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Hacker news and dang in particular has a very good track record of even handed and well thought of moderation. They have definitely earned benefit of the doubt
by im3w1l 6y ago
Hacker news and dang in particular has a very good track record of even handed and well thought of moderation. They have definitely earned benefit of the doubt from me. Let's wait a little before bringing the torches.
- dooglius 6y agoAnd how exactly did you determine this track record? It's not as if there's a log or appeals process...
- yorwba 6y agoThe log is https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... The appeals process is to write to hn@ycombinator.com (Contact link in the footer.)
- viklove 6y agoThat's not a log, not even close. It's a link to dang's comment history, not a list of every comment/submission that has been deleted by the moderation team. Go ahead and downvote me, doesn't make what I'm saying wrong.
- kjaftaedi 6y agoAKA you want a tool that can be used by spammers to game the system. If you don't like the moderation, apply to be a moderator.. or start your own forum.
- viklove 6y agoI have: https://plebia.io https://plebia.io The moderation is 100% transparent and you can see a log of every comment/submission that a moderator has removed. Furthermore, each subforum can control their own moderation team through a voting system. Moderators should serve their users, not rule over them as dictators.
- joenot443 6y agoCan you think of any popular services with a moderation team which publishes such a log? I definitely can't.
- dooglius 6y agohttps://lobste.rs/about#transparency https://lobste.rs/about#transparency
- crankylinuxuser 6y agoI would think that having more transparency (eg: moderation/removal log) is much more appropriate than "he looks good to me". I've already seen a few times where content demeaning YC companies mysteriously got disappeared... and then summarily blamed on automated removal. Who's right? No clue. But being able to see that log as it happens would be a significant good faith action.
- Beldin 6y agoThis leads to am interesting security question: how to achieve real transparency? I mean HN could publish a ranking algorithm and claim that that is what they use. But then we still wouldn't know (1) if that is really what's running in the background, (2) if that is really receiving user inputs that lead to the observed outcome. I'm guessing for most people here the programming assignment "create a fake log including these real inputs so that this story is suddenly dropped according to the ranking algorithm" isn't that hard. I think that in the end, you end up trusting something. (Eg. Is the log fake or real?) IF that is so, you might as well design the system around a predetermined root of trust... here, the moderators.
- crankylinuxuser 6y agoI also think that "real transparency" is something one can approach. Just because complete transparency is nigh impossible doesn't mean the steps towards it is worthless. And there is always a lower layer one can point at that is opaque... right down to the silicon.
- zelphirkalt 6y agoPerhaps both are correct. You can automatically remove "content demeaning YC companies".