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The sensitivity with which you replied just tells me I'm probably right about this. I assure you that, having dealt with HN readers in real life contexts on bo

The sensitivity with which you replied just tells me I'm probably right about this. I assure you that, having dealt with HN readers in real life contexts on both sides of that divide, that the perception absolutely isn't symmetric. HN is seen as a "safe space" for some demographics and definitely as hostile by others. (Edit: I'll just say it. I've had multiple conversations with real life women where I have to make excuses for the perspective of posters here and explain why it's still a valuable forum anyway.) I mean, I agree with you that we all have biases and blind spots in our perception. Which means... so do the mods. I comment because I want HN to continue to be a site that people like me want to comment on. The site that "people whose comments dang likes" want to comment on surely looks different.

dang 6y ago
I totally empathize with what it's like to try to defend HN as a worthy place to participate when you're talking with someone who has extremely strong feelings about how awful it is, and the fact that you're willing to do that makes me feel much more sympathy and common ground with you than any disagreement we may have on other points. But I think your explanation of why this is is much too simplistic. The difference seems to be that you aren't being bombarded every day with utterly contradictory extremely strong feelings about how awful it is. If you were, you wouldn't be able to write what you just posted. Your judgment that the perception "isn't symmetric" is wildly out of line with what I encounter here, so one of us must be dealing with an extremely skewed sample. Perhaps you read more HN posts and talk to a wider variety of people about HN than I do. From my perspective, the links below are typical—and there are countless more where these came from. Of course, there are also countless links claiming exactly the opposite, but since you already believe that, they aren't the medicine in this case. I sample that list when responding to commenters who see things this way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17197581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17197581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23429442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23429442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21627676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21627676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15388778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15388778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BetterThanSlave https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BetterThanSlave https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=slamdance https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=slamdance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 A sample email, for a change of pace: "It's clear ycombinator is clearly culling right-wing opinions and thoughts. The only opinions allowed to remain on the site are left wing [...] What a fucking joke your site has become." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15546533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15546533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23719343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23719343
- newacct583 6y ago
  First: those are hilarious, thanks. Second: I don't see how "Look at all these crazy reactionary right wingers" is really evidence that the median poster here is not skewed. Again getting to sampling error: you're a mod, you see the complaints more than the signal. I'm talking about the skew of the people in the actual threads, and what opinions become acceptable consensus. And that's not the same population. Frankly most of us never see the garbage like that, because you flag it. But what remains isn't "balanced" just because you find jerks on both sides. It's just as likely that one side is working the refs better. Now again, I don't expect you to agree. But I see what I see. And I post to make sure that others don't see the same thing.
- wila 6y ago
  The problem is that as a moderator those type of posts get your attention. The outliers are the ones you worry about. As someone who participates I basically ignore those. There will always be complain posts even when everything is perfect. People might have had a bad day or there might be another reason for their reaction.
  - dang 6y ago
    They are outliers in intensity only. They are not outliers in terms of the underlying phenomenon of how users arrive at their generalized perceptions of HN. On the contrary, the phenomenon itself is routine and typical. I would even call it universal. If you see a comment complaining about "(Apple|Google|Microsoft) fanboys", that's much the same thing. The only actual information in such a comment is about the commenter—specifically, what they dislike (in this case, (Apple|Google|Microsoft)) and therefore what they notice and assigned greater weight to. Such commenters routinely produce entirely opposite outputs about the exact same input set. Indeed their complaints are interchangeable except for the direction of bias they're complaining about. This phenomenon is so reliable that I'm not sure I've seen any more reliable phenomenon on HN. There is clearly a deep cognitive bias underlying it. I've done my best to try to explain what that is. I'd be interested in hearing other explanations, but so far most responses seem to deny the phenomenon, which from my perspective can't possibly be correct. Where I think being a moderator makes a big difference is that we get bombarded with these contradictory complaints every day, often in personally abusive ways. You can't help but notice the contradictions when you're getting bashed for one reason one minute and than bashed for exactly the opposite reason the next. When one side calls you Hitler and the other side calls you Stalin, and each side complains bitterly how you ban everyone they agree with and moderate in the other's favor, the only sane response is to become curious about how the exact same thing can result in such an extreme variance in perception.

dang 6y ago

I totally empathize with what it's like to try to defend HN as a worthy place to participate when you're talking with someone who has extremely strong feelings about how awful it is, and the fact that you're willing to do that makes me feel much more sympathy and common ground with you than any disagreement we may have on other points. But I think your explanation of why this is is much too simplistic. The difference seems to be that you aren't being bombarded every day with utterly contradictory extremely strong feelings about how awful it is. If you were, you wouldn't be able to write what you just posted. Your judgment that the perception "isn't symmetric" is wildly out of line with what I encounter here, so one of us must be dealing with an extremely skewed sample. Perhaps you read more HN posts and talk to a wider variety of people about HN than I do. From my perspective, the links below are typical—and there are countless more where these came from. Of course, there are also countless links claiming exactly the opposite, but since you already believe that, they aren't the medicine in this case. I sample that list when responding to commenters who see things this way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23729568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17197581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17197581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23429442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23429442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19471335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15937781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21627676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21627676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15388778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15388778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BetterThanSlave https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BetterThanSlave https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=slamdance https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=slamdance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 A sample email, for a change of pace: "It's clear ycombinator is clearly culling right-wing opinions and thoughts. The only opinions allowed to remain on the site are left wing [...] What a fucking joke your site has become." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20202305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15546533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15546533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20645202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23719343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23719343

newacct583 6y ago
First: those are hilarious, thanks. Second: I don't see how "Look at all these crazy reactionary right wingers" is really evidence that the median poster here is not skewed. Again getting to sampling error: you're a mod, you see the complaints more than the signal. I'm talking about the skew of the people in the actual threads, and what opinions become acceptable consensus. And that's not the same population. Frankly most of us never see the garbage like that, because you flag it. But what remains isn't "balanced" just because you find jerks on both sides. It's just as likely that one side is working the refs better. Now again, I don't expect you to agree. But I see what I see. And I post to make sure that others don't see the same thing.
wila 6y ago
The problem is that as a moderator those type of posts get your attention. The outliers are the ones you worry about. As someone who participates I basically ignore those. There will always be complain posts even when everything is perfect. People might have had a bad day or there might be another reason for their reaction.
- dang 6y ago
  They are outliers in intensity only. They are not outliers in terms of the underlying phenomenon of how users arrive at their generalized perceptions of HN. On the contrary, the phenomenon itself is routine and typical. I would even call it universal. If you see a comment complaining about "(Apple|Google|Microsoft) fanboys", that's much the same thing. The only actual information in such a comment is about the commenter—specifically, what they dislike (in this case, (Apple|Google|Microsoft)) and therefore what they notice and assigned greater weight to. Such commenters routinely produce entirely opposite outputs about the exact same input set. Indeed their complaints are interchangeable except for the direction of bias they're complaining about. This phenomenon is so reliable that I'm not sure I've seen any more reliable phenomenon on HN. There is clearly a deep cognitive bias underlying it. I've done my best to try to explain what that is. I'd be interested in hearing other explanations, but so far most responses seem to deny the phenomenon, which from my perspective can't possibly be correct. Where I think being a moderator makes a big difference is that we get bombarded with these contradictory complaints every day, often in personally abusive ways. You can't help but notice the contradictions when you're getting bashed for one reason one minute and than bashed for exactly the opposite reason the next. When one side calls you Hitler and the other side calls you Stalin, and each side complains bitterly how you ban everyone they agree with and moderate in the other's favor, the only sane response is to become curious about how the exact same thing can result in such an extreme variance in perception.