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> All of these are typical responses to articles with a large heat-to-substance ratio. To save others from having to look it up themselves: according to [0], i

by gkop 9y ago

> All of these are typical responses to articles with a large heat-to-substance ratio. To save others from having to look it up themselves: according to [0], it took 13 hours for Sam's article to fall off the front page, while this article fell off after about 1 hour. dang didn't say it was ONLY heat-to-substance ratio causing the downmod. Clearly, there are other factors than heat-to-substance ratio causing it though. It's hard to dismiss the suspicion that either "embarrasses YC president" could be a factor in downmodding this article or that Sam's article was not downmodded in order to avoid embarassing Sam :( HN is tremendously influential in tech culture, so even a tiny difference in moderation of similar articles reflecting opposing points of view could compound to a very destructive effect. [0] http://hhn.domador.net/ http://hhn.domador.net/

ThrowawayR2 9y ago
Downmods and flagging aside, it's at least a positive sign that these article that don't toe the line of the current groupthink keep being posted and keep getting upvoted. Don't lose hope; keep upvoting and arguing for the positions you believe in.
dang 9y ago
This is a hard comment to respond to because there appear to be several misapprehensions in it, and at the same time I find it hard to understand what you're saying. Let me try to address a few though. You say "clearly" and then switch to "hard to dismiss the suspicion". There's no "clearly" there, just suspicion. I'm sure it's a natural suspicion or you wouldn't be posting it, but it lands with me as strange somehow. How could an article that doesn't mention Sam embarrass Sam? It was written weeks before his essay anyhow. What you're missing, perhaps, is that the reaction here, by both the users who flagged and the moderators, probably isn't about the subject matter per se, but about the fact that this topic was thoroughly covered yesterday and in follow-up threads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15936614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15936614. Doing the same thing every day is boring, and the current article doesn't clear the bar of substantiveness enough to justify overriding that. There's another point that sits a bit uncomfortably with me. You say HN is influential in tech culture, but if that's true, it's because of qualities HN has that are the product of the very system (community plus moderators plus software) that you seem to object to. That comes up all the time and to me it seems incongruent. You overrate the power of moderation to control this community. Even if we wanted to control it, which we don't, we couldn't, not even close. We serve it and we never forget that.
- gkop 9y ago
  Thanks dang! All I meant by “clearly” was that the signal-to-heat was the same between the two articles. Sometimes user flags are overridden by mods, so it seemed like maybe that’s what happened on Sam’s article but not on this one? I am worried by your argument that we just discussed his yesterday so let’s not today, it’s just as much about the articles as the discussion, this article has substance and is a neat counterpoint to Sam's article, don’t you think? Perhaps in these cases lock comments but leave the article on the front page? Regarding the influence of HN, please don’t ignore that Sam is YC’s president and YC operates HN, so maybe the issue is just that HN isn’t sufficiently independent from YC? Under the status quo the optics look really bad. Thanks for the thoughtful reply and your hard work! It reassures me that you take the judgment calls you make seriously. Communities like HN are challenging to moderate indeed.
  - dang 9y ago
    I sure appreciate the good faith here, especially where we disagree. Re yesterday: if we didn't moderate HN like this the front page would consist mostly of repetitive stuff. There's no doubt in my mind that the community wouldn't like that, and certainly it would make HN a different place. Intellectual curiosity shrivels under repetition.

by gkop 9y ago

ThrowawayR2 9y ago

Downmods and flagging aside, it's at least a positive sign that these article that don't toe the line of the current groupthink keep being posted and keep getting upvoted. Don't lose hope; keep upvoting and arguing for the positions you believe in.

dang 9y ago

This is a hard comment to respond to because there appear to be several misapprehensions in it, and at the same time I find it hard to understand what you're saying. Let me try to address a few though. You say "clearly" and then switch to "hard to dismiss the suspicion". There's no "clearly" there, just suspicion. I'm sure it's a natural suspicion or you wouldn't be posting it, but it lands with me as strange somehow. How could an article that doesn't mention Sam embarrass Sam? It was written weeks before his essay anyhow. What you're missing, perhaps, is that the reaction here, by both the users who flagged and the moderators, probably isn't about the subject matter per se, but about the fact that this topic was thoroughly covered yesterday and in follow-up threads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15936614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15936614. Doing the same thing every day is boring, and the current article doesn't clear the bar of substantiveness enough to justify overriding that. There's another point that sits a bit uncomfortably with me. You say HN is influential in tech culture, but if that's true, it's because of qualities HN has that are the product of the very system (community plus moderators plus software) that you seem to object to. That comes up all the time and to me it seems incongruent. You overrate the power of moderation to control this community. Even if we wanted to control it, which we don't, we couldn't, not even close. We serve it and we never forget that.

gkop 9y ago
Thanks dang! All I meant by “clearly” was that the signal-to-heat was the same between the two articles. Sometimes user flags are overridden by mods, so it seemed like maybe that’s what happened on Sam’s article but not on this one? I am worried by your argument that we just discussed his yesterday so let’s not today, it’s just as much about the articles as the discussion, this article has substance and is a neat counterpoint to Sam's article, don’t you think? Perhaps in these cases lock comments but leave the article on the front page? Regarding the influence of HN, please don’t ignore that Sam is YC’s president and YC operates HN, so maybe the issue is just that HN isn’t sufficiently independent from YC? Under the status quo the optics look really bad. Thanks for the thoughtful reply and your hard work! It reassures me that you take the judgment calls you make seriously. Communities like HN are challenging to moderate indeed.
- dang 9y ago
  I sure appreciate the good faith here, especially where we disagree. Re yesterday: if we didn't moderate HN like this the front page would consist mostly of repetitive stuff. There's no doubt in my mind that the community wouldn't like that, and certainly it would make HN a different place. Intellectual curiosity shrivels under repetition.