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This is scary. And should scare everyone. We need to remove downvoting temporarily for next 6 months. See how things pan out. Cancel culture. Dissent and atta

This is scary. And should scare everyone. We need to remove downvoting temporarily for next 6 months. See how things pan out. Cancel culture. Dissent and attack on free speech. Smearing of truth. People are afraid to speak up. Chilling effect. @dang - this is urgently needed. It’s raising alarm bells like no other to me.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I think this guy downvoted for being rude, not necessarily for being wrong, although probably everyone who downvoted him thought he was wrong as well, when he was correct.
- oblio 6y ago
  > when he was correct. How do you know he was correct? This whole "cancel culture" thing is a 2020 thing, while HN has operated like this since when? 2005? HN has been "cancelling" comments since forever, and it's suddenly a problem? It's part of the rules of the game here :-) You play or you don't.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    ok when I said he was correct I meant his main point was correct, which I did not see as the cancel culture thing but rather that Apple does not keep the 30% commission. The cancel culture thing I saw as more of the rudeness. on edit: clarified what I meant by correct better
amelius 6y ago
I would love to see some academic research on the topic of forum moderation. The problem is probably as difficult as fixing democracy, but it would be nice to see what progress we have made in this area.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Community moderation has been a problem for a long time. There's a paper on Lucasarts "Habitat" MMO from the mid-80s! (can't find it at the moment). There's also JC Hertz's somewhat sensationalised anthropology of online culture from the 90s, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2284572.Surfing_on_the_Internet https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2284572.Surfing_on_the_I... A number of experiments were made and abandoned; Slashdot's different types of up/down vote that users could weight themselves, Advogato's trust network, and so on.
  - amelius 6y ago
    Thanks for the links. I found that this link might be a good entry point into the field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_system But I don't like the word "reputation" as it goes against the idea that people who are new might have good input too. Using reputation as a discriminator is very much like committing an ad-hominem fallacy. But perhaps that's the best we can do.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      A big problem is that an apparent new contributor may not actually be either new, or even a person. Only then can you determine that they're not somebody you've previously assigned a negative reputation value to. (mind you, this is not at all sufficient; a major problem of the present day is people tweeting abuse from positions of power under their real names)
- HPsquared 6y ago
  As moderated online spaces continue to displace traditional media, forum moderation itself has a growing influence on modern democracy.
mellosouls 6y ago
I disagree with this (tho I acknowledge the dissent points and I'm one of those who moans occasionally - with the corresponding downvote hit about unreasonable downvoting). I've also never (yet) downvoted anybody despite severe provocation :) I think some limits on downvoting might be useful (some of which might already be in place, I can't remember). e.g. You can't downvote replies to your comment. (Already in place). A limit to downvotes to a particular comment. (I thought this was in place but can't find a reference) Time limit on downvotes. (I think this is already in place). X downvotes use up Y karma. I would also like a guideline that you should only upvote or downvote based on the quality of the comment rather than whether you don't like what you think of the commenter...
pjc50 6y ago
Counterpoint: downvoting is how Hacker News has maintained a comparatively high quality focused discussion while having only one full time moderator. It's not without its disadvantages - certain things will get instaflagged off the front page, especially "sexism in tech" stories. But it's like a firewall. If you don't have one, you get pwned eventually. Occasionally you get "Boston Bomber" moments, and something true gets downvoted. That is on the poster to figure out why and how to present it in a way that will be accepted. (I have 60k karma, so I know how to play ranked competitive HN, but even I still get downvoted occasionally if I'm lazy about sourcing or needlessly confrontational) (edit: first downvote received in less than thirty seconds. Walked into that one, I suppose. Now leaving the edit window at +3. Sorry, +8. You're not really supposed to threadsit your own comments like this, but since we're talking about the voting system I thought I'd mention it)
- fermienrico 6y ago
