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On the ycombinator thought exchange, it makes sense that satirical posts like these in general are frowned/flagged/weighted down upon (ignoring anecdotes of sub

On the ycombinator thought exchange, it makes sense that satirical posts like these in general are frowned/flagged/weighted down upon (ignoring anecdotes of subjective good and bad discourse on such) like how during the the heat of the GFC some exchanges rolled back unprofitable trades of those who did the most volume on their exchanges. When the topic of such posts probably have a > 0 percent stake in YC companies, such actions from mods is only to be expected to some degree.

dang 9y ago
We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC startups are involved. This is literally the first rule of HN moderation and I've posted about it a ton over the years. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20yc%20less%20not%20more https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
- cinquemb 9y ago
  Somehow, I find it hard to accept that YC and their stakeholders/agents can completely avoid the human biases that also affect every organization to some degree. Linking to posts where you say "less not more" is much different then say, getting the flag/weighting factor data on every post, and running a classifier that segments out YC affiliated ones from ones that are not, and there being a statistical representation of your assertion. But like I've said to some degree before, your forum, your rules :)
  - dang 9y ago
    That's fair. I'd never claim to be immune from unconscious bias. But we do have a rule to help us mitigate it, and a lot of practice applying it. It's the first thing pg explained to me about HN moderation—before I could grab a chair, even—and the first thing I've explained to every moderator since. There's a deeper issue too. We don't think about HN in terms of furthering YC's immediate interests. Nothing could be dumber, because the community would notice immediately—in Monty Python's classic phrase, "God would see through a cheap ploy like that". We just think about how to make HN more interesting. That's how to make it more valuable—including its hard business value. I wrote about this here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019486 Of course we use 'interesting' in a somewhat specialized way, and no community of this size can ever be entirely pleased, as people differ in what interests them. But if we moderate a post like the OP, it isn't because of an opinion about venture capital or China or workers or whatever. It's because of what counts as interesting on HN, and what we know from experience adds or detracts from it.

dang 9y ago

We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC startups are involved. This is literally the first rule of HN moderation and I've posted about it a ton over the years. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20yc%20less%20not%20more https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...

cinquemb 9y ago
Somehow, I find it hard to accept that YC and their stakeholders/agents can completely avoid the human biases that also affect every organization to some degree. Linking to posts where you say "less not more" is much different then say, getting the flag/weighting factor data on every post, and running a classifier that segments out YC affiliated ones from ones that are not, and there being a statistical representation of your assertion. But like I've said to some degree before, your forum, your rules :)
- dang 9y ago
  That's fair. I'd never claim to be immune from unconscious bias. But we do have a rule to help us mitigate it, and a lot of practice applying it. It's the first thing pg explained to me about HN moderation—before I could grab a chair, even—and the first thing I've explained to every moderator since. There's a deeper issue too. We don't think about HN in terms of furthering YC's immediate interests. Nothing could be dumber, because the community would notice immediately—in Monty Python's classic phrase, "God would see through a cheap ploy like that". We just think about how to make HN more interesting. That's how to make it more valuable—including its hard business value. I wrote about this here too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019486 Of course we use 'interesting' in a somewhat specialized way, and no community of this size can ever be entirely pleased, as people differ in what interests them. But if we moderate a post like the OP, it isn't because of an opinion about venture capital or China or workers or whatever. It's because of what counts as interesting on HN, and what we know from experience adds or detracts from it.