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Thanks for the response. If you claim there's no bias, would you be willing to release the full list of posts that have been nudged / downranked from the front

Thanks for the response. If you claim there's no bias, would you be willing to release the full list of posts that have been nudged / downranked from the front page by moderator or trusted users as part of a "HN transparency report"?

metiscus 6y ago
Even if that were to happen so what? It doesn't prove bias one way or another really.
nemothekid 6y ago
Hey dang, Can you do extra work for free, that will be full of uninteresting spam, that no one will ever read, so that I can I win some sort of imaginary war against the CCP/HN boogeyman?
- dicomdan 6y ago
  Sarcastic jabs aren't a productive way to add to discussion. The rules of HN state that conversation must get more nuanced as it continues, not less.
dang 6y ago
That comes up from time to time: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20litigious&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... I think it would be a mistake—it would drain our resources while convincing no one. People who see "every" comment they disagree with "always" at the top, and "every" comment they disagree with "always" flagged and removed, are not looking objectively. I don't mean to pick on you personally!—these are common feelings, rooted in cognitive biases we all share. But the patterns they claim are not even close to true, so anyone who wants to be convinced by evidence can just look at HN in the first place. Beyond that, there's plenty of transparency available through HN Search and the moderation record of https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang. Anyone who looks through the record can find numerous examples of us moderating opposite views in exactly the same way, if they want to. The litigious type of user tends not to want to, and although that group is small in numbers, their capacity to consume moderator time and energy is prodigious. It steals a lot of resources away from other users and from the things we need to be doing to improve the site in general. By the way, I don't claim there's no moderation bias. How can we know what unconscious biases we may have? I'm just saying that certain stock allegations about it are incorrect and have clear explanations.
- dicomdan 6y ago
  Does it mean every thread that is downranked by moderator or superuser will have your comment in it that will show up in search results visible to everyone in the community? Or are there threads that are promoted or demoted silently?
  - dang 6y ago
    It does not mean that. HN is a curated, moderated site; it always has been. Moderators do lots of things that aren't commented. There isn't any class of things we do that is secret, though.

metiscus 6y ago

Even if that were to happen so what? It doesn't prove bias one way or another really.

nemothekid 6y ago

Hey dang, Can you do extra work for free, that will be full of uninteresting spam, that no one will ever read, so that I can I win some sort of imaginary war against the CCP/HN boogeyman?

dicomdan 6y ago
Sarcastic jabs aren't a productive way to add to discussion. The rules of HN state that conversation must get more nuanced as it continues, not less.

dang 6y ago

That comes up from time to time: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20litigious&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... I think it would be a mistake—it would drain our resources while convincing no one. People who see "every" comment they disagree with "always" at the top, and "every" comment they disagree with "always" flagged and removed, are not looking objectively. I don't mean to pick on you personally!—these are common feelings, rooted in cognitive biases we all share. But the patterns they claim are not even close to true, so anyone who wants to be convinced by evidence can just look at HN in the first place. Beyond that, there's plenty of transparency available through HN Search and the moderation record of https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang. Anyone who looks through the record can find numerous examples of us moderating opposite views in exactly the same way, if they want to. The litigious type of user tends not to want to, and although that group is small in numbers, their capacity to consume moderator time and energy is prodigious. It steals a lot of resources away from other users and from the things we need to be doing to improve the site in general. By the way, I don't claim there's no moderation bias. How can we know what unconscious biases we may have? I'm just saying that certain stock allegations about it are incorrect and have clear explanations.

dicomdan 6y ago
Does it mean every thread that is downranked by moderator or superuser will have your comment in it that will show up in search results visible to everyone in the community? Or are there threads that are promoted or demoted silently?
- dang 6y ago
  It does not mean that. HN is a curated, moderated site; it always has been. Moderators do lots of things that aren't commented. There isn't any class of things we do that is secret, though.