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Hello, bad actor here. I only use Hacker News and Reddit. And I always manage to get banned every few months, so I guess I'm a "bad actor". Usually I start of

Hello, bad actor here. I only use Hacker News and Reddit. And I always manage to get banned every few months, so I guess I'm a "bad actor". Usually I start off OK. I can rank up 1000 points on HN or 20k karma on Reddit quickly because some of the discussions are interesting and non-inflammatory and I have interesting things to say. But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find a comment inappropriate or unfair, or mod behavior hypocritical. And I share that in a post that gets flagged or downvoted, and I get banned. It is hard to detect because I think anyone has potential to become a bad actor in the eyes of a mod. There is no such thing as an unbiased mod. They will rub some people the wrong way with their comments or actions. Some personality type's are just not compatible with what mods want to see in their well-tended gardens. I've never stalked or hounded anyone, and I've disagreed with dang's assessment of my posts once or twice, (FYI DanG is a paid mod, not a volunteer, which is probably why he's so calm about it, even though he get's riled too: read the New Yorker article about him) but this appears to be a problem techies cannot solve. Why do I say this? Because it's been going on since the 80's with Usenet. Almost 40 years of trolls, and tech hasn't solved it, but it has created some systems that have worked to keep the weeds out of the gardens. But gardens still need weeding.

