4 ms·

It's healthier than many other online communities, but that's not a terribly high bar to clear. The moderation is reasonably effective against the most extreme

It's healthier than many other online communities, but that's not a terribly high bar to clear. The moderation is reasonably effective against the most extremely toxic content, but IMHO has a tendency to privilege toxic opinions stated in measured tones against the pushback they create. As for member downvotes, I can often predict which comments of mine will attract downvotes: humor will tend to get downvoted as irrelevant, while the relevancy of replies complaining about said humor is rarely questioned. Certain subjects are downvote magnets: Criticism of Elon Musk, scepticism about nuclear power, support for intellectual property rights (especially in the case of music), support for ethnic and gender inclusiveness. It's possible, though, that these are just hot button issues, and the opposite opinions also attract downvotes. The technology backing HN is still massively inferior in every respect to what Usenet was 30 years ago. I tend to read each thread only once, and then only follow up discussions of my own comments. Following a thread over several days is a near hopeless endeavor. Why doesn't anybody combine the light touch moderation of HN, combined with the tools that a decent newsreader like nn or GNUS could provide?

Macha 7y ago
I think praise of nuclear power and criticism of anything done with the goal of inclusiveness also attract downvotes, so those two fall under the "hot button" case rather than the community being one-sided. I would agree that the site is pretty strongly pro-Musk and anti-copyright though.
sankalpb 7y ago
Hey, thanks for bringing up the question of whether certain topics are 'downvote magnets', 'hot button issues', etc. I'm fascinated by your observation that 'following a thread over several days is a near hopeless endeavor' - will you say more?
- striking 7y ago
  Unless you use https://www.hnreplies.com/ https://www.hnreplies.com/, you don't get a notification for when someone has replied to your comment. Even then it is as an email, decreasing immediacy and causing back and forth sessions to have overhead. I understand this as an intentional feature of HN.
  - sankalpb 7y ago
    thanks, I hadn't known about this service!
    - JohnL4 7y ago
      Me too. :-)
- microtherion 7y ago
  I used to be able to jump into a big discussion, read dozens of comments, log out, and the next day could go back and read the NEW comments in that discussion. With HN, I can do that for my own comments, but otherwise, I have to jump back into the whole thread and scroll past all the accumulated discussion to find new contributions. And good newsreaders were also able to selectively skip a comment and everybody replying to it (e.g. if a discussion devolved into a tangent that was less interesting), instead of a whole subject.
paulmd 7y ago
> The moderation ... has a tendency to privilege toxic opinions stated in measured tones against the pushback they create. I have noticed this as well. Furthermore, the moderators definitely have a personal libertarian bent that regularly seeps into selective moderation. I routinely see someone declare an interesting political assertion and then any replies to it that disagree with the principle are shut down as being political, but the parent post is ignored. Personally I inherently disagree that a forum can really be kept apolitical. Politics is the art of things that matter, the only things that are entirely apolitical are irrelevant and uncontroversial. As soon as you bring money, power, or status into the picture in any respect, someone will turn it into a political issue. I am not saying turn this into a campaign rally but many issues have underlying causes or worldviews that inch into the political domain, it is unavoidable. > The technology backing HN is still massively inferior in every respect to what Usenet was 30 years ago. I tend to read each thread only once, and then only follow up discussions of my own comments. Following a thread over several days is a near hopeless endeavor. Why doesn't anybody combine the light touch moderation of HN, combined with the tools that a decent newsreader like nn or GNUS could provide? You've just described a traditional threaded forum. Want to discuss some different aspect of a topic? Start a new thread. And in fact this significantly minimizes the amount of "redundant" conversation where four people are arguing similar things in different comment trees of a topic and you make a similar post multiple times. Furthermore, a threaded model contributes to a more collaborative discussion. It's not upvoting my viewpoint and downvoting yours, as Reddit-style models inevitably turns into, it's just people discussing something because they want to discuss them. Not that arguments and flamewars don't exist, but when you turn it into a points-scoring game, you get sports-team mentality. But people like the dopamine rush, so everything has to have upvotes and downvotes and scoring nowadays. It is what people congregate to. Traditional forums still exist and yet here we are, all of us. (I do kind of agree to your point that having an "inbox" model like newsgroups could allow better discussion than a purely comment-tree based model like reddit or HN, but I'm not entirely sure that allowing the discussion to "branch" arbitrarily much is actually a benefit. You can still follow multiple discussions within a single thread on a regular forum too. However, I am very much of the opinion that "voting" systems inherently turn into "sports teams" and eventually a hivemind. The fact that Usenet and traditional forums aren't "gamified" is a huge plus IMO. The fact that "winning" means the dissenting viewpoint is suppressed is extremely problematic - I browse HN with 'showdead' on for exactly that reason.)
dang 7y ago
What are say the top 3 things from Usenet that would make HN better if we added them?
- microtherion 7y ago
  A big one is marking comments as read, so one could resume reading a thread the next day and not see previous comments anymore. But I don't know how one would integrate that with a tree view, which, as such, also has some advantages. Encouraging selective quoting with interspersed comments, but having seen the triumph of top quoting in e-mail discussions, this might be a lost art anyway. Also, personal kill files. Bring back the PLONK! Thanks to the thread organization of HN, subject kill files are no longer really necessary, but being able to mute people for 30 days or permanently may still be useful (And it might contribute to downvotes being used less for subjective differences of opinion). I also used to like the ability to easily take discussions to email, but Usenet was a smaller place back then and this may no longer scale.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I used to think HN would benefit from more state-keeping, to make it easier to follow threads over longer time periods. I'm now convinced the opposite is true: that HN pushes threads towards being more ephemeral is something that makes it better as a community, not worse. I spent a lot of time on Usenet, and I don't think month-long threads (and their attendant personality factions) would make this place better.
    - lifeisstillgood 7y ago
      One thing that might make a difference is to have a count of comments below mine - I often check my own 'thread' and it would be useful to have something like "you made 6 comments made in past day, and people have left 14 sub comments, 3 in last 2 hours". If I cared I could dive down and see where conversations were happening. as it is I really only spot a top couple. I guess it's halfway between real state and ephemeral
    - kick 7y ago

