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Speaking as someone who does just that... it’s a good site for the quality of the minds here, bad for the degree of censorship. Having said that, it feels more

Speaking as someone who does just that... it’s a good site for the quality of the minds here, bad for the degree of censorship. Having said that, it feels more honest than FB. This is YC pursuing their own best interests very openly with HN... it isn’t “social media for the people.” I might prefer differences, but it’s easy to accept what’s offered when that offer is very clear at the outset. You also have to understand why draconian measures are in place... it’s weakness. This is a site full of people who could never be banned, only whichever account they use at the time. Tons of moderation online depends on user ignorance, and when that fails you have to roll out the dirty tricks. It is literally all they have which works at all. It’s this, or hiring a few hundred mods to sift through absolutely everything, which comes with its own issues. I’m not sure how you would improve this system without radically changing it, especially while trying to minimize the impact of bad actors.

dang 9y ago
> This is YC pursuing their own best interests very openly with HN That's actually true, but not in the sense that most people mean it. Usually when I hear this it means something like "HN promotes YC's business and suppresses criticism of YC", phrased in more sinister language. But that of course would be the dumbest way to operate such a site, especially with this crowd. The way we promote YC's interests is simply by trying to keep HN interesting. The most interesting HN is the most valuable-to-YC HN. That's why people come here, so that's all we optimize for. Literally everything we do with site moderation derives from that. For example, why do we moderate flamewars? Not because we secretly agree with one side or the other but because flamewars are repetitive and therefore bad for curiosity. Plus they encourage people to do worse things, so their damage extends forward in time. These are empirical observations, not moral edicts. We just look for what makes HN richer and more complex vs. what makes it dumber. Scorched earth makes it dumber. I remember years ago hearing a radio interview with the CEO of Costco. When asked, "What would you say to Wall Street analysts who criticize you for giving all those benefits to your employees?" he replied, "I would say have you ever run a major retailer?" Something similar is how I feel when people criticize how we moderate HN. The trouble isn't the criticism—I'd be delighted to be shown how to do this better. The trouble is that the criticisms usually aren't relevant to the actual problem of running HN, which is: how to maximize the interestingness of a public-anonymous internet forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity. Maximizing interestingness includes preventing decay. I hope that doesn't sound complainy. We're all lucky to have the opportunity to participate in an experiment like this. It derives from two things, btw: pg's own curiosity, which started the site, and the fact that the people running YC get HN's core value. It's an unusual set of conditions and we're all responsible for making something interesting of it. p.s. I forgot to add that there are also some formal ways that HN gives back to YC: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs and https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  That isn’t what I meant, at least as far as promoting business interests; at least, not beyond nurturing networking here. As for suppressing critique... well... that seems to be the case, but I don’t see it as unreasonable. Besides, a lot of it falls under other guidelines regarding politics or flaming. Edit: Just to be clear, I don’t think there is any hidden agenda, and by “dirty tricks” I mean the methods, not the intent. I wouldn’t waste my time here if I thought it was just an elaborate stage show.
- nkurz 9y ago
  For example, why do we moderate flamewars? The desire to suppress "flamewars" is great, but once one has a tool called a "flamewar detector" it's easy to lose sight of the fact that not everything that triggers the detector is in fact a flamewar that should be suppressed. Occasionally (rarely? frequently?) what's being suppressed is high quality fast-paced discussion. Once one has a tool that provides some degree of the benefit (the flamewar detector), I'd guess that it can be easy to confuse the actual goal with the incidental behavior. I'm intrigued by this idea of "expected failure". That is, cases where the outcome is actually non-desirable, but since the software worked according to spec, the failure is considered a success by those who designed the software. How do you go about assessing whether the suppression is having the desired effect? Is it based on something more subtle than slowing down the rate of commenting when it's going "too fast"? Are there knobs that can be tweaked to keep it from triggering on desired discussion?
  - dang 9y ago
    > not everything that triggers the detector is in fact a flamewar that should be suppressed Scott and I get emailed every time that software trips so we can quickly look at which threads are being penalized and reverse the penalty when it isn't helpful. The only time we don't do that is when we're sleeping. We tend to call it the 'overheated discussion detector' these days, since it detects more than flamewars. However, that phrase is more awkward to say than 'flamewar detector'. If anyone can come up with a better name I'd love to hear it. Turning that software off is not an option, because HN would be overwhelmingly more dominated by flamewars if we did so. It's not primarily the individual threads that I fear, it's the systemic effects of having them be more dominant. HN exists most of all for the quieter, deeper, more out-of-the-way finds that would be the first to get excluded under such a regime. That would really be an existential risk to HN. Incidentally, that last point generalizes. When people complain that we don't do X, for some obvious X, it isn't because we don't value X (e.g. free speech or whatnot). It's because we're worried about systemic effects.

