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I guess it is a perfect opportunity to thank dang and sctb for their unobtrusive and friendly moderation efforts. The article itself was a bit disappointing be

I guess it is a perfect opportunity to thank dang and sctb for their unobtrusive and friendly moderation efforts. The article itself was a bit disappointing because it focused on political issues. In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right", as evidenced by the fact that a comment on a controversial topic can easily float near zero points while raking in both upvotes and downvotes. And even those who refer to it as "the orange site" still come back and comment. In other words, HN may be an echo chamber but it is a pretty big one with a lot of voices in it.

ohaideredevs 7y ago
Don't know sctb, but I have had run-ins with dang on multiple occasions where he asked me to stop arguing when I felt I wasn't being hostile. Nonetheless, it's always in a very moderate tone of doing his job, rather than trying to express power, and I respect that. (Nor am I implying that I didn't take the arguments too far, in some cases I did) The real proof that they do their job though is that I can still occasionally fine deep insights here that just aren't available in other places.
- Raphmedia 7y ago
  Same here. Dang has sent me such warnings before and it's always with such politeness that you end up feeling like an uneducated fool. HN has some of the best moderation that I have seen in a while. I have been a moderator for a large website in early 2000's and I can only admire them. This is no easy task.
  - madez 7y ago
    I was also once called out by dang. He did it so respectingly and understandingly that it made a change for me. This was much better for my reflection about what was wrong about my behaviour than if I had been moderated more heavihandidly. I don't understand the amount of attention and patience that is necessary for it, but it makes a difference.
radicalbyte 7y ago
Given the kind of people who frequent HN (lots of skilled, wealthy and fairly powerful people) there is a large incentive to game the system. I assume that the mass upvotes/downvotes are exactly that.
- throwaway3627 7y ago
  Tech's court at the Palace of Versailles
- goatherders 7y ago
  I'm curious why you think "lots" of skilled, wealthy and powerful people frequent HN. I think its lots of people who think they are skilled and wish they were wealthy and/or powerful.
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    The heavy startup focus of hackernews (like, it's an incubator's news agitator) + lots of successful tech-types, like FAANG employees with 200K+ salaries. Lots of other commentators I've seen on here are experience pilots, engineers, etc. Maybe not Bill Gates money but certainly on the higher end of the bell-curve when it comes to education and pay. I don't disagree that there is a lot of aspirational talk on here too -- they wanna get rich -- but again, it's the news site that's part of a startup incubator. What did you expect?
    - paganel 7y ago
      > like FAANG employees with 200K+ salaries. At first I was a little amazed that many negative articles and comments about these companies were being down-voted, just notice the latest article on the status of a pregnant employee at Google, where the discussion's focus was very quickly and conveniently moved from how said employee had been mistreated by Google to how bad it is that Google allows its employees to discuss freely on these topics. I didn't understand how come these companies have so many fans on this website, but then I realized that some of these users' total comp largely depends on how those companies' shares behave. If I'm not mistaken a FAANG engineer with 10 year of experience has his comp at about 200k in actual salary and the same figure in redeemable shares, so their total comp can approach 4-500k, half of it in shares. As such, it makes perfect sense to downvote everyone that says bad and unpleasant things about your company, because your money actually depends on it. Not sure that there's anything we, the non-FAANG employees, can do about that. If it matters I've been an user of this website for quite some time, I just wanted to mention that I'm neither powerful nor wealthy.
rusk 7y ago
> both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" both and neither. Partisan discussions, or even any kind of bitching at all ... are outright discouraged. I often step out of line in this regard and don't always agree, but I'm also confident that folk on "the other side" face the same kind of treatment. Though frustrating at times, I respect that it keeps things clean and helps cut out a lot of nonsense, of which the Internet has no shortage should I feel the need to go find some. EDIT - actually upon some reflection I think that I would have to respectfully disagree, and change my opening sentence here to just "neither". Extremes of opinion that are "off topic" are not tolerated, and this is a good thing.
- dunkelheit 7y ago
  Compared to e.g. twitter it may feel this way but there is definitely some discussion going on despite the efforts to keep it to the minimum. And even without directly engaging with "the other side" it is nice to know that they are still here and can provide their perspective on the other matters.
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    I have a sneaking suspicion that this is how the majority of productive political discussions happen - around the edges of other things. People who show up for political debate generally do so with knives drawn; you hear from the loudest people with the most solidified views, and the stuff that rises to the top is playing to the crowd instead of engaging in extended discussions. But in a rec sports team, a movie club, or a tech forum, people aren't grouped by viewpoint and vitriolic arguments are a distraction from the original cause. So those places seem to breed conversations where people take the time to hear one another and avoid breaking down into pure tribalism.
    - Gh0stRAT 7y ago
      >So those places seem to breed conversations where people take the time to hear one another and avoid breaking down into pure tribalism. Another way of looking at it is that in that context, they are interacting as fellow members of their "rec team tribe" rather than as members of competing political tribes. (which they may also be a part of)
