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I don't really understand what "welcome" means. Historically on the internet people are simultaneously "welcome" and "not welcome," i.e. people discover places

I don't really understand what "welcome" means. Historically on the internet people are simultaneously "welcome" and "not welcome," i.e. people discover places of socializing and choose to participate or not. In my decades of socializing on the internet, most places are hostile to some degree. I also wouldn't bother to complain, because hostility is an unavoidable part of human nature, even hostility toward hostility. Some set of people within a given community will be "nice," and some will be "mean." Most people inhabit some indefinite point on the nice-mean continuum. It would be ideal if comments like "females suk lol" were removed, but something tells me that's uncommon. I think that "I would feel more welcome if..." (a very common motif in modern activism) suggests a few things: (1) The operators should care about me/my demographic (2) The operators should signal that they care about me/my demographic (3) The operators should preferentially signal that they care about me/my demographic (4) The operators should counter-signal, i.e. counter-welcome other people/other demographics (determined by perceived opposition to me/my demographic) This may seem like a trivial exercise, but consider how non-welcome a person with conservative political interests would be not only on HN, but in the tech industry as a whole. Consider how non-welcome a white male might feel on Twitter, etc.. Hell, consider how non-welcome a person who thinks Rust sucks would feel on news.ycombinator.com. (tip: very non-welcome) It seems futile to resolve each individual's sense of welcome; to provide a safe-space concurrently for religious white nationalists and black trans activists, and assorted fringes.

