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I think this is uncharitable and paints users of HN who want to avoid flame as to enemy. Furthermore as shown in the article trolls are happy to comment with th

I think this is uncharitable and paints users of HN who want to avoid flame as to enemy. Furthermore as shown in the article trolls are happy to comment with their real accounts. Even furthermore an internet troll craves attention. Therefore the very last thing they want is for this to be flagged.

drcongo 6y ago
The alternative is that there's enough people on here who find it uncomfortable when the spotlight is turned on the misogyny and racism that they share, that they flag this kind of article every single time one comes up. It's embarrassing for the community, because tech is deeply toxic and HN, arguably the biggest, most respected tech community online, shuts down every discussion of that toxicity among us. Every time this happens, I lose a little more respect for my fellow HN users, and care less about getting downvoted for calling it out.
- dang 6y ago
  > shuts down every discussion of that toxicity That's far from accurate. There have been many major discussions. It's true that some people feel that those topics are underrepresented, but that's because every topic is felt to be underrepresented, including the most common topics. It seems to be a consequence of front page space being such a scarce resource [1]. Sometimes people even end up with the idea that the most-commonly-discussed topics are actually being "aggressively removed from discussion" [2]. It's true that users sometimes flag articles that don't deserve to be flagged. We sometimes turn flags off on those. We don't always do that, because not every article on a given topic (e.g. misogyny or racism) is equally likely to support a meaningful discussion. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962

drcongo 6y ago

The alternative is that there's enough people on here who find it uncomfortable when the spotlight is turned on the misogyny and racism that they share, that they flag this kind of article every single time one comes up. It's embarrassing for the community, because tech is deeply toxic and HN, arguably the biggest, most respected tech community online, shuts down every discussion of that toxicity among us. Every time this happens, I lose a little more respect for my fellow HN users, and care less about getting downvoted for calling it out.

dang 6y ago
> shuts down every discussion of that toxicity That's far from accurate. There have been many major discussions. It's true that some people feel that those topics are underrepresented, but that's because every topic is felt to be underrepresented, including the most common topics. It seems to be a consequence of front page space being such a scarce resource [1]. Sometimes people even end up with the idea that the most-commonly-discussed topics are actually being "aggressively removed from discussion" [2]. It's true that users sometimes flag articles that don't deserve to be flagged. We sometimes turn flags off on those. We don't always do that, because not every article on a given topic (e.g. misogyny or racism) is equally likely to support a meaningful discussion. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962