jrcii 7y ago
dang, the liberal groupthink thought policeman who silences anyone who doesn’t agree with his liberal social justice agenda. I can’t imagine a worse moderator.
07d046 7y ago
My complaint about political topics is that the views expressed just aren't very well informed. Comments are typically what smart engineers would write, but there is very rarely any expertise in the topic like there would be in a discussion about compilers.
- repolfx 7y ago
  Well informed in what respect? Who should would be considered well informed? People who study politics professionally, so, journalists? I think the discussions here tend to be far more well informed than most political discussions, most of which amount to essays by people who don't even want you to be well informed. This silly New Yorker article is a good case in point. It lists a whole host of complaints about comments here and links to exactly none of them, thus not even letting the reader check if they agree with the journalists assessment. They do of course link to the stories themselves, because those are written by journalistic allies, although the story link would be at the top of any linked HN page. Literally, in a story about HN discussions, none of the links at the start of the story actually go to them. I can only assume this is because so many of those discussions contain well argued, well written comments dissecting poor quality political campaigning that's posing as journalism, and Anna Wiener doesn't want her audience to be exposed to that. And given her attitude I'm not surprised she doesn't want people to see the discussions here. Look at her list of complaints: "ill advised citations", "thought experiments abound", "humane arguments are dismissed as emotional". "Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify broad moral positions". So this journalist literally rejects logic and thought as a basis for reaching conclusions! I mean, ill advised citations! This is a new concept I've never encountered before. It speaks volumes about the parlous state of the New Yorker that citing sources and using logic is considered bad behaviour. Why should such people be considered better informed than us when it comes to politics?
  - chosenbreed37 7y ago
    I'm inclined to agree. People are entitled to their opinions even if they are not well informed. Provided they don't break any rules they should feel free to air them. Those that are better informed have the opportunity to set them straight. One of the reasons I come here is the see the various opinions and arguments. The "ill advised citations" is a bit weird one :-)
FussyZeus 7y ago
This is actually my sole complaint with HN. I love the community and I understand where the moderators are coming from, but I feel that it's important to point out that the position of "keep politics out of $X" is the purest expression of privilege, and in general is an attitude that embraces the status quo, no matter how horrifying it might be for the unprivileged. I'm not saying HN should allow ALL political discussion, but when technological issues inevitably and undeniably involve politics, either by influencing or being influenced, it seems a little cowardly that the general attitude of HN is "just don't discuss it" when the it in that case is core to the issue at hand, even if it happens to be political.
- jonathanwallace 7y ago
  Politics, IMHO, are about applied relationship and applied power. Ignoring the discussion of both relationships and power leads to an anemic understanding of freedom and what it takes to enable it which leaves us unbalanced and brittle as a civil society. The exercise of this privilege is a systemic, cultural mistake and the tendency of conversations to often devolve into tribalism highlights our lack of sophistication and maturity when it comes to these topics.
  - 481092 7y ago
    You could say the same of knowledge also as it is a power and one applied and accrued by relationship; by what material one reads, by whom and from which source it is linked from and to. Academics of various groups tend to have their own sort of tribalism. I think the mods came to the correct conclusion that politics, although annoying as hell sometimes, is a fabric of society which is nigh impossible to shed when discussing just about anything.
- afarrell 7y ago
  Something can be both an expression of privilege and a very good idea. Example: The advice to get at least 8 hours of sleep at a regular time each night. This reflects: - the economic privilege of not needing to do irregular shift work - not having a chronic disease which interrupts sleep - not being a parent - having a regular place to sleep at all. However, it is still a good idea for one’s physical and mental health. Likewise, a community might reasonably decide that certain political discussions are too acrimonious to have productively. Even if this decision reflects privilege, it might be the only decision under which the community could survive without rupturing. I feel inclined to agree with your second paragraph, but just don’t know if such discussions are actually productive.
ticmasta 7y ago
I've never met Scott but I worked with Dan briefly in the early 2000's and he is a disconcerting combination of brilliance and quiet modesty. It doesn't seem possible that someone as smart and broadly knowledgeable should be so balanced and still. 15 years later he's still one of my most persistent professional memories and I'm glad he's found a cause perfectly suited for his skill set and temperament.
perfmode 7y ago
you may have missed this thought-provoking passage on the intractability of avoiding the political: > Down the page, another user expressed disdain for the experiment. “The idea that we can carve out a space that exists outside of politics and ideology is delusional,” the user wrote. “Squelching political discussion won’t cause us all to transcend ideology, it’ll just make it impossible to discuss or critique a dominant ideology whenever one shows up in someone’s unstated assumptions.” > “Of course it’s delusional,” Gackle replied. “And still we have to moderate this site.” Three days later, he announced that Political Detox Week would be coming to an end. They’d learned, among other things, that “it’s impossible to define ‘politics’ with any consensus because that question is itself highly political.”
