large reddit community (millions of subscribers?) and you pretty much can't win. If you don't have rules, you're "murky" and "wanton". If you have rules, you get "these rules suck" or "you're only enforcing the rules whenever you feel like it" when you try to go by the spirit of the law rather than the letter.
- gvb 10y ago
  To illustrate your point, Facebook censored the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo taken June 8, 1972 with crying children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places. That photo violates a several of Facebook "ban" rules, but is an exception to the rules. After much outcry, Facebook reversed their rule-based ban.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Yes, this happened, and yes, it's dumb, but so what? Who here thinks HN would end up with that policy?
    - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
      To be fair, Im sure the person who posted it on facebook might have thought something similar.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        This seemed clever the first time I read it but now I'm not sure what it really says.
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      It probably wouldn't end up with that specific policy, but I'm reasonably certain it would end up with a policy that would have comparable edge cases.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Why? What makes you certain of that? I'm not suggesting that Dan and Scott stop moderating, just that it's possible to make a clear, coherent statement about bigotry in the moderation guidelines.
        StavrosK 10y ago
lisper 10y ago
> HN's moderation works Frankly I think it's starting to fray a little around the edges. Downvotes and flags are supposed to be used to suppress non-constructive comments and submissions but I see them being used more and more to express disagreement (or, to be more precise, I see more and more comments being downvoted and stories being flagged that seem to me to be constructive and respectful but which express unpopular points of view.)
- aaron695 10y ago
  > Downvotes and flags are supposed to be used to suppress non-constructive comments and submissions. This is not actually true for downvotes. Or if it is true it's currently ambiguous, it's not in the FAQ. But I find it rare that an unpopular opinion will get downvoted if it's well justified. Where as I think upvoting of popular opinions is an issue.
  - duncanawoods 10y ago
    For the downvoters of the parent, here is the citation: PG: "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
    - lisper 10y ago
      He wrote that back when downvoted comments didn't get greyed out the way they do today. Because of the grey-out, a downvote today is effectively a vote for, "No one should read this." IMHO, disagreement should not have that effect. There really ought to be a way to distinguish between "I disagree" and "This comment is not constructive and should be suppressed" -- and there is. If you disagree, you can post a comment to that effect. But whether PG intended it or not, a downvote today is suppression because of the way HN works.
      - grzm 10y ago

lazaroclapp 10y ago

It is. But compared with FB, HN has two distinct advantages: a) The scale is small enough that most content can be manually reviewed, or reviewed after it reaches any significant number of views. b) People in HN are expecting a professional discussion forum and are largely ok with a relatively active moderation. People posting in FB often assume that any moderation by Facebook the company must comport to freedom of the press or freedom of speech laws. This is of course legally nonsense, but it might not be an unreasonable expectation over all. In some ways, because of the scale of online platforms, the societal effects of FB/Twitter/Youtube content policing norms is closer to say, a code about what is allowed or not on-air in radio/TV in a country than a particular set of editorial policies for a particular newspaper.