jlg23 6y ago
> But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find a comment inappropriate or unfair, or mod behavior hypocritical. And I share that in a post that gets flagged or downvoted, and I get banned. Kurt Tucholsky gave great advice on how to write a letter to a government agency that is applicable to all potentially heated discussions: * write letter. * put letter in drawer. * wait three days. don't look at letter in drawer, write a new letter and send that one.
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  Hey, that's a great idea! Instead of getting warned or banned, a user is placed in a timeout box where all of their posts get a three day lag and remain editable, and when the user logs in, they must re-read their posts before proceeding to the site. Kind of an 'in-your-face' reminder not to be a troll. It wouldn't stop the insane trolls, but maybe it would give the borderline trolls time to think.
  - CogentHedgehog 6y ago
    I like this idea too. Also temporary bans are good for offering a cool-down period for users who generally are constructive but tend to lose their tempers from time to time.
- castillar76 6y ago
  This is absolutely true, and it's unfortunate that the current format of sites like Reddit and HN discourage this kind of behavior. The comments that get the most votes are the ones that have been present the longest, which incentivizes early and fast, "shoot from the hip" commenting so your comments get into the flow early where people can see and vote on them. In most large subreddits, it's basically not worth your time to comment on anything more than 12 hours old or so: no one but the original poster (and sometimes not even them!) will see or read your comments. I'm not sure how best to fix that. Some subreddits like /r/scenesfromahat use a timed-release system that only displays vote scores on comments after a fixed period (12 or 24 hours, I forget which). That at least helps reduce the first-comment effect, but it still means that anything after the votes are revealed is basically not going to be seen.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > I'm not sure how best to fix that. Some subreddits like /r/scenesfromahat use a timed-release system that only displays vote scores on comments after a fixed period (12 or 24 hours, I forget which). That at least helps reduce the first-comment effect, but it still means that anything after the votes are revealed is basically not going to be seen. Isn't that a standard subreddit setting? I don't think that actually affects the problem you were describing. I think it's only meant to help keep the vote tallys from influencing user behavior (e.g. bemoaning how many up/down votes some comment got, being extra motivated to karmawhore). In my experience, quick-feedback scores seem to have a negative influence on people's behavior and emotional experience. IIRC, HN used to show comments scores, but stopped some years ago. I personally try to disable such "features" as much as possible.
  - AlexMax 6y ago
    > I'm not sure how best to fix that. At a certain scale, I think threaded conversations are incredibly difficult to follow without a voting system to sort it out, and once you introduce a voting system you end up with voting system problems as you mentioned. I honestly think that flat forums are more fit for purpose. Multiple concurrent conversations end up being a bit messy, but there was at least a reasonable chance that someone would reply to any given post, since everybody in the thread was on the same page. Heck, you can even gamify engagement with a flat forum - one of those that I still frequent allows you to "react" to any given post. It doesn't actually do anything except have a number beside the post tick up, but people still use it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
loceng 6y ago
I've long argued that the downvote is terrible for civil discourse, I've had to tread carefully and be warned many times when I comment on it - including writing in-depth constructive criticism and not simply whining. It's strange to me that especially on a technology forum discussing the negatives or pitfalls of certain mechanisms is being suppressed, censored - just like with politics, as politics is inherently intertwined with everything including non-action.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  The upvote/downvote thing was way, way worse when vote counts were shown per-post. That went away years ago and I think the current system seems to work pretty well when viewed through a macro lens. (In the sense of "is this a good community overall?" and "would it likely be worse if the up/down voting were entirely removed?") I'm on another forum that opted for an up/down vote system and showed counts per-post much like news.yc used to. It created so much drama and anxiety that people were openly antagonistic towards each other over what amounted to fake-internet-points. The solution the admins came up with over there was "keep the counts shown publicly" but also "make public the specific votes that were up/down on any given post" (with an anonymization of all historical downvotes before the policy change, but not afterwards). Within days, the community adapted and it was a huge net benefit, IMO.
  - loceng 6y ago
    What benefits do downvotes provide over just an upvote sorting the best content to the top and ability to report a link or comment for some greater infraction than difference of understanding?
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      Downvoting for being blatantly inaccurate or blatantly anti-community seems a worthwhile community-sourced signal for the posts of bad actors (whether temporary or permanently bad actors). This should absolutely factor into the sorting and eventual hiding of sufficiently negative posts. For people who think of themselves as good actors, I will reflect on posts that attract downvotes and try to figure out if I should have been more constructive on a given post. (I don't "care" about the score per-se, but I do care about the community that I'm part of and if people are telling me that I'm being an asshole on a given post, I should reflect on that, decide if I agree with them, and if I do, to change next time. (Often, I think my content was fine and someone just disagreed and used a downvote to express that. That's not how I use downvotes, but if they do, so be it...))
lidHanteyk 6y ago
Another "bad actor" here. I think that it's a combination of two phenomena: * I have accounts not just here, but also at places like Lobsters and Something Awful. In those places, because accounts are rare and can be banned so easily, discourse is constantly trying to stay much more civil than here or Reddit. * As a former community moderator, I don't respect moderation actions on sites where anonymous signup is allowed. You asked for hoi polloi to wander in off the street and give their opinions; you can't then wonder why discourse is trash. Here, it's even worse; the moderators are paid for their work, which lends a clear bias to every moderation action. Similar happenings on Reddit led directly to user protests and revolts, and it's amazing that the community tolerates paid moderation here. The idea of the well-tended garden is a potent one. I have had to tolerate obviously toxic but helpful people before and it is always irritating to not ban them, despite knowing that they are good for the garden.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
  Banning is more like pruning weeds than pulling out weeds.
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  > I have had to tolerate obviously toxic but helpful people before I understand where you are coming from here. I struggle with this. I think there is a legit theory for it, usually given in the context of how to reconcile shitty behavior of geniuses (Picasso comes to mind: legendary artist, shitty human.) Even if toxic people have something good to say once in a while, do the ends justify the means if they stomp all over the roses in the process? > You asked for hoi polloi to wander in off the street The garden analogy is potent because where I live there is a huge rose garden that anyone can wander in off the street and visit. Some people come in and do stamp on the roses. And it sucks for everyone else. Which is why I can understand the desire to keep those people out. However, shouldn't the gardeners KNOW that there are and always will be shitty humans? I'm truly ambivalent on this one: I want to participate, but I lack impulse control, so I'm excluded. That's not fair. And if I was tending a garden, I'd want to keep the "me"s out.
  - 6y ago
jborichevskiy 6y ago
> (FYI DanG is a paid mod, not a volunteer, which is probably why he's so calm about it, even though he get's riled too: read the New Yorker article about him) If anyone else is interested, here it is: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th... Some interesting stuff in there, though I would love to read more about the behind-the-scenes tools they use to search and keep track of everything.
dgzl 6y ago
I was banned from r/hotsauce because I posted a coupon-code for a brand I was interested in trying. They were trying to sell stock to help mitigate the downfall of the COVID-19. The mod said I was an advertising shill and needed to be purged... As if people posting their collections all day didn't count as advertising.
- BubRoss 6y ago
  A lot of subreddits end up being snakes telling their tail how it's the best tail. A lot of those can turn into ads as people start making whatever brands to get in on the circle jerk. Some subreddits I suspect go further and have companies working with moderators to do very potent marketing without anyone drawing attention to it. /r/mechanicalkeyboards, /r/gadgets, etc, the list goes on.
  - dgzl 6y ago
    And my desperate attempts to become unbanned was met with paranoid skepticism and unfounded rebuttals. I had literally only posted one other time, showing off a meager 10 bottle collection. And somehow trying to help not only the community by sharing a discount code, not only starting a discussion about the aforementioned sauces, but also helping the struggling company. I didn't really see a problem with it. The community like the post and engaged, but somehow I was a first-offence marketing shill worth banning for life.
- Jommi 6y ago
  Not sure what i'm missing here. You clearly did not read the subreddit rules before posting. However the fact that you have no recourse after being banned other than debating a mod, that's a clear issue.