radcon 7y ago
> HN may be an echo chamber but it is a pretty big one with a lot of voices in it. The echo chamber effect on HN is far worse than any comparable site, it's just not as obvious because there's zero transparency. At least there are tons of 3rd party sites that allow us to see censorship in real time on Reddit. No such thing exists for HN. I have no sympathy for the moderators here. I believe they moderate very arbitrarily and are accountable to no one.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  I wonder if you're conflating that actions of the moderators with downvoting done by readers?
  - radcon 7y ago
    Do you know what an echo chamber is? Both of those actions lead to the same result.
- danso 7y ago
  Which metrics are you using the gauge the echo chamber effect, since we don't have third-party tools to gauge how much is purportedly being censored?
gwbas1c 7y ago
Honestly, I've seen some very strange moderation here. For example, a rather good article explaining Bill Gates and Warren Buffet's concerns about cryptocurrency was removed. Remember, Bill Gates is an excellent software engineer; and both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet know a thing or two about economics.
- unreal37 7y ago
  Perhaps you're confusing moderation and flagging. Users themselves get tired of bitcoin flogging and bitcoin bashing, over and over again. Variety is the spice of life.
thedaemon 7y ago
Unobtrusive is far from what the moderation here is on Hackernews. They literally have to moderate as a regular comment. Thus, being obtrusive and breaking their own rules. You might not have noticed it, but me, being a "bad" member, gets the moderation comments all the time and I definitely find them obtrusive. I'd rather just get downvotes from members, like the site should be, instead of comments from dang.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  dang's job is to be obtrusive when you're posting comments that aren't useful…
  - stefantalpalaru 7y ago
    > dang's job is to be obtrusive when you're posting comments that aren't useful… I thought it's to be obtrusive when a friend in need is threatening suicide. This "dang" guy must be a big proponent of Social Darwinism.
- chappi42 7y ago
  > being a "bad" member why don't you strive to be a "good" member? Try autogenic training! (why not?) If you say, "Life is suffering. Life is not happiness. Best you figure that out now." it will influence/overtake you. Try the opposite :-)
  - thedaemon 7y ago
    I'm a bad member according to some users who down vote me. I do strive to be a "useful" member and post what I think is conversation. Some disagree and down vote. I like to be "devil's advocate in life". Does that make me wrong? No, it's helpful to have arguments and converse. Life is great. Not sure why you think I'm depressed. If you are pulling an old comment of mine, it was context based not my life philosophy. :) PS My original comment here is being downvoted into oblivion. One of my points is made by this gesture.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hnModsRDanger 7y ago
Unobtrusive? Try having a legitimate criticism of Apple. Odds are it gets flagged. I don't mean to limit it to Apple, the mods have a heavy hand.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  This hasn't been my experience at all. What was your "legitimate criticism"?
  - dymk 7y ago
    Oh, bad opinions get downvoted or flagged all the time regardless of how they’re presented. My opinion of “ad tracking is not harmful” obliterated whenever I express it. "Yelp brings value to its users" was obliterated a few days ago.
cowabungacode 7y ago
> In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is.... a "haven for alt-right", Really? Do you really think that a strength of HN is that it is a haven for the alt-right? This is shocking and extremly scary to me. The alt-right wants me to die. Is this site a haven for those who want to kill off people like me? That's abhorrent. I agree that HN is a haven for the alt-right but I do not think that is a GOOD thing! From Wikipedia, > The alt-right ... is... white supremacist, white nationalist, white separatist, anti-immigration and sometimes antisemitic movement based in the United States I do not think that it is a strength of HN that it is a haven for the modern day Nazis of the world. I think it strictly devalues the site and reduces conversation quality here dramatically. Those people do not argue in good faith, they flag climate change articles so we cannot talk about good solutions to real problems facing all of us, and they also convince the moderators to ban discussion of Russia's cyberattacks here. The moderators cave their policies to white supremacists and hard-line rules that minimize the points given and comments written about Russian cyberattacks. That HN is a "haven for [Nazis and racists]" is decidedly not a good thing.
- 1000units 7y ago
  The "alt-right" is mostly a boogieman for talking heads. One of my personal hobbies is hanging out in politically extreme internet communities (of both polarities) and arguing with people. Groups labeled "white-supremacist" rarely even contain a large number of white people.
  - cowabungacode 7y ago
    > The "alt-right" is mostly a boogieman for talking heads. No, it's not. The alt-right uses anonymous web boards like this one (but not HN to my knowledge) to coordinate and celebrate mass shootings that are directly admitted to be race-focused and white-supremacist-led. (Edit: The alt-right does use HN to spread hate and their "ideology", but I have not seen direct specific calls to violence here) > Groups labeled "white-supremacist" rarely even contain a large number of white people. I don't see how this is relevant at all. Being white has nothing to do with being a white supremacist. There are lots of non-white white-supremacists in the world. You're using logical fallacies like whataboutism and appeals to false authority instead of debating anything of substance.
OrgNet 7y ago
> their unobtrusive Not unobtrusive but at least, a lot of the time, they leave a comment to let everyone know that they changed what users posted, when they hide posts, etc. The main problem is when they don't (it feels more like the content is being censored or tailored to their views then).
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
