5 ms·

This happens every time when a post or thread exposes the social justice orthodoxy for the pernicious and self-centered bullies that they are. The original ann

This happens every time when a post or thread exposes the social justice orthodoxy for the pernicious and self-centered bullies that they are. The original announcement about Rafael leaving LLVM was flagged off the front page too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982837 Remember LambdaConf? Those posts also ended up several hundred items off the front-page, without being visibly flagged. https://archive.is/iI5NA https://archive.is/iI5NA HN maintains plausible deniability and claims that it wants to keep ideological warfare and flamewars out, but the pattern is too obvious for that to be believable, because only one side of the argument consistently gets flagged away.

sctb 8y ago
This story was flagged by users and received a mild penalty for being a follow-up post (to the original announcement to which you've linked) without significant new information. Everyone sees the pattern that represents the “other side” as having an unfair and total advantage. From where we sit, it's an obvious bias that perpetuates this kind of indignant sense of persecution which leaks meta all over the discussions—except it's even-steven. How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole? Your lead moderator on the subject recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14539802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14539802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284053
- belorn 8y ago
  I see this claim from HN moderators from time to time that "both sides" get same treatment, but I can't recall a single time where this kind of article stayed in the front page, or forbid, had flagging turned off. Anecdotal, but it is the observed pattern that I have seen. It would be lovely if someday you all made a statistic summery of how often moderation action is made on gender equality articles, "which side" the article is on, and what the moderation action was. A nice intern project that would at minimum give some data on the subject. I suspect that it is partial possible to do from the outside using the API, and I have been tempted to do a bit of casual dig into how often dang comments his moderation with "I understand" or "I get what you ..." vs a more aggressive "do not do this again" or "you will get banned". It would naturally just measure the tone, but would again give some insight in how the moderation is spread on both sides.
  - dang 8y ago
    The problem with publishing data on all that is that it wouldn't convince any of the people who care strongly about this either way. All it would do is pour fuel on the flamewars. I say this with high confidence based on past experiences.
    - belorn 8y ago
      I would say in other flamewar topics, publishing data has had a net positive effect. For example, having some data on GPL vs BSD license usage has not killed the flame war but it has elevated some of the discussion. Similar for comparing install/download numbers of Vi vs Emacs. It is unlikely to cause anyone to "switch side" but it reduces the anecdotal noise and focus the discussion to either be about the strength and weaknesses of each side or to be about the data collection method. I personally can't think of a single flamewar topic where data has poured fuel on the flame and made the discussion worse. Could be a failure of imagination of course but past experience has been clearly on the positive. I see however that the work is unlikely to be done by you all if you collectively don't think it is a good idea.
      - dang 8y ago
        Those are good points! But I still don't see the upside. I think it would likely force us into spending even more attention on ideological matters, which already take up far more of our time and energy than they should. Just attempting (and repeatedly failing) to keep the peace here is at the limit of our resources and abilities. It takes time and energy away from other things we could be doing to improve HN. People don't often consider this opportunity cost, but it's on my mind a lot.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  Can you show some articles from the "other side" that were treated like this one?
- horseLOGIC 8y ago
  Wait, so it got the "mild penalty" (which resulted in its immediate disappearance from the frontpage) because it was a follow-up? The post to which it was a follow-up also got flagged. Why? Because "users" flagged that as well? Who cares? Your reasoning is entirely unconvincing. > How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole? Disregard that, what arguments does the moderation have to hide this post? I see neither a flamewar, nor alt-right or SJW run amok in here, but I see that the moderation is hiding this post. That's the issue at hand.
  - dang 8y ago
    It's true that the original post ended up in a flagged state, but not before it got a big discussion, 200+ upvotes, and time on the front page. That counts as significant attention. When a post has had significant attention we treat follow-ups like dupes unless they add significant new information. It's not uncommon for a topic to have a big discussion on HN, prompting media outlets to write about it, and then people post those articles back to HN. Those don't make great HN submissions, because the story is still the same. An interesting recent example was the BBC doing https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44561838 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44561838 after https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645. The present case wasn't quite like that, of course, but it's close. Intellectual curiosity withers under repetition; ideological combat thrives on it. Most people are here for intellectual curiosity, and since that's what the site is for (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), those readers take precedence over the ones who want to have the same fights over and over. What arguments does moderation have to moderate HN? Well, HN is a moderated forum, it always has been, and it makes no claim to be anything but. If we didn't moderate HN it would be a quite different place. We try our best to be even-handed, and I hope you realize that our reward for that is to get slammed hard from both sides. We get accused of supporting white supremacism and misogyny just as much as the kind of things you guys are saying here. It sucks, and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it. p.s. It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Please don't do that. It's not what this site is for, and it's incompatible with what it is for, as I explained above. This is in the site guidelines, which we'd appreciate it if you'd read and follow: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- stillkicking 8y ago
  "How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole?" If one side is committed to flagging content off into invisibility, and another is committed to debating that practice, then you end up with this situation. There does not need to be any symmetry in behavior, and it does not mean the site is both or either of those things. It just means you have some religious SJWs who call everything they disagree with alt-right, regardless of people's actual political self-identification or their desired policies. It means that SJW tactics are allowed to work, and that they are successfully casting the blame onto their own targets. It's like a social prisoner's dilemma where one defector castigates the other for not cooperating. I invite you to show posts that advocate SJW ideas in a polite and neutral tone that have been flagged off the front-page, rather than debated. Given that opponents of SJWism tend to favor free expression on principle, I highly doubt you can find them in any number. If you don't want the meta, keep the object-level clean.

