4 ms·

What I’m most interested in is knowing how moderation works behind the scenes. It can’t be that dang and sctb (and other mods I don’t know about) read every sin

by wtmt 8y ago

What I’m most interested in is knowing how moderation works behind the scenes. It can’t be that dang and sctb (and other mods I don’t know about) read every single comment. Yet they rely to comments that violate the guidelines and warn users. There must be some software analyzing comments based on different parameters (length, downvotes, scans of problematic words/phrases, and more...machine learning/AI too?) and flagging them in a queue for attention.

jorgesborges 8y ago
Well the article mentions that a thread with more comments than upvotes is ranked lower. In this case it was the top thread for an hour or so before being thrown to #26. This is interesting and I personally never upvote or downvote individual threads, but maybe I'll start.
trevyn 8y ago
I think that it would be entirely practical to skim every new comment on HN given a simple chronological list without threading. HN isn’t actually that big. Metafilter is another example of a small-ish, highly moderated community that does a thorough job with a small handful of dedicated moderators.
- yorwba 8y ago
  > I think that it would be entirely practical to skim every new comment on HN given a simple chronological list without threading. HN isn’t actually that big. The oldest comment on the first page of https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments was posted 15 minutes ago. Reading through all of them took me 5 minutes. Ignoring the fact that posting frequency varies throughout the day, reading every comment would require a single person to spend 8 hours a day every day. So it seems possible to moderate HN like that, but I really wouldn't want to be in dang's shoes monitoring the contextless comment stream all day.
  - trevyn 8y ago
    Read, sure, but skimming for the things that moderators call people out for took me about 30 seconds.
YouAreGreat 8y ago
> how moderation works Crowdsourced via the flag button, which acts as a "superpowered downvote" even though it's not presented as such.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Yup. This or several downvotes even if the flag isn't triggered (though I think it usually is)
tptacek 8y ago
They don't read every comment, as they're quick to point out.

by wtmt 8y ago

jorgesborges 8y ago

Well the article mentions that a thread with more comments than upvotes is ranked lower. In this case it was the top thread for an hour or so before being thrown to #26. This is interesting and I personally never upvote or downvote individual threads, but maybe I'll start.

trevyn 8y ago

I think that it would be entirely practical to skim every new comment on HN given a simple chronological list without threading. HN isn’t actually that big. Metafilter is another example of a small-ish, highly moderated community that does a thorough job with a small handful of dedicated moderators.

yorwba 8y ago
> I think that it would be entirely practical to skim every new comment on HN given a simple chronological list without threading. HN isn’t actually that big. The oldest comment on the first page of https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments was posted 15 minutes ago. Reading through all of them took me 5 minutes. Ignoring the fact that posting frequency varies throughout the day, reading every comment would require a single person to spend 8 hours a day every day. So it seems possible to moderate HN like that, but I really wouldn't want to be in dang's shoes monitoring the contextless comment stream all day.
- trevyn 8y ago
  Read, sure, but skimming for the things that moderators call people out for took me about 30 seconds.

YouAreGreat 8y ago

> how moderation works Crowdsourced via the flag button, which acts as a "superpowered downvote" even though it's not presented as such.

raverbashing 8y ago
Yup. This or several downvotes even if the flag isn't triggered (though I think it usually is)

tptacek 8y ago

They don't read every comment, as they're quick to point out.