I didn't know what "SJW" meant. Looked it up, it means "social justice warrior", defined by Wikipedia as "a pejorative term for an individual who promotes socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism, as well as identity politics".
- burfog 7y ago
  A funny thing is that "SJW" wasn't at all a pejorative. It is a self-selected name. The early usage was people proudly calling themselves SJWs. To now say that SJW is a perjorative is weird. Sure, many of the people using the term happen to really dislike SJWs, but how can a self-selected name ever be a perjorative?
stcredzero 7y ago
In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" Such labels are a part and parcel of in-group/out-group psychology. In 2019, by analogy, we should all be wary when people are starting to probe those "ports." I'm pretty sure that I've been seen as both by different people at different times, though recently on HN I've been spending a lot of energy defending a particular principle. Going way back, I'd been pre-judged as a woo-woo hippy, a yuppie, and all sorts of different things since. If we take a step back and look at the broader arc of history, what we have to be wary of are narratives which attempt to paint entire groups of people as morally inferior threats. (For a variety of reasons, including world view.) These narratives always precede the great evils of history. These narratives always deserve great skepticism -- we should always "follow the money" and see who benefits from the pushing of the narrative. We should ask who stands to gain power.
- Causality1 7y ago
  Yes. One of the most wearying things about the modern web is having to always tailor your comments and arguments to whatever atmosphere is going on at the moment, particularly when you're forced to constantly use analogies to get around reactionary biases. For example, if the current discussion is circle-jerking about how oppressed men/women/blacks/whites are, you end up having to frame any defense or problem relating to the disfavored group in terms of the favored group just to avoid getting downvoted to oblivion. You can never argue on principle, you have to put it in terms of what/who people like at the moment. If you don't, you get labeled as a member of or "on the team" of the disfavored group and summarily dismissed.
wpietri 7y ago
> both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" I definitely want to give credit to dang and sctb for making it that way. It could have gone differently. In particular, the no-politics argument is basically a fancy way of saying "nothing that challenges the status quo please". [1] I really appreciate them trying to keep the forum in a state where these discussion can at least happen. I would have left long ago if flagging had continued to be used to kill topics. [1] See, e.g., Prof Ichikawa on how skepticism gets misused to defend the status quo: https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433 https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433
- SquareWheel 7y ago
  This user seems to be conflating skepticism with denialism. These two groups would take completely different positions on the issues listed (eg. climate change).
  - wpietri 7y ago
    When you say "this user" you're talking about Dr Ichikawa, the professor of philosophy? Who specializes in the very topic you're attempting to correct them on? I can't tell if you're serious or if this is just some sort of Poe's Law attempt to satirize the behavior he's pointing out.
    - SquareWheel 7y ago
      The skeptical movement subscribes to critical thinking, empiricism, and applying the scientific model to find answers. To say that skeptics don't believe in climate change is very untrue. This is contrasted to denialism which denies claims out of hand. This is not based on scientific data, but gut feeling or motivated reasoning. Dr. Ichikawa is thus describing denialism in his tweets. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical_movement * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism edit: Here is an article on the distinction from one of the strongest figures in the skeptical movement, Steven Novella. It even focuses on the topic of climate change. https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/skeptic-vs-denier/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/skeptic-vs-den...
sound1 7y ago
A big thank you to Dang! Probably the nicest moderator ever
dmix 7y ago
> HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" I'm so happy I don't see the world this way. This type of worldview is so tribalistic.
- manfredo 7y ago
  I didn't read this comment as tribalistic. At it's most cynical, it's pointing out that HN manages to capture a pretty broad range of perspectives despite people's tribalistic tendencies.
  - dmix 7y ago
    This assumes that's a helpful dichotomy, which implies categorizing people into such groups, which every indication I've seen those labels are overly broad, highly inaccurate, or used whenever convenient to imply some guilt-by-association. To me they only work to be dismissive of people regardless of the merit or quality of their points and splits everything down ideological lines, which naturally pushes people to protect their side with an us vs them view of things. HN should work towards having thoughtful discussions and providing useful contributions. It shouldn't be about tolerating particular political views or not. That shouldn't be the mod's job.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      I interpreted the use of labels as partly poking fun at how trigger happy many people are with applying those labels. Actual alt right and "sjw cesspool" comments get flagged and dead. Me I felt that the comment meant to communicate that divisive issues that elicit these labels (but don't actually warrant them, hence the quotes around both) are permitted on HN and that is something positive. > HN should work towards having thoughtful discussions and providing useful contributions. It shouldn't be about tolerating particular political views or not. That shouldn't be the mod's job. I agree and I'm confident the previous commenter would as well. The only piece of nuanced disagreement I have is about the involvement of moderators. I agree that ultimately it's the users that need to do work towards providing useful and thoughtful discussion, but moderators do have a crucial role is fostering and maintaining that kind of culture.