  I think what I see is the following: Side A: 1000+ voted story, with Apple’s recent App Store sentiments, emotionally engaging. This is the mob. Side B: A lone fact checker. The comment posted by this fact checker was not ambiguous. It literally said that this whole thread is false. That kind of gravity in a comment is different from your usual discourse. Side B is overrun by Side A. I am seeing this in our society, not just on this forum. I feel like it’s different than you and I discussing whether tabs or spaces are better. It’s being overrun by emotions. We need to allow criticisms to surface and counterpoints to be heard when they’re devoid of attacks/trolling. Downvoting is creating a rather reinforcing mechanism for the mob the feel good about their stance. Further fueling it. I am spooked by the current atmosphere on the internet. And I’m spooked by many instances of mob mentality in our society. Note: I am not talking about US protests.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    What makes side B a "fact checker"? How can you identify them as such? The real problem is that for pretty much any claim I can find you a tweet saying it was false. That doesn't help. We're into relative assessments of credibility by origin here. It looks like the original tweet author has retracted, which is pretty convincing.
hardlianotion 6y ago
The point is a serious one and really shouldn't be downvoted. On balance, I disagree, but social bubbles are a systemic risk in our online communities, and the way downvote buttons are often used can promote a groupthink tendency,
corobo 6y ago
definition of overreacting
The_rationalist 6y ago
I've been downvoted for stating a simple sourced fact last week. It happens all the time, when there are echo chamber or when the truth hurt some fanatics feelings they downvote in order to hide the truth, truth which hurt their ridiculously high sensitivity. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23977461&goto=item%3Fid%3D23976680%2323977461 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23977461&goto=item%3Fi... Such people should be accountable and loose their ability to downvote (and to a lesser extent to upvote) As they actively hurt the epistomological quality of HN comments So here's the idea: we should be able to call a moderator/contributor, explain to him why you think the downvoting is unfair and he will give retroactions.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  It's possible that you were downvoted for irrelevancy? Dunno, I almost never downvote.
  - The_rationalist 6y ago
    I don't see how that would be irrelevant. I talked about async stack trace and the original blog post talked about it. BTW a guy thanked me because he found my comment useful.
aaron695 6y ago
Downvoting has 13 years of work and stress testing by 10,000s of people, you don't just turn it off. Software 101, something 10 years old has some sort of proportional to 10 years worth of work in it. It's also not cancel culture here yet, flagged and dead are viewable. Part of the reason HN has defences against cancel culture is they don't make changes.
- lazyjones 6y ago
  > Downvoting has 13 years of work and stress testing by 10,000s of people, you don't just turn it off. This may be an argument for its correct functioning in the technical sense but is blatantly ignorant on changes in society and communication. If a mechanism becomes misused and exploited after a community grows and welcomes people from other communities, it has to be reconsidered. Social interaction definitely doesn't scale smoothly.
pc86 6y ago
This is ridiculous, pearl-clutching nonsense. > This is scary. That a profile where half the comments are rude gets downvoted? If I want to get called an asshole and read rude, barely intelligible comments I'll go to 4chan. You can disagree and present well-reasoned arguments without devolving to "LOL WAT? U IDIOTS" > We need to remove downvoting temporarily for next 6 months. "Need" is an overstatement if I've ever heard one, wow. Sort of an arbitrary timeline, too. > Cancel culture. Equating downvoting and community moderation with "cancel culture" is pretty far off base. > Dissent and attack on free speech. You have absolutely no right to free speech on HN, nor should you, nor did you ever, nor is that what free speech actually means. The number of people who equate "the government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" with "I can be an asshole in a private forum and you're not allowed to call me an asshole" is astounding, and that is the real problem here. > Smearing of truth. By downvoting rude comments? > People are afraid to speak up. They're demonstrably not. > Chilling effect. Word salad. > @dang - this is urgently needed. It's not. > It’s raising alarm bells like no other to me. By most news accounts the US is careening toward a totalitarian apocalypse, China is literally sending train loads of Uighur muslims to re-education camps, and we're in the middle (or start, in the US) of a global pandemic, but HN's community moderation standards and practices are what's got your spidey sense tingling?
lazyjones 6y ago
That you are being downvoted to oblivion is another indication that something is wrong. Slashdot had a better moderation system ca. 20 years ago - you needed a reason along with the downvote and people would think twice about downvoting for "comment says something that may be factually right but somehow hurts my feelings or aligns with orange man". Meta-moderation also helped. The moderator here is doing a good job, but perhaps he's being overwhelmed lately by the polarization and extreme groupthink on many issues.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