zzzcpan 6y ago
> Hell, consider how non-welcome a person who thinks Rust sucks would feel on news.ycombinator.com. (tip: very non-welcome) That would be me. I literally got shadowbanned for criticizing Rust when I first became a member on HN. But I don't feel unwelcome by HN, only by mods, who I don't think of highly anyway, as this pushed me to pay attention to what mods actually do over the years. Nowadays they punish my account again, at least they didn't ban it this time, presumably this time it was because of my opinion on something corporate capitalist they didn't like. > It seems futile to resolve each individual's sense of welcome; to provide a safe-space concurrently for religious white nationalists and black trans activists, and assorted fringes. No matter how fringe, if mods allow, people will still be able to defend and express their opinions here, so only mods can make them feel unwelcome here.
- dang 6y ago
  > I literally got shadowbanned for criticizing Rust when I first became a member on HN. That can't be true. We couldn't care less whether people criticize Rust.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    I've seen accounts with green usernames that seem to have been shadowbanned for less. Typically, it's a new account that says some reasonable things, and maybe one or two fairly unreasonable things. Getting flagged for the unreasonable things can really kill a brand new account with under 10 karma.
    - dang 6y ago
      "Seem to have been shadowbanned for less" than...criticizing Rust? come on you guys. That's not even close. Perhaps you saw an account that was affected by a software filter, especially if it's new. We try to review the affected posts and immunize legit accounts against the software, but we miss some. > Typically, it's a new account that says some reasonable things, and maybe one or two fairly unreasonable things. Accounts get banned for the worst things they do, not the best. If one day I go get groceries, walk the dog, and set somebody's house on fire, "the majority of things I did were reasonable" is not much of a defense. It's hard to speak in the general case though. People routinely overinterpret what they see based on what they assume is happening. If you haven't specifically asked and we haven't specifically answered, the explanation is probably wrong. It's not hard to get an answer if you try.
      - pmiller2 6y ago
        Yes, "seem to," as in, I have no idea why, because nobody tells me and it's not publicized anywhere how shadowbanning works. > Accounts get banned for the worst things they do, not the best. Suppose one day I go get groceries, walk the dog, and set somebody's house on fire. It's not a defense that the majority of things I did were reasonable. I'm not talking about "set someone's house on fire" though. I'm talking about a comment that triggers a handful of people to mash the downvote or flag link. Specifically, this account: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rbecker https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rbecker which, obviously someone else noticed as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23585354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23585354 That user's subsequent comments have not been great, but, at the time that I encountered them, they had something like 10 karma. Note how I wasn't the only one who couldn't figure out why they were shadowbanned?
jolux 6y ago
>It seems futile to resolve each individual's sense of welcome; to provide a safe-space concurrently for religious white nationalists and black trans activists, and assorted fringes. That's easy: I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe, as don't I suspect a lot of people on HN (most?). Spaces that prioritize making religious white nationalists feel safe are not interesting spaces to participate in in general (check out the front page of Gab (edit: I think I meant Voat) if you need a sense of what I mean). It's also not really about being nice or mean, it's about comments like these suggesting I want preferential treatment from moderators. If my original post wasn't clear: I think the moderators are basically doing the best job that they can at weeding out obviously sexist, racist, and otherwise unproductive comments. So, I'm not really complaining about how the space is moderated, I think it's at a pretty stable equilibrium and I'm pessimistic about it getting much better than this for women, with what it prioritizes (primarily, open discussion about controversial topics, so long as it remains civil, even when one side is expressing repellent views in a civil manner). Obviously, this is not disqualifying for me, because I'm still here, and I have a lot more karma than you. However, in my years of being here, I had never read this piece before, and I frequently feel pretty alone as a woman when there are comments that make me uncomfortable. It is just nice to know that there are other women in the space who share my experience, and I wish there was something like a women HNers social group or something, I guess.
- bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
  > That's easy: I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe, as don't I suspect a lot of people on HN (most?). I agree with that approach (which is why I don't use Twitter). > It's also not really about being nice or mean, it's about comments like these... You've just unintentionally identified the exact problem. You think my response was somehow "sexist" or hostile. I don't. I do think it mostly contains critical thought. If you think my comment should be censored, you've lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned. > ..., and I have a lot more karma than you. (1) This is perhaps one account of 10+ I have made over the years. I don't know how much karma you have because I do not care and won't be clicking through to your account. I also have no idea how much karma I have, totaling all accounts together. I would estimate ~ 100. (2) My relationship with HN (and most of the internet outside of IRC) is almost entirely parasitic; I rarely comment or submit articles to HN. I certainly wouldn't do so specifically in order to increase my karma rating. (3) If you care enough about karma to brag about it, you probably are a terrible contributor to HN anyway.
tlb 6y ago
> Consider how non-welcome a person who thinks Rust sucks would feel on news.ycombinator.com. (tip: very non-welcome) I [an occasional mod] welcome people who think Rust sucks as long as they give some details why. I don't welcome people who just post snarky dismissals of projects. I'd say the majority of people who complain about their opinion being unwelcome here have been stating their opinion as a big loud raspberry, rather than making a substantive argument people can engage with. It's just the raspberry that's unwelcome.
- jolux 6y ago
  I think this was the hardest part for me to learn: the site cares a lot about what I would describe as "tone," which is generally a good heuristic for interesting and productive discussions (but this can feel stifling for a lot of people, particularly but not exclusively minority groups in tech). Early on I definitely engaged in a manner that was less than pleasant, and the culture here seems to take a dim view of that no matter who it's coming from, which is the part I find the most impressive. I have since learned how to say what I want to say without just blowing raspberries (for the most part) and I am generally rewarded for it with interesting comments and upvotes.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    > Early on I definitely engaged in a manner that was less than pleasant... From your top-level comment, it sounds like you started when you were 15? So, um... I and a number of others don't really want to be judged by how we commented when we were 15. (In my case, not on HN - it didn't exist yet. But yeah, I was "less than pleasant" a lot of the time.) Don't be too hard on yourself for the teen-age years.
    - jolux 6y ago
      Mostly I said a lot of inflammatory stuff when calling out sexism and racism, and was probably ignorant and worse on other subjects too. I learned relatively quickly that my assumptions about the site were incorrect.
    - 6y ago
pmiller2 6y ago
> This may seem like a trivial exercise, but consider how non-welcome a person with conservative political interests would be not only on HN, but in the tech industry as a whole. And here is a bit of a paradox. Not only are "conservative" (right wing) views marginalized here, but so are many leftist ideas that aren't one of HN's pet topics (UBI, land value tax, etc.) You simply cannot criticize capitalism or the "free market" here without expecting downvotes. You can't talk about things that, for instance, the Soviet Union did right (e.g. going from an agrarian country of peasants to an industrial power in under 50 years) among all the wrongs it committed (gulags, the Holodomor, etc). The same, I suspect, for China, Cuba, Venezuela, or any other country that isn't the US and to which the US has not "brought democracy." Speaking of "bringing democracy," I strongly suspect that serious discussion of Western imperialism is off the table, as well. And, let's not even think about the US's broken immigration system. On the world political scale, none of these things are remotely controversial. You can consistently say all of them, while holding a center-left ideology in basically all of Europe. I don't particularly think having a "safe space" is all that productive, but I would appreciate if some of these topics got a little bit of lively and reasoned debate. Instead, people just mash that downvote button, which frustrates me to no end. I've accepted that by pointing these things out, I end up losing a few fake internet points, and I'm okay with that. I'm so far about the downvote/flag threshold that it doesn't matter. But, I don't like it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

