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I mean, I'd love to, and the answer is a resounding yes. But it was buried off the front two pages. No one respects the moderation more than I do, and how hard

I mean, I'd love to, and the answer is a resounding yes. But it was buried off the front two pages. No one respects the moderation more than I do, and how hard it is to make good decisions. But from a commenter POV it does get a little tiresome writing comments that get cut off due to shuffling around the front page. But meh, it's not a big deal. EDIT: Welp. After looking over the other comments, it seems they made the right call. I wish people would behave themselves.

grzm 9y ago
From what I've seen as a member of HN, one of the actions both members and mods take is to flag and downweight (respectively) submissions that are likely to lead to flamewars. I find it frustrating (but understandable) that discussion so often degrades so quickly. There are a lot of important topics that I would love to see discussed earnestly, but that takes a lot of effort on behalf of those discussing. If you're frustrated, do your best to help make the community the best it can (which is why I commented above). Make good comments, submit good articles. Member and mod reactions are indeed that—reactions to the behavior of the members on the site. If members discussed hot topics civilly and charitably, members and mods wouldn't flag and down weight. From what I've seen from the mods' comments, they'd like nothing more than to let that happen.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Completely agreed. By the way, who are you? I remember when you popped up, and at first I was convinced you were tptacek on an alt. You use 'foo to talk about HN user foo, for example, and you have the principle of charity in your profile. And most of your comments have been about moderation. You've clearly been here a long time, so I'm quite curious. I don't disagree with any of them, and frankly if you were a mod I think you'd do a fine job. Your judgment is better than mine. If you don't care to answer publicly, you could indulge me privately. I'm a good steward of secrets. Or just tell me to buzz off. :)
  - grzm 9y ago
    Thanks for the kind words. I certainly admire 'tptacek's commenting style (and to be explicit, I'm not 'tptacek, nor am I 'dang, which has come up in the past). I hack Clojure a bit (and find little use for Twitter), so when I noticed the ' prefix used here, I happily picked that up. I've read HN for quite a while but this is my first account. Over the past couple of years I've been increasingly concerned about the severe political and cultural polarization (in general, not just on HN) and the increasing role the internet plays in people's social lives. I think it's really important that we figure out how to resolve the first and how to healthily integrate the second. HN is a great place to look at both, and one I value. It's also more tractable than others (for example, I recognize your handle as well :). I also think that the community should play a role in maintaining itself. By far members here do want to participate in good discussion and we're only held back by our own human psychology. Often we just need to take a step back and a breath and observe what's going on. If we can help each other do that, I think we'll be in a much better position to resolving all kinds of human issues (if you'll permit a bit of naïve grandiosity). So, that's why you see the comments from me that you do.
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      Well, good job navigating the choppy waters. Presumably if you were mistaken people would've asked you to stop by now. I'm a fellow Lisp hacker, so maybe you could throw an email into your profile and we can keep in touch or swap projects.
dang 9y ago
> it seems they Mods didn't touch the post; it was flagged by users. We sometimes turn off flags in such cases but there needs to be substantive new information. In this case the article was an opinion piece (though a well-written one).
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  The story was buried off the front two pages first. Then the flag happened. Maybe caching was involved, so the "[flagged]" was delayed. But the story definitely disappeared before "[flagged]" showed up. Just reporting what I saw. Either way, it's no big deal. It would've been a bad idea to have it on the front page.
  - grzm 9y ago
    As I understand it, the behaviors are related but independent. User flagging affects ranking even before the [flagged] tag appears. There's some threshold before the latter happens, which I suspect is what you observed.
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      Nah, that causes a story to move from page 1 to page 2, for example. (Or more precisely, to drop in rank by ~10 to ~20.) I made certain to check the front two pages for this story, and it wasn't on them, immediately. Then [flagged] popped up later. It was a sharp step function, not a gradual change. If flagging caused a story to disappear from the front two pages, there would never be a need for [flagged] -- a story would be as good as flagged without it. It'd be a clarifying signal, but it wouldn't have any material impact on the story's rank. Again, none of this really matters, but it's fun to talk about. :) Maybe it was buried via a torrent of flags. If three flags showed up within a few seconds of each other, that might have caused the behavior. EDIT: see http://hnrankings.info/15267221/ http://hnrankings.info/15267221/
      - pvg 9y ago
        I'm sure the moderators have nothing better to do on weekends but engage in elaborate dastardly schemes to move stories from page 2 to page 4 without [flagged] appearing and keep us down.