dang 9y ago

> This is YC pursuing their own best interests very openly with HN That's actually true, but not in the sense that most people mean it. Usually when I hear this it means something like "HN promotes YC's business and suppresses criticism of YC", phrased in more sinister language. But that of course would be the dumbest way to operate such a site, especially with this crowd. The way we promote YC's interests is simply by trying to keep HN interesting. The most interesting HN is the most valuable-to-YC HN. That's why people come here, so that's all we optimize for. Literally everything we do with site moderation derives from that. For example, why do we moderate flamewars? Not because we secretly agree with one side or the other but because flamewars are repetitive and therefore bad for curiosity. Plus they encourage people to do worse things, so their damage extends forward in time. These are empirical observations, not moral edicts. We just look for what makes HN richer and more complex vs. what makes it dumber. Scorched earth makes it dumber. I remember years ago hearing a radio interview with the CEO of Costco. When asked, "What would you say to Wall Street analysts who criticize you for giving all those benefits to your employees?" he replied, "I would say have you ever run a major retailer?" Something similar is how I feel when people criticize how we moderate HN. The trouble isn't the criticism—I'd be delighted to be shown how to do this better. The trouble is that the criticisms usually aren't relevant to the actual problem of running HN, which is: how to maximize the interestingness of a public-anonymous internet forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity. Maximizing interestingness includes preventing decay. I hope that doesn't sound complainy. We're all lucky to have the opportunity to participate in an experiment like this. It derives from two things, btw: pg's own curiosity, which started the site, and the fact that the people running YC get HN's core value. It's an unusual set of conditions and we're all responsible for making something interesting of it. p.s. I forgot to add that there are also some formal ways that HN gives back to YC: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs and https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches.

QAPereo 9y ago
That isn’t what I meant, at least as far as promoting business interests; at least, not beyond nurturing networking here. As for suppressing critique... well... that seems to be the case, but I don’t see it as unreasonable. Besides, a lot of it falls under other guidelines regarding politics or flaming. Edit: Just to be clear, I don’t think there is any hidden agenda, and by “dirty tricks” I mean the methods, not the intent. I wouldn’t waste my time here if I thought it was just an elaborate stage show.
nkurz 9y ago
For example, why do we moderate flamewars? The desire to suppress "flamewars" is great, but once one has a tool called a "flamewar detector" it's easy to lose sight of the fact that not everything that triggers the detector is in fact a flamewar that should be suppressed. Occasionally (rarely? frequently?) what's being suppressed is high quality fast-paced discussion. Once one has a tool that provides some degree of the benefit (the flamewar detector), I'd guess that it can be easy to confuse the actual goal with the incidental behavior. I'm intrigued by this idea of "expected failure". That is, cases where the outcome is actually non-desirable, but since the software worked according to spec, the failure is considered a success by those who designed the software. How do you go about assessing whether the suppression is having the desired effect? Is it based on something more subtle than slowing down the rate of commenting when it's going "too fast"? Are there knobs that can be tweaked to keep it from triggering on desired discussion?
- dang 9y ago
  > not everything that triggers the detector is in fact a flamewar that should be suppressed Scott and I get emailed every time that software trips so we can quickly look at which threads are being penalized and reverse the penalty when it isn't helpful. The only time we don't do that is when we're sleeping. We tend to call it the 'overheated discussion detector' these days, since it detects more than flamewars. However, that phrase is more awkward to say than 'flamewar detector'. If anyone can come up with a better name I'd love to hear it. Turning that software off is not an option, because HN would be overwhelmingly more dominated by flamewars if we did so. It's not primarily the individual threads that I fear, it's the systemic effects of having them be more dominant. HN exists most of all for the quieter, deeper, more out-of-the-way finds that would be the first to get excluded under such a regime. That would really be an existential risk to HN. Incidentally, that last point generalizes. When people complain that we don't do X, for some obvious X, it isn't because we don't value X (e.g. free speech or whatnot). It's because we're worried about systemic effects.