4 ms·

This was a dogwhistle, not unselfconscious use of a loaded term.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago
Ah well, I'm a proud degenerate. Better that than a deplorable, I guess.
dang 6y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160874 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hansjorg 6y ago
  You routinely seem to allow (as in it not even warranting a comment) straight up dehumanizing language from many participants in here. I realize this kind of behaviour has been normalized by the president over the last four years, but I thought HN was better than this.
  - dang 6y ago
    We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, so if you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20likeliest&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Beyond that, I'd need to see specific links to give you specific information. Always happy to do that.
  - crocodiletears 6y ago
    Degenerate's in increasingly common use. I can't speak to the parent's use of the term, indeed from the context of their statement, there's good reasons to be suspicious of their intent. However, my social circle uses it quite heavily to refer to things like people who consider pet ownership equivalent to parenting, neonazis, and karens who fabricate sleights against themselves in order to haggle prices at retail outlets. Despite its distasteful origins, it's becoming a catch-all for self-aggrandizing anti-social behavior, and destructively anti-normative sentiments.
    - thomasz 6y ago
      When you consider the context of Mozilla’s lgbt politics it becomes crystal clear that this isn’t just harmless internet slang.
- cultus 6y ago
  I am a gay technical professional, and I see homophobic or otherwise dehumanizing language tolerated, with moderation efforts instead against those calling out bigoted comments. I can tell you this makes me feel unwelcome, and makes me disappointed in our industry in general. Dog whistles are often very obvious, as is the case here. Not allowing any common-sense deviation from "always presume good faith" is absolutely ridiculous.
  - dang 6y ago
    Common sense is always welcome. Note the word 'plausible' in that guideline—it extends over the whole. In this particular case it looks like we see common sense as pointing in opposite directions, but such differences are inevitable any time that interpretation and judgment calls are involved, which is certainly true of moderation. Beyond that, it's hard to answer general statements about HN moderation when they don't include specific links. You might well be talking about comments that we simply didn't see (cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24161292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24161292). There are many other possibilities too. Usually when I hear generalizations about HN moderation on political/ideological issues, they're being made by strong adherents to one ideological position who perceive the moderators as being secretly against their position. That's problematic because there are intense cognitive biases conditioning such perceptions, such as the one where people are more likely to notice cases they dislike than the ones they agree with, and to weight them much more heavily (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). If you consider that phenomenon, you'll notice that it guarantees that unbiased moderation will always be experienced as biased by passionate perceivers, regardless of which position they adhere to. This is a double bind situation for the moderators, and it makes such complaints difficult to respond to except by pointing out that the other side feels exactly the same way. I don't mean to say that that's the case with your perceptions, just that it's hard to discuss these things without concrete cases to look at. Based on your comment, my guess is that we would agree on egregious cases (and those certainly get moderated here, except when we don't see them), but would perhaps draw the lines differently on borderline cases, like the GP. That too is inevitable when one is trying to moderate a community that has countless different perspectives—it's impossible to satisfy everyone, or even to satisfy anyone completely. But there's a choice here too: we want HN to be different from the places on the internet that are dominated by the online callout/shaming culture (not because the callouts are always wrong, but because of the systemic effect on the community when they become the default). For that, I think the plausibility guideline is the right medicine. It basically leads to scolding/banning for egregious cases, forgiveness for borderline cases, and open-mindedness in unclear ones (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24073607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24073607).

Ah well, I'm a proud degenerate. Better that than a deplorable, I guess.

dang 6y ago

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160874 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

hansjorg 6y ago
You routinely seem to allow (as in it not even warranting a comment) straight up dehumanizing language from many participants in here. I realize this kind of behaviour has been normalized by the president over the last four years, but I thought HN was better than this.
- dang 6y ago
  We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, so if you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20likeliest&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Beyond that, I'd need to see specific links to give you specific information. Always happy to do that.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  Degenerate's in increasingly common use. I can't speak to the parent's use of the term, indeed from the context of their statement, there's good reasons to be suspicious of their intent. However, my social circle uses it quite heavily to refer to things like people who consider pet ownership equivalent to parenting, neonazis, and karens who fabricate sleights against themselves in order to haggle prices at retail outlets. Despite its distasteful origins, it's becoming a catch-all for self-aggrandizing anti-social behavior, and destructively anti-normative sentiments.
  - thomasz 6y ago
    When you consider the context of Mozilla’s lgbt politics it becomes crystal clear that this isn’t just harmless internet slang.
cultus 6y ago
I am a gay technical professional, and I see homophobic or otherwise dehumanizing language tolerated, with moderation efforts instead against those calling out bigoted comments. I can tell you this makes me feel unwelcome, and makes me disappointed in our industry in general. Dog whistles are often very obvious, as is the case here. Not allowing any common-sense deviation from "always presume good faith" is absolutely ridiculous.
- dang 6y ago
  Common sense is always welcome. Note the word 'plausible' in that guideline—it extends over the whole. In this particular case it looks like we see common sense as pointing in opposite directions, but such differences are inevitable any time that interpretation and judgment calls are involved, which is certainly true of moderation. Beyond that, it's hard to answer general statements about HN moderation when they don't include specific links. You might well be talking about comments that we simply didn't see (cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24161292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24161292). There are many other possibilities too. Usually when I hear generalizations about HN moderation on political/ideological issues, they're being made by strong adherents to one ideological position who perceive the moderators as being secretly against their position. That's problematic because there are intense cognitive biases conditioning such perceptions, such as the one where people are more likely to notice cases they dislike than the ones they agree with, and to weight them much more heavily (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=notice%20dislike%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). If you consider that phenomenon, you'll notice that it guarantees that unbiased moderation will always be experienced as biased by passionate perceivers, regardless of which position they adhere to. This is a double bind situation for the moderators, and it makes such complaints difficult to respond to except by pointing out that the other side feels exactly the same way. I don't mean to say that that's the case with your perceptions, just that it's hard to discuss these things without concrete cases to look at. Based on your comment, my guess is that we would agree on egregious cases (and those certainly get moderated here, except when we don't see them), but would perhaps draw the lines differently on borderline cases, like the GP. That too is inevitable when one is trying to moderate a community that has countless different perspectives—it's impossible to satisfy everyone, or even to satisfy anyone completely. But there's a choice here too: we want HN to be different from the places on the internet that are dominated by the online callout/shaming culture (not because the callouts are always wrong, but because of the systemic effect on the community when they become the default). For that, I think the plausibility guideline is the right medicine. It basically leads to scolding/banning for egregious cases, forgiveness for borderline cases, and open-mindedness in unclear ones (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24073607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24073607).