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Is it just Strict moderation or Members with a common goal of making this place a good / fair place?

by amrrs 7y ago

Mizza 7y ago
I think both combine to form a culture. (In your HN settings, you'll see there's the ability to see deleted posts and shadowbanned users, and if you turn that on you'll see that most posts have a load a crazy people and trolls posting on them that the mods have cleaned up.)
komali2 7y ago
Bit of both. The moderation is necessary for keeping the community whole when we get influxes of trolls or redditors.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Definitely the members IMO; a moderator can snipe out the occasional troll, but if all members are being pricks there's nothing that can be done about that. What you need is to maintain an atmosphere, a culture, etc. You need the community to call one another out and keep one another accountable. And you need to nip any broken windows in the bud - Reddit's comment threads often spiral out of control and into a spammy mess of memes and references for example, simply because that's part of their culture. It's harmless enough on Reddit, but if that happened on HN the comments section would diminish greatly in value.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Not the members. One of the other forums I frequent would be chock full of pricks by HN standards. They are known for being jerks on other forums that cover the same interest. It's still a very good community as long as you don't take everything personally.
cmroanirgo 7y ago
From the article, quoting @dang: ≥What does seem to work better is personal interaction, over and over and over again, with individual users. That, case by case by case, seems to move the needle. But it’s very slow.” I think the guidelines are a great way of encouraging us all to be more thoughtful to others comments, and have noticed a difference in the way I might comment HN. Often I kill my comment before I actually click "Reply", especially if I know my comment will be too divisive, or if it doesn't add to the quality of previous comments. Sometimes I upvote a comment because it helped me question/ change a personal dogmatic view.
- craftyguy 7y ago
  > I think the guidelines are a great way of encouraging us all to be more thoughtful to others comments, and have noticed a difference in the way I might comment HN. The guidelines are somewhat of a joke, and are only followed (even by mods) when it is convenient to do so. For example, I've been repremanded in the past by our supreme leader dang for posting comments like "do you have a source for that?", because he assumed it was too hostile while he completely ignored his own 'hacker' 'news' guideline of 'assume good faith' (I was literally asking someone to source the information/argument they posted here.. but hey good job on completely derailing that discussion dang!)
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    "do you have a source for that?", especially when phrased that way, is a statement made in bad faith, because it indicates that you believe that there's a chance the statement is unsourced (as opposed to "can you please cite this?").
    - 18pfsmt 7y ago
      I find it very difficult to believe that is a direct quotation from dang. Not only that, your parent called dang "supreme leader" (i.e. dictator, guilty of atrocities). This is clearly absurd and hyperbolic verbiage. Extremely "colorful" language is modern rhetoric of the worst kind.
  - dang 7y ago
    Where did I do that?
    - cmroanirgo 7y ago
      Ironically, the source of said admonishment wasn't forthcoming, by GP... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19984428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19984428 > Ok, but "got any sources for that?" is a rather unsubstantive contribution, and then going on tilt about getting downvoted breaks the site guidelines outright. Would you mind raising the signal/noise ratio of what you post here? It seems the attempt to correct a low "signal / noise ratio", in this instance, seems to be back firing.

Is it just Strict moderation or Members with a common goal of making this place a good / fair place?

by amrrs 7y ago

Is it just Strict moderation or Members with a common goal of making this place a good / fair place?

I think both combine to form a culture. (In your HN settings, you'll see there's the ability to see deleted posts and shadowbanned users, and if you turn that on you'll see that most posts have a load a crazy people and trolls posting on them that the mods have cleaned up.)

komali2 7y ago

Bit of both. The moderation is necessary for keeping the community whole when we get influxes of trolls or redditors.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

Definitely the members IMO; a moderator can snipe out the occasional troll, but if all members are being pricks there's nothing that can be done about that. What you need is to maintain an atmosphere, a culture, etc. You need the community to call one another out and keep one another accountable. And you need to nip any broken windows in the bud - Reddit's comment threads often spiral out of control and into a spammy mess of memes and references for example, simply because that's part of their culture. It's harmless enough on Reddit, but if that happened on HN the comments section would diminish greatly in value.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Not the members. One of the other forums I frequent would be chock full of pricks by HN standards. They are known for being jerks on other forums that cover the same interest. It's still a very good community as long as you don't take everything personally.

cmroanirgo 7y ago

From the article, quoting @dang: ≥What does seem to work better is personal interaction, over and over and over again, with individual users. That, case by case by case, seems to move the needle. But it’s very slow.” I think the guidelines are a great way of encouraging us all to be more thoughtful to others comments, and have noticed a difference in the way I might comment HN. Often I kill my comment before I actually click "Reply", especially if I know my comment will be too divisive, or if it doesn't add to the quality of previous comments. Sometimes I upvote a comment because it helped me question/ change a personal dogmatic view.

craftyguy 7y ago
> I think the guidelines are a great way of encouraging us all to be more thoughtful to others comments, and have noticed a difference in the way I might comment HN. The guidelines are somewhat of a joke, and are only followed (even by mods) when it is convenient to do so. For example, I've been repremanded in the past by our supreme leader dang for posting comments like "do you have a source for that?", because he assumed it was too hostile while he completely ignored his own 'hacker' 'news' guideline of 'assume good faith' (I was literally asking someone to source the information/argument they posted here.. but hey good job on completely derailing that discussion dang!)
- saagarjha 7y ago
  "do you have a source for that?", especially when phrased that way, is a statement made in bad faith, because it indicates that you believe that there's a chance the statement is unsourced (as opposed to "can you please cite this?").
  - 18pfsmt 7y ago
    I find it very difficult to believe that is a direct quotation from dang. Not only that, your parent called dang "supreme leader" (i.e. dictator, guilty of atrocities). This is clearly absurd and hyperbolic verbiage. Extremely "colorful" language is modern rhetoric of the worst kind.
- dang 7y ago
  Where did I do that?
  - cmroanirgo 7y ago
    Ironically, the source of said admonishment wasn't forthcoming, by GP... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19984428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19984428 > Ok, but "got any sources for that?" is a rather unsubstantive contribution, and then going on tilt about getting downvoted breaks the site guidelines outright. Would you mind raising the signal/noise ratio of what you post here? It seems the attempt to correct a low "signal / noise ratio", in this instance, seems to be back firing.