4 ms·

(Sorry for the long reply -- if you're short of time, feel free to just skip to the arrow on the bottom since that's the most crucial part.) > "Threatening an

(Sorry for the long reply -- if you're short of time, feel free to just skip to the arrow on the bottom since that's the most crucial part.) > "Threatening an immediate ban" is not accurate. I led with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14776923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14776923. The commenter responded with "I wanted to started this flamewar", which they subsequently edited to say "didn't wanted" (presumably this was a language misfire). Moderation replies can indeed look pretty bad when the comments to which they're replying have been edited to say the opposite of what they originally said! Okay, fair enough, but honestly I feel like as a mod, in the context of the grammar errors and the nature of the rest of the comment (as well as the fact that you wouldn't expect for someone to so quickly admit "I wanted to to start a flame war"), you could've/should've probably realized it was a language issue. Did it honestly not strike you as odd that you'd get a response like this, and did you honestly not expect this might be the case? (Not an actual question I'm expecting a reply to -- I just mentioned it since I think it's worth thinking about.) > When I ask someone not to start flamewars and they respond by not receiving the feedback and instead saying that they wanted to do it, this is usually a sign that an account doesn't mean to use the site as intended. How often does this even happen? Do you people ever immediately admit they want to start a flame war? Again, see above. (Again, not necessarily expecting a reply -- just letting you know this is what I'm thinking as I read this part of your comment.) > When I showed up the thread was already full of angry arguments about Hezbollah and 9/11. Perhaps you haven't read those comments? Some of them are probably flagged by now. Those comments deserved to be burned with fire. But that's not really an excuse for such a public e-slapping of a different user who put a pretty civil comment whose entire goal was to promote something a peaceful view. (Yes, I have read your rebuttal to this... addressed below.) > And yes, obviously the original comment wasn't nearly as toxic as the ones that followed. What you guys seem to be missing, though, is that the comment that sparks a flamewar is responsible for what it sparked. It's not as if these dynamics aren't well understood and entirely predictable. Responsible to some extent, yes, but (a) you can't generally expect users to understand and predict these dynamics as well as a moderator like you, and (b) one is not entirely responsible for everyone else's response to a situation. Moderating such a comment (editing/deleting/etc.) is completely fine. But to go out of your way to publicly shame him in such an unprecedented and strong fashion that so many of has had not even seen before is what struck me (and I suspect others) as utterly disproportional, especially when the topic is kind of sensitive. Not trying to suggest that you should make this a regular thing, but I think if at least if it had been a regular thing, it'd have been less problematic. However, one additional important (and non-meta) thing I want to note regarding "sparking a flamewar" itself is below. > If you read that original comment fairly you won't miss the obvious (if unintentional) provocations it contained. 2 things: First (less important), I only see one potential example of this, which is the use of the term "Right-wing media". <biased>I think it requires a bit of a thin skin to be insulted by someone saying that "$direction-wing media" is portraying my country and people inaccurately, especially given what we regularly see on HN, but whatever.</biased> I don't see anything more than that, so the pluralization of "provocations" and calling them "obvious" does bother me. ====> Second (VERY important), I do think your initial response was excellent. But in your second reply you suddenly went off the mod-rails and provoked a far more awful response when you started calling him "nationalist". Until this point, no particular person had been targeted, and the entire chain had been civil. (Again -- I very much admired how professional and otherwise excellent your initial reply was.) Yet you suddenly derailed and single-handedly flamed him like this. That was just awful and I really did not expect to see it from a mod who's trying to teach users how to avoid provoking others. It honestly made it that much harder to take the rest of what you said seriously and, IMO, completely sent across the wrong message. > You guys are right about one thing, though: I haven't done a good job of explaining how I intervened in the thread, to judge by how much pushback my comments received. When that happens, I take it as a sign of something wrong in my approach. In this case the reason is that I was running out the door on my way to a workshop, and moderation in haste is never a good idea. Now I'm running back to the same event (late!) so my last half-dozen comments may not be much better, but I hope I've at least given more background explanation. This is a great response here (and I agree that running out while typing a mod comment is not a great idea!) and yes it definitely helps. But my worry is less about the explanation for your response and more about the response itself -- see the last point above. Cheers~

