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I have complained about this to moderators before. There are certain topics that are almost off limits on HN not due to the rules, but due to the heavy flaggin

by slg 7y ago

I have complained about this to moderators before. There are certain topics that are almost off limits on HN not due to the rules, but due to the heavy flagging they always receive. Articles by, about, and for women are one common example. These articles being flagged results in this community being pulled further into a dangerous realm of misogyny that already exist in some pockets of the tech world. EDIT: Another example of semi-banned topics is criticism of HN. This post was number 1 on the front page a few minutes ago. It is already down to 11 with several older posts with fewer points higher up on the front page. EDIT 2: And now this post is seemingly flagged killed. From number 1 to disappeared in roughly 10 minutes.

ColinWright 7y ago
I'm not a mod and I don't have any inside track, but I've been around a while. I suspect that this item has fallen not because of flags, but because it's got 80 comments and only 75 votes. There is a mechanism as a proxy to detect flame wars, and is not necessarily because of flagging. If you think this has been sunk inappropriately then email the mods. They are quite open to getting honest, constructive comments and suggestions. If you think this item and this discussion is of value to the community, let them know and they might agree and remove the flame-war penalty.
- slg 7y ago
  I have scrolled through several pages and this post is no longer in the top 200 on HN. I have never seen the flame-war penalty hit anything close to that hard that quickly. I am pretty sure this is from user flagging.
  - ColinWright 7y ago
    It may be. I've also now read through most of this thread and I can say categorically that for me, this thread is now mostly full of dross, and I'd be tempted to flag it as being of negative value to HN. I haven't, but I can see why others would. Like it or hate it, the purpose of the voting system is to provide a direction for the content. You may disagree, but it's like elections - you get what "the community" deems valuable or relevant. There's a lot of stuff I post that sinks without trace, and other things that get downvoted into obvlivion even though I personally think they are of positive value. The community decides - you have to accept that.
    - slg 7y ago
      I am not suggesting we remove the ability to downvote or flag. I still want the community to decide most of these things. I simply want more accountability for these actions so they aren't used for petty reasons. You would be free to flag this post for causing a comment section full of garbage. You would just have to say that rather than flagging and moving on.
      - dang 7y ago
        That would lead to a ton of comments saying why they had flagged or downvoted things. Such comments tend to be of low quality and (if people could reply) would lead to endless bickering. IMO it's much better for signal/noise ratio not to go there. I once spoke to the creator of a much larger forum than HN, who told me the biggest mistake they made was to add a meta facility to the site.
        ColinWright 7y ago
        I think the idea is that when you flag or downvote you have to provide a comment on the action, and that comment is then displayed when someone asks for a list of downvotes and/or flags. Those comments are not part of the regular comment system, and one can't reply to them. It's what happens on Lobsters, but whether or not it makes a difference is hard to say. The traffic is small enough that I doubt the effect is properly measurable.
        tptacek 7y ago
        Right, but however you expose that information, aren't you just providing nucleation sites for meta-debates? This is a site that practically begs users to generate opinions about everything; you can't even pick the background color for your blog post without potentially sparking a 10-comment subthread about it. Off-topic meta arguments are arguably the biggest problem comment threads on HN have.
        ColinWright 7y ago
  - dang 7y ago
    It was both, but we turned off the flamewar detector.
- oxnrtr 7y ago
  ... and on Lobsters you would neither need to speculate what happened nor kneel in front of the mods to fix it, because moderation actions are publicly logged¹. :-) ¹ https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations
dang 7y ago
HN has hosted countless threads about gender issues and articles by, about, and for women. Here is one from two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22128385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22128385. Some get flagged; sometimes we turn off the flags, especially when the article contains substantive information and isn't primarily a sensational piece. This is by no means an under-represented topic on this site in relative terms. You may feel that it's under-represented in absolute terms, but that's true of every important topic, because front page space is the scarcest resource HN has. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- slg 7y ago
  Isn't the fact that you regularly have to turn off the flags on these articles a sign that these articles get unnecessarily flagged? And even when you do unflag articles, sometimes it is just too late to rescue. For example, this article was flagged. You unflagged it, but by now it is page 8 instead of number 1 on the front page like it was when I saw it. EDIT: This comment received two downvotes within 3 minutes of me posting. It is a comment buried half way down the comment section on a post that is 8 pages deep on HN. That type of immediate reaction seems strange and as a user it would be helpful to know whether something I said is unfit for this community or if there is some other reason for that reaction. Requiring users explain themselves for this behavior provides some immediate value for me on this comment.
  - dang 7y ago
    It's a sign that moderation mechanisms and user mechanisms sometimes produce different outcomes, which is true of every aspect of HN, and is why moderation is necessary in the first place. I wouldn't draw specific conclusions about gender issues from that. Gender is a well-represented topic on HN, and has been for years. Some people feel it should be more so, some less so; that is also the case for every prominent topic, and doubly so for divisive ones. We didn't unflag this article. We turned off the software penalty called the flamewar detector. There's nothing odd about your comment being downvoted. Other users are still reading this thread just like we are. As for why they downvoted, perhaps they felt you were prosecuting the point in a repetitive way, or that the discussion has gotten too meta. Those things attract downvotes because they quickly get uninteresting.