jlg23 6y ago

> But then some topics veer into domains that make me angry (hello politics), or I find a comment inappropriate or unfair, or mod behavior hypocritical. And I share that in a post that gets flagged or downvoted, and I get banned. Kurt Tucholsky gave great advice on how to write a letter to a government agency that is applicable to all potentially heated discussions: * write letter. * put letter in drawer. * wait three days. don't look at letter in drawer, write a new letter and send that one.

staycoolboy 6y ago
Hey, that's a great idea! Instead of getting warned or banned, a user is placed in a timeout box where all of their posts get a three day lag and remain editable, and when the user logs in, they must re-read their posts before proceeding to the site. Kind of an 'in-your-face' reminder not to be a troll. It wouldn't stop the insane trolls, but maybe it would give the borderline trolls time to think.
- CogentHedgehog 6y ago
  I like this idea too. Also temporary bans are good for offering a cool-down period for users who generally are constructive but tend to lose their tempers from time to time.
castillar76 6y ago
This is absolutely true, and it's unfortunate that the current format of sites like Reddit and HN discourage this kind of behavior. The comments that get the most votes are the ones that have been present the longest, which incentivizes early and fast, "shoot from the hip" commenting so your comments get into the flow early where people can see and vote on them. In most large subreddits, it's basically not worth your time to comment on anything more than 12 hours old or so: no one but the original poster (and sometimes not even them!) will see or read your comments. I'm not sure how best to fix that. Some subreddits like /r/scenesfromahat use a timed-release system that only displays vote scores on comments after a fixed period (12 or 24 hours, I forget which). That at least helps reduce the first-comment effect, but it still means that anything after the votes are revealed is basically not going to be seen.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > I'm not sure how best to fix that. Some subreddits like /r/scenesfromahat use a timed-release system that only displays vote scores on comments after a fixed period (12 or 24 hours, I forget which). That at least helps reduce the first-comment effect, but it still means that anything after the votes are revealed is basically not going to be seen. Isn't that a standard subreddit setting? I don't think that actually affects the problem you were describing. I think it's only meant to help keep the vote tallys from influencing user behavior (e.g. bemoaning how many up/down votes some comment got, being extra motivated to karmawhore). In my experience, quick-feedback scores seem to have a negative influence on people's behavior and emotional experience. IIRC, HN used to show comments scores, but stopped some years ago. I personally try to disable such "features" as much as possible.
- AlexMax 6y ago
  > I'm not sure how best to fix that. At a certain scale, I think threaded conversations are incredibly difficult to follow without a voting system to sort it out, and once you introduce a voting system you end up with voting system problems as you mentioned. I honestly think that flat forums are more fit for purpose. Multiple concurrent conversations end up being a bit messy, but there was at least a reasonable chance that someone would reply to any given post, since everybody in the thread was on the same page. Heck, you can even gamify engagement with a flat forum - one of those that I still frequent allows you to "react" to any given post. It doesn't actually do anything except have a number beside the post tick up, but people still use it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

loceng 6y ago

I've long argued that the downvote is terrible for civil discourse, I've had to tread carefully and be warned many times when I comment on it - including writing in-depth constructive criticism and not simply whining. It's strange to me that especially on a technology forum discussing the negatives or pitfalls of certain mechanisms is being suppressed, censored - just like with politics, as politics is inherently intertwined with everything including non-action.