ohaideredevs 7y ago

Don't know sctb, but I have had run-ins with dang on multiple occasions where he asked me to stop arguing when I felt I wasn't being hostile. Nonetheless, it's always in a very moderate tone of doing his job, rather than trying to express power, and I respect that. (Nor am I implying that I didn't take the arguments too far, in some cases I did) The real proof that they do their job though is that I can still occasionally fine deep insights here that just aren't available in other places.

Raphmedia 7y ago
Same here. Dang has sent me such warnings before and it's always with such politeness that you end up feeling like an uneducated fool. HN has some of the best moderation that I have seen in a while. I have been a moderator for a large website in early 2000's and I can only admire them. This is no easy task.
- madez 7y ago
  I was also once called out by dang. He did it so respectingly and understandingly that it made a change for me. This was much better for my reflection about what was wrong about my behaviour than if I had been moderated more heavihandidly. I don't understand the amount of attention and patience that is necessary for it, but it makes a difference.

radicalbyte 7y ago

Given the kind of people who frequent HN (lots of skilled, wealthy and fairly powerful people) there is a large incentive to game the system. I assume that the mass upvotes/downvotes are exactly that.

throwaway3627 7y ago
Tech's court at the Palace of Versailles
goatherders 7y ago
I'm curious why you think "lots" of skilled, wealthy and powerful people frequent HN. I think its lots of people who think they are skilled and wish they were wealthy and/or powerful.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  The heavy startup focus of hackernews (like, it's an incubator's news agitator) + lots of successful tech-types, like FAANG employees with 200K+ salaries. Lots of other commentators I've seen on here are experience pilots, engineers, etc. Maybe not Bill Gates money but certainly on the higher end of the bell-curve when it comes to education and pay. I don't disagree that there is a lot of aspirational talk on here too -- they wanna get rich -- but again, it's the news site that's part of a startup incubator. What did you expect?
  - paganel 7y ago
    > like FAANG employees with 200K+ salaries. At first I was a little amazed that many negative articles and comments about these companies were being down-voted, just notice the latest article on the status of a pregnant employee at Google, where the discussion's focus was very quickly and conveniently moved from how said employee had been mistreated by Google to how bad it is that Google allows its employees to discuss freely on these topics. I didn't understand how come these companies have so many fans on this website, but then I realized that some of these users' total comp largely depends on how those companies' shares behave. If I'm not mistaken a FAANG engineer with 10 year of experience has his comp at about 200k in actual salary and the same figure in redeemable shares, so their total comp can approach 4-500k, half of it in shares. As such, it makes perfect sense to downvote everyone that says bad and unpleasant things about your company, because your money actually depends on it. Not sure that there's anything we, the non-FAANG employees, can do about that. If it matters I've been an user of this website for quite some time, I just wanted to mention that I'm neither powerful nor wealthy.

rusk 7y ago

> both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" both and neither. Partisan discussions, or even any kind of bitching at all ... are outright discouraged. I often step out of line in this regard and don't always agree, but I'm also confident that folk on "the other side" face the same kind of treatment. Though frustrating at times, I respect that it keeps things clean and helps cut out a lot of nonsense, of which the Internet has no shortage should I feel the need to go find some. EDIT - actually upon some reflection I think that I would have to respectfully disagree, and change my opening sentence here to just "neither". Extremes of opinion that are "off topic" are not tolerated, and this is a good thing.

dunkelheit 7y ago
Compared to e.g. twitter it may feel this way but there is definitely some discussion going on despite the efforts to keep it to the minimum. And even without directly engaging with "the other side" it is nice to know that they are still here and can provide their perspective on the other matters.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  I have a sneaking suspicion that this is how the majority of productive political discussions happen - around the edges of other things. People who show up for political debate generally do so with knives drawn; you hear from the loudest people with the most solidified views, and the stuff that rises to the top is playing to the crowd instead of engaging in extended discussions. But in a rec sports team, a movie club, or a tech forum, people aren't grouped by viewpoint and vitriolic arguments are a distraction from the original cause. So those places seem to breed conversations where people take the time to hear one another and avoid breaking down into pure tribalism.
  - Gh0stRAT 7y ago
    >So those places seem to breed conversations where people take the time to hear one another and avoid breaking down into pure tribalism. Another way of looking at it is that in that context, they are interacting as fellow members of their "rec team tribe" rather than as members of competing political tribes. (which they may also be a part of)

jrcii 7y ago

dang, the liberal groupthink thought policeman who silences anyone who doesn’t agree with his liberal social justice agenda. I can’t imagine a worse moderator.

