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I've been here over 10 years and I don't really recall seeing anything other than blatant spam or crap removed in that time. Maybe I've just not seen it happen.

I've been here over 10 years and I don't really recall seeing anything other than blatant spam or crap removed in that time. Maybe I've just not seen it happen. But, the way things seem to have worked here (very well I might add) is that when enough of the community disagrees, things get downvoted to death and if you don't have "Show dead" enabled, you don't see them. Your choice. I've had show dead enabled as long as I can remember because I like to see everything posted. Sometimes I agree with things a lot of people here clearly disagree with and I'm fine with that. I can decide to either argue my/their case or move on and accept we have different views. Maybe sometimes seeing things heavily downvoted here changes my mind on subject as well and question if my views are right or not. We can't all agree about everything all the time. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. We all are, nobody is ever 100% right, 100% of the time. I sure as hell don't want somebody else controlling everything I see and read because they think it might give me the "wrong" ideas. I'm an adult and I should be allowed to make my own mind up and most importantly question things, as should everybody else, regardless of education level or where they "fit" into society. When I think about all of the forums and comment sections I regularly interact with, the ones with the most open, democratic, free speech, with little to no direct moderation seem to be the most engaging, tolerant and frankly, nicer places. I've given up on engaging with anything that's heavily moderated or frankly, blatantly biased - Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and I feel a lot happier. ‘I would rather have questions that cannot be answered, than answers that cannot be questioned’ - Richard Feynman.

magicalist 6y ago
> I've been here over 10 years and I don't really recall seeing anything other than blatant spam or crap removed in that time. Well, besides the usual "who decides what's 'blatant spam or crap'?" response to the "it's only bad stuff that gets censored", I'd suggest you haven't really been paying attention, then. Take a look at dang's comment history[1] and you'll see a lot of warnings before ban but also plenty of bans and references to previous bans, usually for substantive, not spam, reasons. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
meroes 6y ago
You must have missed the DOJ filing against Yale last week. Removed in <30 minutes due to comments.
esoterica 6y ago
HN is a LOT more heavily moderated than Facebook, Twitter, and most subreddits. You must really not have been paying attention if you haven't noticed after 10 years.
doktrin 6y ago
As others have already mentioned, HN is in fact actively moderated. It's by far the most curated public discussion forum I frequent. The civil tone that prevails here is in many ways a result of the community guidelines being strictly enforced, and backed up with a banhammer. If you were to take the above at face value, would this change your perception about the value of moderation in online communities?
mNovak 6y ago
Controversial content (lately that means political) regularly gets flagged and removed. As a recent example the NYT Trump Taxes article went through cycles of being posted, rapidly upvoted, then flagged to algorithmic removal, over and over again. To point where meta-discussion came online (and was flagged) [1] Personally I think downvoting is the appropriate response to say "this is not interesting or relevant to HN", but many have realized flagging provides outsized influence. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610890

magicalist 6y ago

> I've been here over 10 years and I don't really recall seeing anything other than blatant spam or crap removed in that time. Well, besides the usual "who decides what's 'blatant spam or crap'?" response to the "it's only bad stuff that gets censored", I'd suggest you haven't really been paying attention, then. Take a look at dang's comment history[1] and you'll see a lot of warnings before ban but also plenty of bans and references to previous bans, usually for substantive, not spam, reasons. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

meroes 6y ago

You must have missed the DOJ filing against Yale last week. Removed in <30 minutes due to comments.

esoterica 6y ago

HN is a LOT more heavily moderated than Facebook, Twitter, and most subreddits. You must really not have been paying attention if you haven't noticed after 10 years.

doktrin 6y ago

As others have already mentioned, HN is in fact actively moderated. It's by far the most curated public discussion forum I frequent. The civil tone that prevails here is in many ways a result of the community guidelines being strictly enforced, and backed up with a banhammer. If you were to take the above at face value, would this change your perception about the value of moderation in online communities?

mNovak 6y ago

Controversial content (lately that means political) regularly gets flagged and removed. As a recent example the NYT Trump Taxes article went through cycles of being posted, rapidly upvoted, then flagged to algorithmic removal, over and over again. To point where meta-discussion came online (and was flagged) [1] Personally I think downvoting is the appropriate response to say "this is not interesting or relevant to HN", but many have realized flagging provides outsized influence. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610890