grzm 9y ago

From what I've seen as a member of HN, one of the actions both members and mods take is to flag and downweight (respectively) submissions that are likely to lead to flamewars. I find it frustrating (but understandable) that discussion so often degrades so quickly. There are a lot of important topics that I would love to see discussed earnestly, but that takes a lot of effort on behalf of those discussing. If you're frustrated, do your best to help make the community the best it can (which is why I commented above). Make good comments, submit good articles. Member and mod reactions are indeed that—reactions to the behavior of the members on the site. If members discussed hot topics civilly and charitably, members and mods wouldn't flag and down weight. From what I've seen from the mods' comments, they'd like nothing more than to let that happen.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Completely agreed. By the way, who are you? I remember when you popped up, and at first I was convinced you were tptacek on an alt. You use 'foo to talk about HN user foo, for example, and you have the principle of charity in your profile. And most of your comments have been about moderation. You've clearly been here a long time, so I'm quite curious. I don't disagree with any of them, and frankly if you were a mod I think you'd do a fine job. Your judgment is better than mine. If you don't care to answer publicly, you could indulge me privately. I'm a good steward of secrets. Or just tell me to buzz off. :)
- grzm 9y ago
  Thanks for the kind words. I certainly admire 'tptacek's commenting style (and to be explicit, I'm not 'tptacek, nor am I 'dang, which has come up in the past). I hack Clojure a bit (and find little use for Twitter), so when I noticed the ' prefix used here, I happily picked that up. I've read HN for quite a while but this is my first account. Over the past couple of years I've been increasingly concerned about the severe political and cultural polarization (in general, not just on HN) and the increasing role the internet plays in people's social lives. I think it's really important that we figure out how to resolve the first and how to healthily integrate the second. HN is a great place to look at both, and one I value. It's also more tractable than others (for example, I recognize your handle as well :). I also think that the community should play a role in maintaining itself. By far members here do want to participate in good discussion and we're only held back by our own human psychology. Often we just need to take a step back and a breath and observe what's going on. If we can help each other do that, I think we'll be in a much better position to resolving all kinds of human issues (if you'll permit a bit of naïve grandiosity). So, that's why you see the comments from me that you do.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Well, good job navigating the choppy waters. Presumably if you were mistaken people would've asked you to stop by now. I'm a fellow Lisp hacker, so maybe you could throw an email into your profile and we can keep in touch or swap projects.

dang 9y ago

> it seems they Mods didn't touch the post; it was flagged by users. We sometimes turn off flags in such cases but there needs to be substantive new information. In this case the article was an opinion piece (though a well-written one).

sillysaurus3 9y ago
The story was buried off the front two pages first. Then the flag happened. Maybe caching was involved, so the "[flagged]" was delayed. But the story definitely disappeared before "[flagged]" showed up. Just reporting what I saw. Either way, it's no big deal. It would've been a bad idea to have it on the front page.
- grzm 9y ago
  As I understand it, the behaviors are related but independent. User flagging affects ranking even before the [flagged] tag appears. There's some threshold before the latter happens, which I suspect is what you observed.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Nah, that causes a story to move from page 1 to page 2, for example. (Or more precisely, to drop in rank by ~10 to ~20.) I made certain to check the front two pages for this story, and it wasn't on them, immediately. Then [flagged] popped up later. It was a sharp step function, not a gradual change. If flagging caused a story to disappear from the front two pages, there would never be a need for [flagged] -- a story would be as good as flagged without it. It'd be a clarifying signal, but it wouldn't have any material impact on the story's rank. Again, none of this really matters, but it's fun to talk about. :) Maybe it was buried via a torrent of flags. If three flags showed up within a few seconds of each other, that might have caused the behavior. EDIT: see http://hnrankings.info/15267221/ http://hnrankings.info/15267221/
    - pvg 9y ago
      I'm sure the moderators have nothing better to do on weekends but engage in elaborate dastardly schemes to move stories from page 2 to page 4 without [flagged] appearing and keep us down.