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Article written by a black man, in a column called "Black Voices", about black beekeepers in Detroit, and moderators feel the need to remove "Black" from the ti

by GuiA 7y ago

Article written by a black man, in a column called "Black Voices", about black beekeepers in Detroit, and moderators feel the need to remove "Black" from the title in order to "step away from the flamebait". New low for Hacker News.

dang 7y ago
What a cheap shot. I didn't "feel the need". I'm doing what we always do, which is try to set the articles here up for the fairest, most thoughtful hearing the community can give them, and minimizing the low-quality rage and noise that everything can easily slip into. If people feel like that word in the title is essential to its content, I have zero problem with that. What we have a problem with is threads that fly off into ragey and shallow disputes about titles. Such discussion requires zero thought and zero effort—only reactivity. All people do when they argue like that—on whatever side of whatever issue—is angrily repeat things that have been angrily repeated before. That's not what HN is for. When we see signs of it happening, we've learned that the easiest thing to do is just change the title to reflect the actual content of the article. Unfortunately in this case the attempted cure produced more of the disease. That happens sometimes. In that case we change it back and plead with people to talk about the article instead. Please talk about the article instead now.
- GuiA 7y ago
  To pick one example amongst many, when there are articles about “12 year old does X”, there is plenty of low quality rage and noise about how valuing accomplishments based on age isn’t acceptable and so on, yet I’ve never seen such a title get edited. Painting it as something the moderation team systematically does is disingenuous.
  - dang 7y ago
    I'm sure that we've edited such titles in the past. "I've never seen it" is a poor metric for making general claims about moderation. People see and remember only what stands out to them, and what stands out is determined by their pre-existing views. That's why the general claims people make about HN moderation are so starkly contradictory. If there's one mechanical, utterly reliable phenomenon I've learned about from moderating HN, that's the one.
ajna91 7y ago
Be kind to the mods, they do their best to make judgement calls, and dang is very receptive to feedback. No need to be nasty.

by GuiA 7y ago

dang 7y ago

What a cheap shot. I didn't "feel the need". I'm doing what we always do, which is try to set the articles here up for the fairest, most thoughtful hearing the community can give them, and minimizing the low-quality rage and noise that everything can easily slip into. If people feel like that word in the title is essential to its content, I have zero problem with that. What we have a problem with is threads that fly off into ragey and shallow disputes about titles. Such discussion requires zero thought and zero effort—only reactivity. All people do when they argue like that—on whatever side of whatever issue—is angrily repeat things that have been angrily repeated before. That's not what HN is for. When we see signs of it happening, we've learned that the easiest thing to do is just change the title to reflect the actual content of the article. Unfortunately in this case the attempted cure produced more of the disease. That happens sometimes. In that case we change it back and plead with people to talk about the article instead. Please talk about the article instead now.

GuiA 7y ago
To pick one example amongst many, when there are articles about “12 year old does X”, there is plenty of low quality rage and noise about how valuing accomplishments based on age isn’t acceptable and so on, yet I’ve never seen such a title get edited. Painting it as something the moderation team systematically does is disingenuous.
- dang 7y ago
  I'm sure that we've edited such titles in the past. "I've never seen it" is a poor metric for making general claims about moderation. People see and remember only what stands out to them, and what stands out is determined by their pre-existing views. That's why the general claims people make about HN moderation are so starkly contradictory. If there's one mechanical, utterly reliable phenomenon I've learned about from moderating HN, that's the one.

ajna91 7y ago

Be kind to the mods, they do their best to make judgement calls, and dang is very receptive to feedback. No need to be nasty.