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Moderators should in no way be able to bury posts or even nudge them downwards. This is a cowardly way to try to control discussion. If it isn't explicitly agai
by vormalpg 9y ago
Moderators should in no way be able to bury posts or even nudge them downwards. This is a cowardly way to try to control discussion. If it isn't explicitly against the site rules, let the readers decide.
- eterm 9y agoI've long come to accept that HN is a curated source, the voting is a kind of false-democracy to make it appear more democratic than it is. Yes, likely >90% of the site is done through voting, but a significant amount of pruning and bumping clearly also occurs.
- tptacek 9y agoIt's not a democracy at all. User votes are one signal the site uses among many. It's been like that since day one.
- rtpg 9y agoSure... it's still mostly about votes right? "Popular things go to the top" is a pretty good first approximation of the algorithm. You have things getting flagged to death for generating bad conversation/flamewars (kinda like parents telling kids to stop playing rough since people are getting hurt). There's the hiring posts. At least to me, it's always felt like moderation is happening at the margins.
- tptacek 9y agoVotes are a powerful signal here because they're the easiest signal to automate. That leads people to believe their HN votes are more sacred than they are. There has never been a point in the history of the site where it's ever been unclear that the site is ultimately run by the mods. People complaining now should find someone who's been on here for a long time and ask what it was like under Paul Graham. Hint: not better.
- eropple 9y agoI've given the mods here some grief and I think there's a lot of room to improve, but Thomas is one hundred percent right here. Graham's I-don't-have-time-for-this moderation was a much, much worse thing for the community.
- angersock 9y agoPurpose of HN is ultimately agitprop for YC. It makes sense that curation of posts occurs--this only confuses people that buy too much into the "hacker" ethos.
- tptacek 9y agoThis is silly.
- angersock 9y agoHow so? HN is run by YC, and HN is used to promote YC companies and attract talent and normalize YC-style startup culture. Please elaborate before being so dismissive--you know, like we used to do on old HN.
- tptacek 9y agoI wrote a longer comment, originally, but cut it back to the single sentence when I realized that by dignifying the argument I was only lending your tossed-off slur more credibility. HN is not moderated so as to be agitprop for YC. Nobody who's talked to Dan for more than a couple minutes, or watched this site discuss the SFBA tech industry, could believe that. The difference between the site post-Dan and pre-Dan --- you know, the "old" HN vs. today --- is that you can repeatedly write unfounded accusations like that today and not have your account shadowbanned and all your comments rank-penalized, like they were when Paul Graham ran the site. We all accepted those arbitrary moderation decisions back then, when there was no pretense of fairness or equity in moderation. Now that we have it, we attack the people who spend their time assuring it by making preposterous comparisons to the "good old days".
- angersock 9y agoComments are still rank-penalized and detached, so that's not exactly a thing of the past. I am not arguing dang is doing a bad job--I'm arguing that their job is done with an eye more towards keeping a community in line with YC interests than promoting pure free-speech or hacker culture. That includes things like killing off certain contentious posts, removing grossly off-topic material, and a lot of other frankly decent moderation.
- chasing 9y agoIt's a private space and they want to promote a certain kind of discussion. It's not cowardly at all.
- beingmyself2 9y agoshadowbanning is cowardly and cruel. If internet bullying is a thing then this is an example of such.
- dragandj 9y agoIf you let the readers decide, you'd have HN with the front page full of the "news" about tech scene Kardashians.
- megaman22 9y agoBeen there, done that. I got so sick of flag/hiding the latest Uber nonstory for a while.
- sgift 9y agoFrom Dans explanation in the post: > We downweight posts in response to things that go against the site guidelines, such as when a submission is unsubstantive, baity or sensational. So, this is what's happening already.
- Sone7 9y agoOh, good to know. Guess we don't need any kind of logging system for that, we'll just take it at face value - I'm sure there are absolutely no other reasons that mods would downweight posts, so that's just great. /s
- vormalpg 9y agoNotice how subjective those descriptors are. It's been very clear in the past that moderator intervention is rampant for articles / posts that merely strike a raw nerve.
- sgift 9y agoIf they were objective they could be automated. The whole reason for manual moderation is that this is not possible.
- intopieces 9y agoYep, they are subjective. That's what I want. I want the HN mods to curate the content based on those guidelines. It's what makes this site worth coming to. I'm willing a optimize for precision over recall here.
- nabla9 9y agoI strongly disagree. As user base grows, all platforms suffer from mean reversion or "Eternal September" where quality of the content reverses towards low quality issues. If you want to keep up the quality you need editorial staff. Call them curators, editors or moderators if you want. What I would like to happen is HN editing being transparent. Show buried or nudged content differently so that those who submit can adapt.
- QAPereo 9y agoThis site doesn’t seem to have many mods, and they seem pretty desperate to me. I think a lot of the objectionable behavior on their part is desperate, not deliberate, such as throttling. They dont have the time to be editors or curators, and this is a site full of people who know how trivial it is to bypass moderation.