07d046 7y ago

My complaint about political topics is that the views expressed just aren't very well informed. Comments are typically what smart engineers would write, but there is very rarely any expertise in the topic like there would be in a discussion about compilers.

repolfx 7y ago
Well informed in what respect? Who should would be considered well informed? People who study politics professionally, so, journalists? I think the discussions here tend to be far more well informed than most political discussions, most of which amount to essays by people who don't even want you to be well informed. This silly New Yorker article is a good case in point. It lists a whole host of complaints about comments here and links to exactly none of them, thus not even letting the reader check if they agree with the journalists assessment. They do of course link to the stories themselves, because those are written by journalistic allies, although the story link would be at the top of any linked HN page. Literally, in a story about HN discussions, none of the links at the start of the story actually go to them. I can only assume this is because so many of those discussions contain well argued, well written comments dissecting poor quality political campaigning that's posing as journalism, and Anna Wiener doesn't want her audience to be exposed to that. And given her attitude I'm not surprised she doesn't want people to see the discussions here. Look at her list of complaints: "ill advised citations", "thought experiments abound", "humane arguments are dismissed as emotional". "Logic, applied narrowly, is used to justify broad moral positions". So this journalist literally rejects logic and thought as a basis for reaching conclusions! I mean, ill advised citations! This is a new concept I've never encountered before. It speaks volumes about the parlous state of the New Yorker that citing sources and using logic is considered bad behaviour. Why should such people be considered better informed than us when it comes to politics?
- chosenbreed37 7y ago
  I'm inclined to agree. People are entitled to their opinions even if they are not well informed. Provided they don't break any rules they should feel free to air them. Those that are better informed have the opportunity to set them straight. One of the reasons I come here is the see the various opinions and arguments. The "ill advised citations" is a bit weird one :-)

FussyZeus 7y ago

This is actually my sole complaint with HN. I love the community and I understand where the moderators are coming from, but I feel that it's important to point out that the position of "keep politics out of $X" is the purest expression of privilege, and in general is an attitude that embraces the status quo, no matter how horrifying it might be for the unprivileged. I'm not saying HN should allow ALL political discussion, but when technological issues inevitably and undeniably involve politics, either by influencing or being influenced, it seems a little cowardly that the general attitude of HN is "just don't discuss it" when the it in that case is core to the issue at hand, even if it happens to be political.

jonathanwallace 7y ago
Politics, IMHO, are about applied relationship and applied power. Ignoring the discussion of both relationships and power leads to an anemic understanding of freedom and what it takes to enable it which leaves us unbalanced and brittle as a civil society. The exercise of this privilege is a systemic, cultural mistake and the tendency of conversations to often devolve into tribalism highlights our lack of sophistication and maturity when it comes to these topics.
- 481092 7y ago
  You could say the same of knowledge also as it is a power and one applied and accrued by relationship; by what material one reads, by whom and from which source it is linked from and to. Academics of various groups tend to have their own sort of tribalism. I think the mods came to the correct conclusion that politics, although annoying as hell sometimes, is a fabric of society which is nigh impossible to shed when discussing just about anything.
afarrell 7y ago
Something can be both an expression of privilege and a very good idea. Example: The advice to get at least 8 hours of sleep at a regular time each night. This reflects: - the economic privilege of not needing to do irregular shift work - not having a chronic disease which interrupts sleep - not being a parent - having a regular place to sleep at all. However, it is still a good idea for one’s physical and mental health. Likewise, a community might reasonably decide that certain political discussions are too acrimonious to have productively. Even if this decision reflects privilege, it might be the only decision under which the community could survive without rupturing. I feel inclined to agree with your second paragraph, but just don’t know if such discussions are actually productive.

ticmasta 7y ago

I've never met Scott but I worked with Dan briefly in the early 2000's and he is a disconcerting combination of brilliance and quiet modesty. It doesn't seem possible that someone as smart and broadly knowledgeable should be so balanced and still. 15 years later he's still one of my most persistent professional memories and I'm glad he's found a cause perfectly suited for his skill set and temperament.

perfmode 7y ago

you may have missed this thought-provoking passage on the intractability of avoiding the political: > Down the page, another user expressed disdain for the experiment. “The idea that we can carve out a space that exists outside of politics and ideology is delusional,” the user wrote. “Squelching political discussion won’t cause us all to transcend ideology, it’ll just make it impossible to discuss or critique a dominant ideology whenever one shows up in someone’s unstated assumptions.” > “Of course it’s delusional,” Gackle replied. “And still we have to moderate this site.” Three days later, he announced that Political Detox Week would be coming to an end. They’d learned, among other things, that “it’s impossible to define ‘politics’ with any consensus because that question is itself highly political.”