zzzcpan 6y ago

> Hell, consider how non-welcome a person who thinks Rust sucks would feel on news.ycombinator.com. (tip: very non-welcome) That would be me. I literally got shadowbanned for criticizing Rust when I first became a member on HN. But I don't feel unwelcome by HN, only by mods, who I don't think of highly anyway, as this pushed me to pay attention to what mods actually do over the years. Nowadays they punish my account again, at least they didn't ban it this time, presumably this time it was because of my opinion on something corporate capitalist they didn't like. > It seems futile to resolve each individual's sense of welcome; to provide a safe-space concurrently for religious white nationalists and black trans activists, and assorted fringes. No matter how fringe, if mods allow, people will still be able to defend and express their opinions here, so only mods can make them feel unwelcome here.

dang 6y ago
> I literally got shadowbanned for criticizing Rust when I first became a member on HN. That can't be true. We couldn't care less whether people criticize Rust.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  I've seen accounts with green usernames that seem to have been shadowbanned for less. Typically, it's a new account that says some reasonable things, and maybe one or two fairly unreasonable things. Getting flagged for the unreasonable things can really kill a brand new account with under 10 karma.
  - dang 6y ago
    "Seem to have been shadowbanned for less" than...criticizing Rust? come on you guys. That's not even close. Perhaps you saw an account that was affected by a software filter, especially if it's new. We try to review the affected posts and immunize legit accounts against the software, but we miss some. > Typically, it's a new account that says some reasonable things, and maybe one or two fairly unreasonable things. Accounts get banned for the worst things they do, not the best. If one day I go get groceries, walk the dog, and set somebody's house on fire, "the majority of things I did were reasonable" is not much of a defense. It's hard to speak in the general case though. People routinely overinterpret what they see based on what they assume is happening. If you haven't specifically asked and we haven't specifically answered, the explanation is probably wrong. It's not hard to get an answer if you try.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      Yes, "seem to," as in, I have no idea why, because nobody tells me and it's not publicized anywhere how shadowbanning works. > Accounts get banned for the worst things they do, not the best. Suppose one day I go get groceries, walk the dog, and set somebody's house on fire. It's not a defense that the majority of things I did were reasonable. I'm not talking about "set someone's house on fire" though. I'm talking about a comment that triggers a handful of people to mash the downvote or flag link. Specifically, this account: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rbecker https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=rbecker which, obviously someone else noticed as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23585354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23585354 That user's subsequent comments have not been great, but, at the time that I encountered them, they had something like 10 karma. Note how I wasn't the only one who couldn't figure out why they were shadowbanned?

jolux 6y ago

>It seems futile to resolve each individual's sense of welcome; to provide a safe-space concurrently for religious white nationalists and black trans activists, and assorted fringes. That's easy: I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe, as don't I suspect a lot of people on HN (most?). Spaces that prioritize making religious white nationalists feel safe are not interesting spaces to participate in in general (check out the front page of Gab (edit: I think I meant Voat) if you need a sense of what I mean). It's also not really about being nice or mean, it's about comments like these suggesting I want preferential treatment from moderators. If my original post wasn't clear: I think the moderators are basically doing the best job that they can at weeding out obviously sexist, racist, and otherwise unproductive comments. So, I'm not really complaining about how the space is moderated, I think it's at a pretty stable equilibrium and I'm pessimistic about it getting much better than this for women, with what it prioritizes (primarily, open discussion about controversial topics, so long as it remains civil, even when one side is expressing repellent views in a civil manner). Obviously, this is not disqualifying for me, because I'm still here, and I have a lot more karma than you. However, in my years of being here, I had never read this piece before, and I frequently feel pretty alone as a woman when there are comments that make me uncomfortable. It is just nice to know that there are other women in the space who share my experience, and I wish there was something like a women HNers social group or something, I guess.

bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
> That's easy: I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe, as don't I suspect a lot of people on HN (most?). I agree with that approach (which is why I don't use Twitter). > It's also not really about being nice or mean, it's about comments like these... You've just unintentionally identified the exact problem. You think my response was somehow "sexist" or hostile. I don't. I do think it mostly contains critical thought. If you think my comment should be censored, you've lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned. > ..., and I have a lot more karma than you. (1) This is perhaps one account of 10+ I have made over the years. I don't know how much karma you have because I do not care and won't be clicking through to your account. I also have no idea how much karma I have, totaling all accounts together. I would estimate ~ 100. (2) My relationship with HN (and most of the internet outside of IRC) is almost entirely parasitic; I rarely comment or submit articles to HN. I certainly wouldn't do so specifically in order to increase my karma rating. (3) If you care enough about karma to brag about it, you probably are a terrible contributor to HN anyway.

tlb 6y ago

> Consider how non-welcome a person who thinks Rust sucks would feel on news.ycombinator.com. (tip: very non-welcome) I [an occasional mod] welcome people who think Rust sucks as long as they give some details why. I don't welcome people who just post snarky dismissals of projects. I'd say the majority of people who complain about their opinion being unwelcome here have been stating their opinion as a big loud raspberry, rather than making a substantive argument people can engage with. It's just the raspberry that's unwelcome.

jolux 6y ago
I think this was the hardest part for me to learn: the site cares a lot about what I would describe as "tone," which is generally a good heuristic for interesting and productive discussions (but this can feel stifling for a lot of people, particularly but not exclusively minority groups in tech). Early on I definitely engaged in a manner that was less than pleasant, and the culture here seems to take a dim view of that no matter who it's coming from, which is the part I find the most impressive. I have since learned how to say what I want to say without just blowing raspberries (for the most part) and I am generally rewarded for it with interesting comments and upvotes.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  > Early on I definitely engaged in a manner that was less than pleasant... From your top-level comment, it sounds like you started when you were 15? So, um... I and a number of others don't really want to be judged by how we commented when we were 15. (In my case, not on HN - it didn't exist yet. But yeah, I was "less than pleasant" a lot of the time.) Don't be too hard on yourself for the teen-age years.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Mostly I said a lot of inflammatory stuff when calling out sexism and racism, and was probably ignorant and worse on other subjects too. I learned relatively quickly that my assumptions about the site were incorrect.
  - 6y ago

pmiller2 6y ago

> This may seem like a trivial exercise, but consider how non-welcome a person with conservative political interests would be not only on HN, but in the tech industry as a whole. And here is a bit of a paradox. Not only are "conservative" (right wing) views marginalized here, but so are many leftist ideas that aren't one of HN's pet topics (UBI, land value tax, etc.) You simply cannot criticize capitalism or the "free market" here without expecting downvotes. You can't talk about things that, for instance, the Soviet Union did right (e.g. going from an agrarian country of peasants to an industrial power in under 50 years) among all the wrongs it committed (gulags, the Holodomor, etc). The same, I suspect, for China, Cuba, Venezuela, or any other country that isn't the US and to which the US has not "brought democracy." Speaking of "bringing democracy," I strongly suspect that serious discussion of Western imperialism is off the table, as well. And, let's not even think about the US's broken immigration system. On the world political scale, none of these things are remotely controversial. You can consistently say all of them, while holding a center-left ideology in basically all of Europe. I don't particularly think having a "safe space" is all that productive, but I would appreciate if some of these topics got a little bit of lively and reasoned debate. Instead, people just mash that downvote button, which frustrates me to no end. I've accepted that by pointing these things out, I end up losing a few fake internet points, and I'm okay with that. I'm so far about the downvote/flag threshold that it doesn't matter. But, I don't like it.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]