I think this guy downvoted for being rude, not necessarily for being wrong, although probably everyone who downvoted him thought he was wrong as well, when he was correct.

oblio 6y ago
> when he was correct. How do you know he was correct? This whole "cancel culture" thing is a 2020 thing, while HN has operated like this since when? 2005? HN has been "cancelling" comments since forever, and it's suddenly a problem? It's part of the rules of the game here :-) You play or you don't.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  ok when I said he was correct I meant his main point was correct, which I did not see as the cancel culture thing but rather that Apple does not keep the 30% commission. The cancel culture thing I saw as more of the rudeness. on edit: clarified what I meant by correct better

amelius 6y ago

I would love to see some academic research on the topic of forum moderation. The problem is probably as difficult as fixing democracy, but it would be nice to see what progress we have made in this area.

pjc50 6y ago
Community moderation has been a problem for a long time. There's a paper on Lucasarts "Habitat" MMO from the mid-80s! (can't find it at the moment). There's also JC Hertz's somewhat sensationalised anthropology of online culture from the 90s, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2284572.Surfing_on_the_Internet https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2284572.Surfing_on_the_I... A number of experiments were made and abandoned; Slashdot's different types of up/down vote that users could weight themselves, Advogato's trust network, and so on.
- amelius 6y ago
  Thanks for the links. I found that this link might be a good entry point into the field: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_system But I don't like the word "reputation" as it goes against the idea that people who are new might have good input too. Using reputation as a discriminator is very much like committing an ad-hominem fallacy. But perhaps that's the best we can do.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    A big problem is that an apparent new contributor may not actually be either new, or even a person. Only then can you determine that they're not somebody you've previously assigned a negative reputation value to. (mind you, this is not at all sufficient; a major problem of the present day is people tweeting abuse from positions of power under their real names)
HPsquared 6y ago
As moderated online spaces continue to displace traditional media, forum moderation itself has a growing influence on modern democracy.

mellosouls 6y ago

I disagree with this (tho I acknowledge the dissent points and I'm one of those who moans occasionally - with the corresponding downvote hit about unreasonable downvoting). I've also never (yet) downvoted anybody despite severe provocation :) I think some limits on downvoting might be useful (some of which might already be in place, I can't remember). e.g. You can't downvote replies to your comment. (Already in place). A limit to downvotes to a particular comment. (I thought this was in place but can't find a reference) Time limit on downvotes. (I think this is already in place). X downvotes use up Y karma. I would also like a guideline that you should only upvote or downvote based on the quality of the comment rather than whether you don't like what you think of the commenter...

pjc50 6y ago

Counterpoint: downvoting is how Hacker News has maintained a comparatively high quality focused discussion while having only one full time moderator. It's not without its disadvantages - certain things will get instaflagged off the front page, especially "sexism in tech" stories. But it's like a firewall. If you don't have one, you get pwned eventually. Occasionally you get "Boston Bomber" moments, and something true gets downvoted. That is on the poster to figure out why and how to present it in a way that will be accepted. (I have 60k karma, so I know how to play ranked competitive HN, but even I still get downvoted occasionally if I'm lazy about sourcing or needlessly confrontational) (edit: first downvote received in less than thirty seconds. Walked into that one, I suppose. Now leaving the edit window at +3. Sorry, +8. You're not really supposed to threadsit your own comments like this, but since we're talking about the voting system I thought I'd mention it)

fermienrico 6y ago
I think what I see is the following: Side A: 1000+ voted story, with Apple’s recent App Store sentiments, emotionally engaging. This is the mob. Side B: A lone fact checker. The comment posted by this fact checker was not ambiguous. It literally said that this whole thread is false. That kind of gravity in a comment is different from your usual discourse. Side B is overrun by Side A. I am seeing this in our society, not just on this forum. I feel like it’s different than you and I discussing whether tabs or spaces are better. It’s being overrun by emotions. We need to allow criticisms to surface and counterpoints to be heard when they’re devoid of attacks/trolling. Downvoting is creating a rather reinforcing mechanism for the mob the feel good about their stance. Further fueling it. I am spooked by the current atmosphere on the internet. And I’m spooked by many instances of mob mentality in our society. Note: I am not talking about US protests.
- pjc50 6y ago
  What makes side B a "fact checker"? How can you identify them as such? The real problem is that for pretty much any claim I can find you a tweet saying it was false. That doesn't help. We're into relative assessments of credibility by origin here. It looks like the original tweet author has retracted, which is pretty convincing.