Macha 7y ago

I think praise of nuclear power and criticism of anything done with the goal of inclusiveness also attract downvotes, so those two fall under the "hot button" case rather than the community being one-sided. I would agree that the site is pretty strongly pro-Musk and anti-copyright though.

sankalpb 7y ago

Hey, thanks for bringing up the question of whether certain topics are 'downvote magnets', 'hot button issues', etc. I'm fascinated by your observation that 'following a thread over several days is a near hopeless endeavor' - will you say more?

striking 7y ago
Unless you use https://www.hnreplies.com/ https://www.hnreplies.com/, you don't get a notification for when someone has replied to your comment. Even then it is as an email, decreasing immediacy and causing back and forth sessions to have overhead. I understand this as an intentional feature of HN.
- sankalpb 7y ago
  thanks, I hadn't known about this service!
  - JohnL4 7y ago
    Me too. :-)
microtherion 7y ago
I used to be able to jump into a big discussion, read dozens of comments, log out, and the next day could go back and read the NEW comments in that discussion. With HN, I can do that for my own comments, but otherwise, I have to jump back into the whole thread and scroll past all the accumulated discussion to find new contributions. And good newsreaders were also able to selectively skip a comment and everybody replying to it (e.g. if a discussion devolved into a tangent that was less interesting), instead of a whole subject.

paulmd 7y ago

> The moderation ... has a tendency to privilege toxic opinions stated in measured tones against the pushback they create. I have noticed this as well. Furthermore, the moderators definitely have a personal libertarian bent that regularly seeps into selective moderation. I routinely see someone declare an interesting political assertion and then any replies to it that disagree with the principle are shut down as being political, but the parent post is ignored. Personally I inherently disagree that a forum can really be kept apolitical. Politics is the art of things that matter, the only things that are entirely apolitical are irrelevant and uncontroversial. As soon as you bring money, power, or status into the picture in any respect, someone will turn it into a political issue. I am not saying turn this into a campaign rally but many issues have underlying causes or worldviews that inch into the political domain, it is unavoidable. > The technology backing HN is still massively inferior in every respect to what Usenet was 30 years ago. I tend to read each thread only once, and then only follow up discussions of my own comments. Following a thread over several days is a near hopeless endeavor. Why doesn't anybody combine the light touch moderation of HN, combined with the tools that a decent newsreader like nn or GNUS could provide? You've just described a traditional threaded forum. Want to discuss some different aspect of a topic? Start a new thread. And in fact this significantly minimizes the amount of "redundant" conversation where four people are arguing similar things in different comment trees of a topic and you make a similar post multiple times. Furthermore, a threaded model contributes to a more collaborative discussion. It's not upvoting my viewpoint and downvoting yours, as Reddit-style models inevitably turns into, it's just people discussing something because they want to discuss them. Not that arguments and flamewars don't exist, but when you turn it into a points-scoring game, you get sports-team mentality. But people like the dopamine rush, so everything has to have upvotes and downvotes and scoring nowadays. It is what people congregate to. Traditional forums still exist and yet here we are, all of us. (I do kind of agree to your point that having an "inbox" model like newsgroups could allow better discussion than a purely comment-tree based model like reddit or HN, but I'm not entirely sure that allowing the discussion to "branch" arbitrarily much is actually a benefit. You can still follow multiple discussions within a single thread on a regular forum too. However, I am very much of the opinion that "voting" systems inherently turn into "sports teams" and eventually a hivemind. The fact that Usenet and traditional forums aren't "gamified" is a huge plus IMO. The fact that "winning" means the dissenting viewpoint is suppressed is extremely problematic - I browse HN with 'showdead' on for exactly that reason.)

dang 7y ago

What are say the top 3 things from Usenet that would make HN better if we added them?

microtherion 7y ago
A big one is marking comments as read, so one could resume reading a thread the next day and not see previous comments anymore. But I don't know how one would integrate that with a tree view, which, as such, also has some advantages. Encouraging selective quoting with interspersed comments, but having seen the triumph of top quoting in e-mail discussions, this might be a lost art anyway. Also, personal kill files. Bring back the PLONK! Thanks to the thread organization of HN, subject kill files are no longer really necessary, but being able to mute people for 30 days or permanently may still be useful (And it might contribute to downvotes being used less for subjective differences of opinion). I also used to like the ability to easily take discussions to email, but Usenet was a smaller place back then and this may no longer scale.
- tptacek 7y ago
  I used to think HN would benefit from more state-keeping, to make it easier to follow threads over longer time periods. I'm now convinced the opposite is true: that HN pushes threads towards being more ephemeral is something that makes it better as a community, not worse. I spent a lot of time on Usenet, and I don't think month-long threads (and their attendant personality factions) would make this place better.
  - lifeisstillgood 7y ago
    One thing that might make a difference is to have a count of comments below mine - I often check my own 'thread' and it would be useful to have something like "you made 6 comments made in past day, and people have left 14 sub comments, 3 in last 2 hours". If I cared I could dive down and see where conversations were happening. as it is I really only spot a top couple. I guess it's halfway between real state and ephemeral
  - kick 7y ago