radcon 7y ago

> HN may be an echo chamber but it is a pretty big one with a lot of voices in it. The echo chamber effect on HN is far worse than any comparable site, it's just not as obvious because there's zero transparency. At least there are tons of 3rd party sites that allow us to see censorship in real time on Reddit. No such thing exists for HN. I have no sympathy for the moderators here. I believe they moderate very arbitrarily and are accountable to no one.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
I wonder if you're conflating that actions of the moderators with downvoting done by readers?
- radcon 7y ago
  Do you know what an echo chamber is? Both of those actions lead to the same result.
danso 7y ago
Which metrics are you using the gauge the echo chamber effect, since we don't have third-party tools to gauge how much is purportedly being censored?

gwbas1c 7y ago

Honestly, I've seen some very strange moderation here. For example, a rather good article explaining Bill Gates and Warren Buffet's concerns about cryptocurrency was removed. Remember, Bill Gates is an excellent software engineer; and both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet know a thing or two about economics.

unreal37 7y ago
Perhaps you're confusing moderation and flagging. Users themselves get tired of bitcoin flogging and bitcoin bashing, over and over again. Variety is the spice of life.

thedaemon 7y ago

Unobtrusive is far from what the moderation here is on Hackernews. They literally have to moderate as a regular comment. Thus, being obtrusive and breaking their own rules. You might not have noticed it, but me, being a "bad" member, gets the moderation comments all the time and I definitely find them obtrusive. I'd rather just get downvotes from members, like the site should be, instead of comments from dang.

saagarjha 7y ago
dang's job is to be obtrusive when you're posting comments that aren't useful…
- stefantalpalaru 7y ago
  > dang's job is to be obtrusive when you're posting comments that aren't useful… I thought it's to be obtrusive when a friend in need is threatening suicide. This "dang" guy must be a big proponent of Social Darwinism.
chappi42 7y ago
> being a "bad" member why don't you strive to be a "good" member? Try autogenic training! (why not?) If you say, "Life is suffering. Life is not happiness. Best you figure that out now." it will influence/overtake you. Try the opposite :-)
- thedaemon 7y ago
  I'm a bad member according to some users who down vote me. I do strive to be a "useful" member and post what I think is conversation. Some disagree and down vote. I like to be "devil's advocate in life". Does that make me wrong? No, it's helpful to have arguments and converse. Life is great. Not sure why you think I'm depressed. If you are pulling an old comment of mine, it was context based not my life philosophy. :) PS My original comment here is being downvoted into oblivion. One of my points is made by this gesture.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hnModsRDanger 7y ago

Unobtrusive? Try having a legitimate criticism of Apple. Odds are it gets flagged. I don't mean to limit it to Apple, the mods have a heavy hand.

saagarjha 7y ago
This hasn't been my experience at all. What was your "legitimate criticism"?
- dymk 7y ago
  Oh, bad opinions get downvoted or flagged all the time regardless of how they’re presented. My opinion of “ad tracking is not harmful” obliterated whenever I express it. "Yelp brings value to its users" was obliterated a few days ago.

cowabungacode 7y ago

> In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is.... a "haven for alt-right", Really? Do you really think that a strength of HN is that it is a haven for the alt-right? This is shocking and extremly scary to me. The alt-right wants me to die. Is this site a haven for those who want to kill off people like me? That's abhorrent. I agree that HN is a haven for the alt-right but I do not think that is a GOOD thing! From Wikipedia, > The alt-right ... is... white supremacist, white nationalist, white separatist, anti-immigration and sometimes antisemitic movement based in the United States I do not think that it is a strength of HN that it is a haven for the modern day Nazis of the world. I think it strictly devalues the site and reduces conversation quality here dramatically. Those people do not argue in good faith, they flag climate change articles so we cannot talk about good solutions to real problems facing all of us, and they also convince the moderators to ban discussion of Russia's cyberattacks here. The moderators cave their policies to white supremacists and hard-line rules that minimize the points given and comments written about Russian cyberattacks. That HN is a "haven for [Nazis and racists]" is decidedly not a good thing.

1000units 7y ago
The "alt-right" is mostly a boogieman for talking heads. One of my personal hobbies is hanging out in politically extreme internet communities (of both polarities) and arguing with people. Groups labeled "white-supremacist" rarely even contain a large number of white people.
- cowabungacode 7y ago
  > The "alt-right" is mostly a boogieman for talking heads. No, it's not. The alt-right uses anonymous web boards like this one (but not HN to my knowledge) to coordinate and celebrate mass shootings that are directly admitted to be race-focused and white-supremacist-led. (Edit: The alt-right does use HN to spread hate and their "ideology", but I have not seen direct specific calls to violence here) > Groups labeled "white-supremacist" rarely even contain a large number of white people. I don't see how this is relevant at all. Being white has nothing to do with being a white supremacist. There are lots of non-white white-supremacists in the world. You're using logical fallacies like whataboutism and appeals to false authority instead of debating anything of substance.

OrgNet 7y ago

> their unobtrusive Not unobtrusive but at least, a lot of the time, they leave a comment to let everyone know that they changed what users posted, when they hide posts, etc. The main problem is when they don't (it feels more like the content is being censored or tailored to their views then).