hardlianotion 6y ago

The point is a serious one and really shouldn't be downvoted. On balance, I disagree, but social bubbles are a systemic risk in our online communities, and the way downvote buttons are often used can promote a groupthink tendency,

corobo 6y ago

definition of overreacting

The_rationalist 6y ago

I've been downvoted for stating a simple sourced fact last week. It happens all the time, when there are echo chamber or when the truth hurt some fanatics feelings they downvote in order to hide the truth, truth which hurt their ridiculously high sensitivity. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23977461&goto=item%3Fid%3D23976680%2323977461 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=23977461&goto=item%3Fi... Such people should be accountable and loose their ability to downvote (and to a lesser extent to upvote) As they actively hurt the epistomological quality of HN comments So here's the idea: we should be able to call a moderator/contributor, explain to him why you think the downvoting is unfair and he will give retroactions.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
It's possible that you were downvoted for irrelevancy? Dunno, I almost never downvote.
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  I don't see how that would be irrelevant. I talked about async stack trace and the original blog post talked about it. BTW a guy thanked me because he found my comment useful.

aaron695 6y ago

Downvoting has 13 years of work and stress testing by 10,000s of people, you don't just turn it off. Software 101, something 10 years old has some sort of proportional to 10 years worth of work in it. It's also not cancel culture here yet, flagged and dead are viewable. Part of the reason HN has defences against cancel culture is they don't make changes.

lazyjones 6y ago
> Downvoting has 13 years of work and stress testing by 10,000s of people, you don't just turn it off. This may be an argument for its correct functioning in the technical sense but is blatantly ignorant on changes in society and communication. If a mechanism becomes misused and exploited after a community grows and welcomes people from other communities, it has to be reconsidered. Social interaction definitely doesn't scale smoothly.

pc86 6y ago

This is ridiculous, pearl-clutching nonsense. > This is scary. That a profile where half the comments are rude gets downvoted? If I want to get called an asshole and read rude, barely intelligible comments I'll go to 4chan. You can disagree and present well-reasoned arguments without devolving to "LOL WAT? U IDIOTS" > We need to remove downvoting temporarily for next 6 months. "Need" is an overstatement if I've ever heard one, wow. Sort of an arbitrary timeline, too. > Cancel culture. Equating downvoting and community moderation with "cancel culture" is pretty far off base. > Dissent and attack on free speech. You have absolutely no right to free speech on HN, nor should you, nor did you ever, nor is that what free speech actually means. The number of people who equate "the government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech" with "I can be an asshole in a private forum and you're not allowed to call me an asshole" is astounding, and that is the real problem here. > Smearing of truth. By downvoting rude comments? > People are afraid to speak up. They're demonstrably not. > Chilling effect. Word salad. > @dang - this is urgently needed. It's not. > It’s raising alarm bells like no other to me. By most news accounts the US is careening toward a totalitarian apocalypse, China is literally sending train loads of Uighur muslims to re-education camps, and we're in the middle (or start, in the US) of a global pandemic, but HN's community moderation standards and practices are what's got your spidey sense tingling?

lazyjones 6y ago

That you are being downvoted to oblivion is another indication that something is wrong. Slashdot had a better moderation system ca. 20 years ago - you needed a reason along with the downvote and people would think twice about downvoting for "comment says something that may be factually right but somehow hurts my feelings or aligns with orange man". Meta-moderation also helped. The moderator here is doing a good job, but perhaps he's being overwhelmed lately by the polarization and extreme groupthink on many issues.