sctb 8y ago

This story was flagged by users and received a mild penalty for being a follow-up post (to the original announcement to which you've linked) without significant new information. Everyone sees the pattern that represents the “other side” as having an unfair and total advantage. From where we sit, it's an obvious bias that perpetuates this kind of indignant sense of persecution which leaks meta all over the discussions—except it's even-steven. How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole? Your lead moderator on the subject recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14913312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14539802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14539802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14284053

belorn 8y ago
I see this claim from HN moderators from time to time that "both sides" get same treatment, but I can't recall a single time where this kind of article stayed in the front page, or forbid, had flagging turned off. Anecdotal, but it is the observed pattern that I have seen. It would be lovely if someday you all made a statistic summery of how often moderation action is made on gender equality articles, "which side" the article is on, and what the moderation action was. A nice intern project that would at minimum give some data on the subject. I suspect that it is partial possible to do from the outside using the API, and I have been tempted to do a bit of casual dig into how often dang comments his moderation with "I understand" or "I get what you ..." vs a more aggressive "do not do this again" or "you will get banned". It would naturally just measure the tone, but would again give some insight in how the moderation is spread on both sides.
- dang 8y ago
  The problem with publishing data on all that is that it wouldn't convince any of the people who care strongly about this either way. All it would do is pour fuel on the flamewars. I say this with high confidence based on past experiences.
  - belorn 8y ago
    I would say in other flamewar topics, publishing data has had a net positive effect. For example, having some data on GPL vs BSD license usage has not killed the flame war but it has elevated some of the discussion. Similar for comparing install/download numbers of Vi vs Emacs. It is unlikely to cause anyone to "switch side" but it reduces the anecdotal noise and focus the discussion to either be about the strength and weaknesses of each side or to be about the data collection method. I personally can't think of a single flamewar topic where data has poured fuel on the flame and made the discussion worse. Could be a failure of imagination of course but past experience has been clearly on the positive. I see however that the work is unlikely to be done by you all if you collectively don't think it is a good idea.
    - dang 8y ago
      Those are good points! But I still don't see the upside. I think it would likely force us into spending even more attention on ideological matters, which already take up far more of our time and energy than they should. Just attempting (and repeatedly failing) to keep the peace here is at the limit of our resources and abilities. It takes time and energy away from other things we could be doing to improve HN. People don't often consider this opportunity cost, but it's on my mind a lot.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
cup-of-tea 8y ago
Can you show some articles from the "other side" that were treated like this one?
horseLOGIC 8y ago
Wait, so it got the "mild penalty" (which resulted in its immediate disappearance from the frontpage) because it was a follow-up? The post to which it was a follow-up also got flagged. Why? Because "users" flagged that as well? Who cares? Your reasoning is entirely unconvincing. > How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole? Disregard that, what arguments does the moderation have to hide this post? I see neither a flamewar, nor alt-right or SJW run amok in here, but I see that the moderation is hiding this post. That's the issue at hand.
- dang 8y ago
  It's true that the original post ended up in a flagged state, but not before it got a big discussion, 200+ upvotes, and time on the front page. That counts as significant attention. When a post has had significant attention we treat follow-ups like dupes unless they add significant new information. It's not uncommon for a topic to have a big discussion on HN, prompting media outlets to write about it, and then people post those articles back to HN. Those don't make great HN submissions, because the story is still the same. An interesting recent example was the BBC doing https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44561838 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44561838 after https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645. The present case wasn't quite like that, of course, but it's close. Intellectual curiosity withers under repetition; ideological combat thrives on it. Most people are here for intellectual curiosity, and since that's what the site is for (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), those readers take precedence over the ones who want to have the same fights over and over. What arguments does moderation have to moderate HN? Well, HN is a moderated forum, it always has been, and it makes no claim to be anything but. If we didn't moderate HN it would be a quite different place. We try our best to be even-handed, and I hope you realize that our reward for that is to get slammed hard from both sides. We get accused of supporting white supremacism and misogyny just as much as the kind of things you guys are saying here. It sucks, and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it. p.s. It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Please don't do that. It's not what this site is for, and it's incompatible with what it is for, as I explained above. This is in the site guidelines, which we'd appreciate it if you'd read and follow: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
stillkicking 8y ago
"How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole?" If one side is committed to flagging content off into invisibility, and another is committed to debating that practice, then you end up with this situation. There does not need to be any symmetry in behavior, and it does not mean the site is both or either of those things. It just means you have some religious SJWs who call everything they disagree with alt-right, regardless of people's actual political self-identification or their desired policies. It means that SJW tactics are allowed to work, and that they are successfully casting the blame onto their own targets. It's like a social prisoner's dilemma where one defector castigates the other for not cooperating. I invite you to show posts that advocate SJW ideas in a polite and neutral tone that have been flagged off the front-page, rather than debated. Given that opponents of SJWism tend to favor free expression on principle, I highly doubt you can find them in any number. If you don't want the meta, keep the object-level clean.