dang 9y ago
I've now had time to read this. I appreciate your dedication to HN, to having a good community, and your wanting to see a fellow user treated fairly. In this we agree. But I'm not seeing a lot to agree with in your analysis. When you say that I "could've/should've probably realized" that a commenter meant the opposite of what he posted, consider what you're asking for at scale: that we understand what commenters mean regardless of what they say. It may have been obvious to you what that particular comment meant (but did you read it before he edited it to say the opposite, and understand it the correct way? If not, then the luxury of hindsight is at work here.) Different things are obvious to each of us. The things that are obvious to me are easy, so the question is, what about the things that aren't obvious? Translate what you're saying into a general moderation strategy and apply it to those cases and it turns into a requirement to be a mind reader. That I can't do. In your analysis of the original comment you skipped over "Iran is not Saudi Arabia or anything like that". To me that means you're not reading the comment nearly closely enough to assess how provocative these things are. Perhaps this national swipe happened to align with your own politics and so was less visible to you qua national swipe (I'm sure that's true for most readers here). Nevertheless a national swipe is clearly what it was, however unintentional, and the point we're trying to make over and over to HN users—including our esteemed users from Iran, who are as welcome here as all others—is that it doesn't matter how unintentional that is or even how accurate it is. When you post like this, the flames that result burn the same way as any others. If we don't want HN to be a war zone, we all need to take care of it. It seems like part of what surprised you is that I told the commenter directly that if we would ban him if he continued to ignore the moderation request. HN has a lot of comments coming through the firehose. I post a lot, but the total of what I post is negligible (a good thing!), so it's unsurprising that you hadn't seen a comment like that before. It's actually pretty standard: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20%22we%20will%20ban%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... It is intended to provide clear information about what happens when we've let someone know that they're breaking the rules and ask them to stop, but instead of receiving the feedback they argue and make protests. Why do we do this? Because for some users, it's better this way. For whatever reason, some people don't respond well to polite coaxing but the clear line, "if you do this again, we will ban you", actually works for them in the sense that they then proceed to use the site as intended. When dealing with thousands of users one soon learns that different 'channels' work for different people and one tries to select the channel that's indicated in a situation. Probably this was the wrong selection here, but (short of being a mind reader) it's impossible to make correct selections at scale when a comment says the opposite of what it means. Had I encountered a comment that read, "I didn't want to start a flamewar", I would not have switched to channel B; I would have stuck with channel A (polite coaxing), given a fuller explanation, and said something like "Please stop". As for my having been in haste, to me that's the root cause of the misunderstanding because with more time to reflect I could have adjusted my reaction to be subtly different. Yet this too has a systemic aspect. HN has a small number of moderators and we all work weekends. HN never stops, but we have to. (We don't stop as much as we should, but that's an occupational hazard and a different story.) Sometimes moderating in haste is unavoidable because the alternative would be never being available to do anything else in life—and I assure you that would not lead to HN being better. So while it's bad to moderate in haste and we don't like to do it and we generally avoid it, trying to avoid it completely would be a mistake.

dang 9y ago

I've now had time to read this. I appreciate your dedication to HN, to having a good community, and your wanting to see a fellow user treated fairly. In this we agree. But I'm not seeing a lot to agree with in your analysis. When you say that I "could've/should've probably realized" that a commenter meant the opposite of what he posted, consider what you're asking for at scale: that we understand what commenters mean regardless of what they say. It may have been obvious to you what that particular comment meant (but did you read it before he edited it to say the opposite, and understand it the correct way? If not, then the luxury of hindsight is at work here.) Different things are obvious to each of us. The things that are obvious to me are easy, so the question is, what about the things that aren't obvious? Translate what you're saying into a general moderation strategy and apply it to those cases and it turns into a requirement to be a mind reader. That I can't do. In your analysis of the original comment you skipped over "Iran is not Saudi Arabia or anything like that". To me that means you're not reading the comment nearly closely enough to assess how provocative these things are. Perhaps this national swipe happened to align with your own politics and so was less visible to you qua national swipe (I'm sure that's true for most readers here). Nevertheless a national swipe is clearly what it was, however unintentional, and the point we're trying to make over and over to HN users—including our esteemed users from Iran, who are as welcome here as all others—is that it doesn't matter how unintentional that is or even how accurate it is. When you post like this, the flames that result burn the same way as any others. If we don't want HN to be a war zone, we all need to take care of it. It seems like part of what surprised you is that I told the commenter directly that if we would ban him if he continued to ignore the moderation request. HN has a lot of comments coming through the firehose. I post a lot, but the total of what I post is negligible (a good thing!), so it's unsurprising that you hadn't seen a comment like that before. It's actually pretty standard: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20%22we%20will%20ban%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... It is intended to provide clear information about what happens when we've let someone know that they're breaking the rules and ask them to stop, but instead of receiving the feedback they argue and make protests. Why do we do this? Because for some users, it's better this way. For whatever reason, some people don't respond well to polite coaxing but the clear line, "if you do this again, we will ban you", actually works for them in the sense that they then proceed to use the site as intended. When dealing with thousands of users one soon learns that different 'channels' work for different people and one tries to select the channel that's indicated in a situation. Probably this was the wrong selection here, but (short of being a mind reader) it's impossible to make correct selections at scale when a comment says the opposite of what it means. Had I encountered a comment that read, "I didn't want to start a flamewar", I would not have switched to channel B; I would have stuck with channel A (polite coaxing), given a fuller explanation, and said something like "Please stop". As for my having been in haste, to me that's the root cause of the misunderstanding because with more time to reflect I could have adjusted my reaction to be subtly different. Yet this too has a systemic aspect. HN has a small number of moderators and we all work weekends. HN never stops, but we have to. (We don't stop as much as we should, but that's an occupational hazard and a different story.) Sometimes moderating in haste is unavoidable because the alternative would be never being available to do anything else in life—and I assure you that would not lead to HN being better. So while it's bad to moderate in haste and we don't like to do it and we generally avoid it, trying to avoid it completely would be a mistake.