by slg 7y ago

ColinWright 7y ago

I'm not a mod and I don't have any inside track, but I've been around a while. I suspect that this item has fallen not because of flags, but because it's got 80 comments and only 75 votes. There is a mechanism as a proxy to detect flame wars, and is not necessarily because of flagging. If you think this has been sunk inappropriately then email the mods. They are quite open to getting honest, constructive comments and suggestions. If you think this item and this discussion is of value to the community, let them know and they might agree and remove the flame-war penalty.

slg 7y ago
I have scrolled through several pages and this post is no longer in the top 200 on HN. I have never seen the flame-war penalty hit anything close to that hard that quickly. I am pretty sure this is from user flagging.
- ColinWright 7y ago
  It may be. I've also now read through most of this thread and I can say categorically that for me, this thread is now mostly full of dross, and I'd be tempted to flag it as being of negative value to HN. I haven't, but I can see why others would. Like it or hate it, the purpose of the voting system is to provide a direction for the content. You may disagree, but it's like elections - you get what "the community" deems valuable or relevant. There's a lot of stuff I post that sinks without trace, and other things that get downvoted into obvlivion even though I personally think they are of positive value. The community decides - you have to accept that.
  - slg 7y ago
    I am not suggesting we remove the ability to downvote or flag. I still want the community to decide most of these things. I simply want more accountability for these actions so they aren't used for petty reasons. You would be free to flag this post for causing a comment section full of garbage. You would just have to say that rather than flagging and moving on.
    - dang 7y ago
      That would lead to a ton of comments saying why they had flagged or downvoted things. Such comments tend to be of low quality and (if people could reply) would lead to endless bickering. IMO it's much better for signal/noise ratio not to go there. I once spoke to the creator of a much larger forum than HN, who told me the biggest mistake they made was to add a meta facility to the site.
      - ColinWright 7y ago
        I think the idea is that when you flag or downvote you have to provide a comment on the action, and that comment is then displayed when someone asks for a list of downvotes and/or flags. Those comments are not part of the regular comment system, and one can't reply to them. It's what happens on Lobsters, but whether or not it makes a difference is hard to say. The traffic is small enough that I doubt the effect is properly measurable.
        tptacek 7y ago
        Right, but however you expose that information, aren't you just providing nucleation sites for meta-debates? This is a site that practically begs users to generate opinions about everything; you can't even pick the background color for your blog post without potentially sparking a 10-comment subthread about it. Off-topic meta arguments are arguably the biggest problem comment threads on HN have.
        ColinWright 7y ago
- dang 7y ago
  It was both, but we turned off the flamewar detector.
oxnrtr 7y ago
... and on Lobsters you would neither need to speculate what happened nor kneel in front of the mods to fix it, because moderation actions are publicly logged¹. :-) ¹ https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations

dang 7y ago

HN has hosted countless threads about gender issues and articles by, about, and for women. Here is one from two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22128385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22128385. Some get flagged; sometimes we turn off the flags, especially when the article contains substantive information and isn't primarily a sensational piece. This is by no means an under-represented topic on this site in relative terms. You may feel that it's under-represented in absolute terms, but that's true of every important topic, because front page space is the scarcest resource HN has. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

slg 7y ago
Isn't the fact that you regularly have to turn off the flags on these articles a sign that these articles get unnecessarily flagged? And even when you do unflag articles, sometimes it is just too late to rescue. For example, this article was flagged. You unflagged it, but by now it is page 8 instead of number 1 on the front page like it was when I saw it. EDIT: This comment received two downvotes within 3 minutes of me posting. It is a comment buried half way down the comment section on a post that is 8 pages deep on HN. That type of immediate reaction seems strange and as a user it would be helpful to know whether something I said is unfit for this community or if there is some other reason for that reaction. Requiring users explain themselves for this behavior provides some immediate value for me on this comment.
- dang 7y ago
  It's a sign that moderation mechanisms and user mechanisms sometimes produce different outcomes, which is true of every aspect of HN, and is why moderation is necessary in the first place. I wouldn't draw specific conclusions about gender issues from that. Gender is a well-represented topic on HN, and has been for years. Some people feel it should be more so, some less so; that is also the case for every prominent topic, and doubly so for divisive ones. We didn't unflag this article. We turned off the software penalty called the flamewar detector. There's nothing odd about your comment being downvoted. Other users are still reading this thread just like we are. As for why they downvoted, perhaps they felt you were prosecuting the point in a repetitive way, or that the discussion has gotten too meta. Those things attract downvotes because they quickly get uninteresting.