sokoloff 6y ago
The upvote/downvote thing was way, way worse when vote counts were shown per-post. That went away years ago and I think the current system seems to work pretty well when viewed through a macro lens. (In the sense of "is this a good community overall?" and "would it likely be worse if the up/down voting were entirely removed?") I'm on another forum that opted for an up/down vote system and showed counts per-post much like news.yc used to. It created so much drama and anxiety that people were openly antagonistic towards each other over what amounted to fake-internet-points. The solution the admins came up with over there was "keep the counts shown publicly" but also "make public the specific votes that were up/down on any given post" (with an anonymization of all historical downvotes before the policy change, but not afterwards). Within days, the community adapted and it was a huge net benefit, IMO.
- loceng 6y ago
  What benefits do downvotes provide over just an upvote sorting the best content to the top and ability to report a link or comment for some greater infraction than difference of understanding?
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    Downvoting for being blatantly inaccurate or blatantly anti-community seems a worthwhile community-sourced signal for the posts of bad actors (whether temporary or permanently bad actors). This should absolutely factor into the sorting and eventual hiding of sufficiently negative posts. For people who think of themselves as good actors, I will reflect on posts that attract downvotes and try to figure out if I should have been more constructive on a given post. (I don't "care" about the score per-se, but I do care about the community that I'm part of and if people are telling me that I'm being an asshole on a given post, I should reflect on that, decide if I agree with them, and if I do, to change next time. (Often, I think my content was fine and someone just disagreed and used a downvote to express that. That's not how I use downvotes, but if they do, so be it...))

lidHanteyk 6y ago

Another "bad actor" here. I think that it's a combination of two phenomena: * I have accounts not just here, but also at places like Lobsters and Something Awful. In those places, because accounts are rare and can be banned so easily, discourse is constantly trying to stay much more civil than here or Reddit. * As a former community moderator, I don't respect moderation actions on sites where anonymous signup is allowed. You asked for hoi polloi to wander in off the street and give their opinions; you can't then wonder why discourse is trash. Here, it's even worse; the moderators are paid for their work, which lends a clear bias to every moderation action. Similar happenings on Reddit led directly to user protests and revolts, and it's amazing that the community tolerates paid moderation here. The idea of the well-tended garden is a potent one. I have had to tolerate obviously toxic but helpful people before and it is always irritating to not ban them, despite knowing that they are good for the garden.

0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
Banning is more like pruning weeds than pulling out weeds.
staycoolboy 6y ago
> I have had to tolerate obviously toxic but helpful people before I understand where you are coming from here. I struggle with this. I think there is a legit theory for it, usually given in the context of how to reconcile shitty behavior of geniuses (Picasso comes to mind: legendary artist, shitty human.) Even if toxic people have something good to say once in a while, do the ends justify the means if they stomp all over the roses in the process? > You asked for hoi polloi to wander in off the street The garden analogy is potent because where I live there is a huge rose garden that anyone can wander in off the street and visit. Some people come in and do stamp on the roses. And it sucks for everyone else. Which is why I can understand the desire to keep those people out. However, shouldn't the gardeners KNOW that there are and always will be shitty humans? I'm truly ambivalent on this one: I want to participate, but I lack impulse control, so I'm excluded. That's not fair. And if I was tending a garden, I'd want to keep the "me"s out.
- 6y ago

jborichevskiy 6y ago

> (FYI DanG is a paid mod, not a volunteer, which is probably why he's so calm about it, even though he get's riled too: read the New Yorker article about him) If anyone else is interested, here it is: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th... Some interesting stuff in there, though I would love to read more about the behind-the-scenes tools they use to search and keep track of everything.

dgzl 6y ago

I was banned from r/hotsauce because I posted a coupon-code for a brand I was interested in trying. They were trying to sell stock to help mitigate the downfall of the COVID-19. The mod said I was an advertising shill and needed to be purged... As if people posting their collections all day didn't count as advertising.

BubRoss 6y ago
A lot of subreddits end up being snakes telling their tail how it's the best tail. A lot of those can turn into ads as people start making whatever brands to get in on the circle jerk. Some subreddits I suspect go further and have companies working with moderators to do very potent marketing without anyone drawing attention to it. /r/mechanicalkeyboards, /r/gadgets, etc, the list goes on.
- dgzl 6y ago
  And my desperate attempts to become unbanned was met with paranoid skepticism and unfounded rebuttals. I had literally only posted one other time, showing off a meager 10 bottle collection. And somehow trying to help not only the community by sharing a discount code, not only starting a discussion about the aforementioned sauces, but also helping the struggling company. I didn't really see a problem with it. The community like the post and engaged, but somehow I was a first-offence marketing shill worth banning for life.
Jommi 6y ago
Not sure what i'm missing here. You clearly did not read the subreddit rules before posting. However the fact that you have no recourse after being banned other than debating a mod, that's a clear issue.