4 ms·

I think that was a bit of a weird conclusion. The "flame war detector" is terrible. What is does is cave to the will of the flamers and create a positive feedba

by hoaw 8y ago

I think that was a bit of a weird conclusion. The "flame war detector" is terrible. What is does is cave to the will of the flamers and create a positive feedback loop for them. They will then go on to post on other topics, which why even the most benign posts will have crap comments. It is what it is, but certainly not even close to ideal.

warp_factor 8y ago
agree with you. The issue with this is that anything even close to a little bit controversial will start to go down faster. As a result, we will end up with closely selected, safe, politically correct article on the main page where debate can be kept to a minimal on safe topics.
- emerongi 8y ago
  Maybe an option would be to have a setting to automatically hide "flame wars" if the user does not wish to see those? We already have the manual "hide", but this would hide some posts automatically. I do agree that this automatic de-ranking as soon as a post is considered to be controversial is unexpected and not a feature I like.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  Assuming today’s typical use of “politically correct”, it really works in the opposite. I. e. stories about racism or sexism in the tech industry have almost no chance of reaching this audience, that could actually have the power to effect change. Meanwhile, stories and comments cynically portaying all of the “mainstream media” as corrupt, biased, and incompetent routinely rise to the top because that POV is now almost universally seen as uncontroversial fact. Explicit right-wing drivel like overt racism have no chance, thankfully. But having written a tech & politics column for 15 years in my native country, I can read my old stuff and see how my politics have developed. And while I have moved a bit on issues like diversity, I feel the tech community has moved somewhat in the opposite direction, or perhaps towards a sort of cynical, self-focused sort of populism. To use one example that’s almost purely about technology: the GPL used to have many proponents in the slashdot era. These days, anything not MIT licensed is quickly derided as “socialism” or “against freedom”. The general understanding of issues also seems to have gone downhill. It appears, for example, that very people even understand the motivation behind GPL 3.0.
deleted 8y ago
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kristofferR 8y ago
Yeah, if you want to hide a post you don't like you can just start an interesting and controversial discussion/flamewar in the comment thread - and the post will be deleted right away.
jpalomaki 8y ago
I don’t really see this happening. IMHO There are relatively few really bad comments in most discussions - maybe they get downvoted quickly? HN is not really a place to fight the flame wars. Typically the flame war is not related to topic, but underlaying issue (topic being for example Ubuntu release XY, but the flames revolving around state of Linux desktop).
- hoaw 8y ago
  It isn't that the comments are extremely bad. It is that the same attitude of essentially "not caring about the community" carries over into less controversial discussions. Which makes hacker news very noise for people who do want to have decent discussions, share information or whatnot. Basically every story will have people who seem more interested of hearing themselves speak, snipe by down voting or one liners, don't make an effort or don't reply at all or can't leave the discussion to those who actually find it interesting. It is those attitudes or expressions that should be moderated, not topics.

by hoaw 8y ago

warp_factor 8y ago

agree with you. The issue with this is that anything even close to a little bit controversial will start to go down faster. As a result, we will end up with closely selected, safe, politically correct article on the main page where debate can be kept to a minimal on safe topics.

emerongi 8y ago
Maybe an option would be to have a setting to automatically hide "flame wars" if the user does not wish to see those? We already have the manual "hide", but this would hide some posts automatically. I do agree that this automatic de-ranking as soon as a post is considered to be controversial is unexpected and not a feature I like.
IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
Assuming today’s typical use of “politically correct”, it really works in the opposite. I. e. stories about racism or sexism in the tech industry have almost no chance of reaching this audience, that could actually have the power to effect change. Meanwhile, stories and comments cynically portaying all of the “mainstream media” as corrupt, biased, and incompetent routinely rise to the top because that POV is now almost universally seen as uncontroversial fact. Explicit right-wing drivel like overt racism have no chance, thankfully. But having written a tech & politics column for 15 years in my native country, I can read my old stuff and see how my politics have developed. And while I have moved a bit on issues like diversity, I feel the tech community has moved somewhat in the opposite direction, or perhaps towards a sort of cynical, self-focused sort of populism. To use one example that’s almost purely about technology: the GPL used to have many proponents in the slashdot era. These days, anything not MIT licensed is quickly derided as “socialism” or “against freedom”. The general understanding of issues also seems to have gone downhill. It appears, for example, that very people even understand the motivation behind GPL 3.0.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kristofferR 8y ago

Yeah, if you want to hide a post you don't like you can just start an interesting and controversial discussion/flamewar in the comment thread - and the post will be deleted right away.

jpalomaki 8y ago

I don’t really see this happening. IMHO There are relatively few really bad comments in most discussions - maybe they get downvoted quickly? HN is not really a place to fight the flame wars. Typically the flame war is not related to topic, but underlaying issue (topic being for example Ubuntu release XY, but the flames revolving around state of Linux desktop).

hoaw 8y ago
It isn't that the comments are extremely bad. It is that the same attitude of essentially "not caring about the community" carries over into less controversial discussions. Which makes hacker news very noise for people who do want to have decent discussions, share information or whatnot. Basically every story will have people who seem more interested of hearing themselves speak, snipe by down voting or one liners, don't make an effort or don't reply at all or can't leave the discussion to those who actually find it interesting. It is those attitudes or expressions that should be moderated, not topics.