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

I didn't know what "SJW" meant. Looked it up, it means "social justice warrior", defined by Wikipedia as "a pejorative term for an individual who promotes socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism, as well as identity politics".

burfog 7y ago
A funny thing is that "SJW" wasn't at all a pejorative. It is a self-selected name. The early usage was people proudly calling themselves SJWs. To now say that SJW is a perjorative is weird. Sure, many of the people using the term happen to really dislike SJWs, but how can a self-selected name ever be a perjorative?

stcredzero 7y ago

In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" Such labels are a part and parcel of in-group/out-group psychology. In 2019, by analogy, we should all be wary when people are starting to probe those "ports." I'm pretty sure that I've been seen as both by different people at different times, though recently on HN I've been spending a lot of energy defending a particular principle. Going way back, I'd been pre-judged as a woo-woo hippy, a yuppie, and all sorts of different things since. If we take a step back and look at the broader arc of history, what we have to be wary of are narratives which attempt to paint entire groups of people as morally inferior threats. (For a variety of reasons, including world view.) These narratives always precede the great evils of history. These narratives always deserve great skepticism -- we should always "follow the money" and see who benefits from the pushing of the narrative. We should ask who stands to gain power.

Causality1 7y ago
Yes. One of the most wearying things about the modern web is having to always tailor your comments and arguments to whatever atmosphere is going on at the moment, particularly when you're forced to constantly use analogies to get around reactionary biases. For example, if the current discussion is circle-jerking about how oppressed men/women/blacks/whites are, you end up having to frame any defense or problem relating to the disfavored group in terms of the favored group just to avoid getting downvoted to oblivion. You can never argue on principle, you have to put it in terms of what/who people like at the moment. If you don't, you get labeled as a member of or "on the team" of the disfavored group and summarily dismissed.

wpietri 7y ago

> both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" I definitely want to give credit to dang and sctb for making it that way. It could have gone differently. In particular, the no-politics argument is basically a fancy way of saying "nothing that challenges the status quo please". [1] I really appreciate them trying to keep the forum in a state where these discussion can at least happen. I would have left long ago if flagging had continued to be used to kill topics. [1] See, e.g., Prof Ichikawa on how skepticism gets misused to defend the status quo: https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433 https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433

SquareWheel 7y ago
This user seems to be conflating skepticism with denialism. These two groups would take completely different positions on the issues listed (eg. climate change).
- wpietri 7y ago
  When you say "this user" you're talking about Dr Ichikawa, the professor of philosophy? Who specializes in the very topic you're attempting to correct them on? I can't tell if you're serious or if this is just some sort of Poe's Law attempt to satirize the behavior he's pointing out.
  - SquareWheel 7y ago
    The skeptical movement subscribes to critical thinking, empiricism, and applying the scientific model to find answers. To say that skeptics don't believe in climate change is very untrue. This is contrasted to denialism which denies claims out of hand. This is not based on scientific data, but gut feeling or motivated reasoning. Dr. Ichikawa is thus describing denialism in his tweets. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical_movement * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism edit: Here is an article on the distinction from one of the strongest figures in the skeptical movement, Steven Novella. It even focuses on the topic of climate change. https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/skeptic-vs-denier/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/skeptic-vs-den...

sound1 7y ago

A big thank you to Dang! Probably the nicest moderator ever

dmix 7y ago

> HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right" I'm so happy I don't see the world this way. This type of worldview is so tribalistic.

manfredo 7y ago
I didn't read this comment as tribalistic. At it's most cynical, it's pointing out that HN manages to capture a pretty broad range of perspectives despite people's tribalistic tendencies.
- dmix 7y ago
  This assumes that's a helpful dichotomy, which implies categorizing people into such groups, which every indication I've seen those labels are overly broad, highly inaccurate, or used whenever convenient to imply some guilt-by-association. To me they only work to be dismissive of people regardless of the merit or quality of their points and splits everything down ideological lines, which naturally pushes people to protect their side with an us vs them view of things. HN should work towards having thoughtful discussions and providing useful contributions. It shouldn't be about tolerating particular political views or not. That shouldn't be the mod's job.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    I interpreted the use of labels as partly poking fun at how trigger happy many people are with applying those labels. Actual alt right and "sjw cesspool" comments get flagged and dead. Me I felt that the comment meant to communicate that divisive issues that elicit these labels (but don't actually warrant them, hence the quotes around both) are permitted on HN and that is something positive. > HN should work towards having thoughtful discussions and providing useful contributions. It shouldn't be about tolerating particular political views or not. That shouldn't be the mod's job. I agree and I'm confident the previous commenter would as well. The only piece of nuanced disagreement I have is about the involvement of moderators. I agree that ultimately it's the users that need to do work towards providing useful and thoughtful discussion, but moderators do have a crucial role is fostering and maintaining that kind of culture.