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>Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that’s where it mostly was taking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to comple

>Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that’s where it mostly was taking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to complement it). This is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned and people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in this blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality community.

chippy 9y ago
Most submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front page. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance. Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at themselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then.
- dang 9y ago
  > That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance I'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN moderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar detector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're surprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly remained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple weeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other authors put into crafting the post.
  - alecco 9y ago
    Could you please at least try to think how this looks to people with other opinions on this subject? This kind of attitude makes people move further in the other direction. I wish HN to still be a place for rational discussion. Remember, the content here is made by the users. For free.
    - dang 9y ago
      I'm afraid I'm not following you. I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other threads. The main difference in this one is that the comments are more civil and substantive across the spectrum of opinions. That's a great thing. Perhaps it feels to you like HN moderation is ideologically driven, but that's not so. It does feel that way, unfortunately, to most ideologically committed users. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it; everyone jumps to the conclusion that the deck is stacked against them, and the comments about this tend to be much the same regardless of the ideology of the commenter. Indeed the evils of HN moderation seem to be the only thing they all agree on! This bothered me for a few years but eventually there's little sense in being bothered by an optical illusion. More about this in the many comments at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20bias https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
      - alecco 9y ago
        > I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other threads Funny, I see a dominant opinion in the other (flagged) threads and an another dominant opinion in this one. 1695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787 754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759 590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626 448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601
        dang 9y ago
        Those threads were all extremely active and most if not all spent significant time on HN's front page, so I'm not sure what your point is? More generally: these perceptions are strongly in the eye of the beholder. I guarantee you that someone with opposite views to yours sees the opposite bias on HN. This obviously doesn't vary with HN, but it does vary with the perceiver—specifically with the perceiver's beliefs and their intensity. It comes down to sample bias and other cognitive biases. Even the most perfectly even-handedly moderated site (which I'm not saying HN is!) would get all the same perceptions and accusations.
  - araneae 9y ago
    "Provenance" means origin, which in this case is the Ycombinator blog. It's very unlikely that anything from the ycombinator blog would get removed, given that this is itself a ycombinator site.

chippy 9y ago

Most submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front page. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance. Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at themselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then.

dang 9y ago
> That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance I'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN moderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar detector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're surprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly remained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple weeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other authors put into crafting the post.
- alecco 9y ago
  Could you please at least try to think how this looks to people with other opinions on this subject? This kind of attitude makes people move further in the other direction. I wish HN to still be a place for rational discussion. Remember, the content here is made by the users. For free.
  - dang 9y ago
    I'm afraid I'm not following you. I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other threads. The main difference in this one is that the comments are more civil and substantive across the spectrum of opinions. That's a great thing. Perhaps it feels to you like HN moderation is ideologically driven, but that's not so. It does feel that way, unfortunately, to most ideologically committed users. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it; everyone jumps to the conclusion that the deck is stacked against them, and the comments about this tend to be much the same regardless of the ideology of the commenter. Indeed the evils of HN moderation seem to be the only thing they all agree on! This bothered me for a few years but eventually there's little sense in being bothered by an optical illusion. More about this in the many comments at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20bias https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
    - alecco 9y ago
      > I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other threads Funny, I see a dominant opinion in the other (flagged) threads and an another dominant opinion in this one. 1695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787 754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759 590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626 448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601
      - dang 9y ago
        Those threads were all extremely active and most if not all spent significant time on HN's front page, so I'm not sure what your point is? More generally: these perceptions are strongly in the eye of the beholder. I guarantee you that someone with opposite views to yours sees the opposite bias on HN. This obviously doesn't vary with HN, but it does vary with the perceiver—specifically with the perceiver's beliefs and their intensity. It comes down to sample bias and other cognitive biases. Even the most perfectly even-handedly moderated site (which I'm not saying HN is!) would get all the same perceptions and accusations.
- araneae 9y ago
  "Provenance" means origin, which in this case is the Ycombinator blog. It's very unlikely that anything from the ycombinator blog would get removed, given that this is itself a ycombinator site.