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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
- xbar 6y agoSometimes I worry I operate more like a wasp than a bee, here. Anyway, great story and coverage.
- Jaruzel 6y agoDid dang promote this to the front page? :) Seriously tho... shout out to dang for all the hard work he does. (Please don't vote me up if you agree - I don't want the karma - just comment instead...)
- fsflover 6y agoUpvotes are not just for karma, they also show that you say relevant/important things and that people agree with you.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoIMO, the most important work that upvotes and downvotes do is to move comments up and down the page. In that context, HN consensus on downvoting jokes makes more sense. I like a good joke, but they belong on the bottom of the page after the "serious" conversation. It's unfortunate that it's overloaded with karma, but complicating the upvote/downvote system has other drawbacks.
- inopinatus 6y agoCounterpoint: half my upvotes are from humour, and some topics cry out for a lightening of tone. Unsurprisingly, I’ve found levity is best received when incorporating a kernel of fact or observation. Also, timezone matters. Jokes are easy. Comedy is hard.
- vagrantJin 6y agoAgreed. Humour is a good part of good conversation and an excellent way to provide insight without seeming to be condescending and/or obnoxious. That being said,it does take skill to squeeze in a dad joke in a discussion of abstract computing problems related to 8081s and I'll go on a limb that HN not lenient on badly executed D-jokes as say reddit would for the attempt.
- scott_s 6y agoI have a saying on this topic: you’re not as funny as you think you are. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=scott_s%20not%20funny&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- abfan1127 6y agowhat about relevant/important things that many people don't agree with? Preventing any community from becoming 1-sided seems like a hard problem to solve, but no less important.
- pjc50 6y agoOne of the things that one can learn from HN is how to do this without necessarily having a confrontation.
- Dirlewanger 6y agoThat's literally what they're meant for, but in practice it's an agree/disagree button, albeit not as abused as reddit's is.
- mdturnerphys 6y ago(2019) Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052
- umvi 6y agoAh... dang = [Dan]iel [G]ackle I always thought it was just a mild expletive that reflected the role of moderation
- krustyburger 6y agoI’ve also seen him be accused of biases involving his supposedly being Chinese. It’s sad when anything on HN turns into a flame war, and it would happen a lot more without his constant intervention.
- cpach 6y ago[redacted]
- krustyburger 6y agoI’m not quite sure what you mean. He’s not Chinese, but people sometimes parse his username incorrectly and jump to wild conclusions. I agree that he does very fine work here.
- cpach 6y agoI totally misread your comment and thought you meant that HN would be better of without the current moderation. Excuse me!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SftwreEngnr 6y agoFunny
- DoreenMichele 6y agoIt's both. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494093
- julianlam 6y agoOne thing I've always wondered, is whether moderating a forum like HN (or any forum, really) is mentally stimulating enough to do day in and day out. As a web developer, the more I do the more I crave novel challenges. Writing CRUD apps or getters and setters gets old fast. Are there novel challenges with content moderation?
- wpietri 6y agoI can't say for HN, but the general answer is yes. Social systems tend to produce a lot of novel behavior, with plenty of surprising second- and third-order effects. Dealing with jerks, trolls, griefers, etc, is an arms race; they're always looking for new ways to mess things up. And the tools in this space are constantly evolving, too; for example, there's a lot of interesting ML work being done for automated content tagging.
- chrisweekly 6y agoPlus the content here is generally of intrinsic interest, and the commentary / community of sufficient quality that working in its active defense likely carries some of its own reward in the doing.
- FrojoS 6y agoIf you had a second stealth account to join discussions Im sure its plenty stimulating. But even just reading might be enough. HN is full of lurkers who spend an insane amount of time here. edit: Im not saying the moderators have stealth accounts!
- tptacek 6y agoThat does not seem at all like Dan's style.
- mkl 6y agoYes. While it's never really been stealth [1], Dan does still use gruseom occasionally (not for the above purposes): https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gruseom https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gruseom [1] https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hacker-news/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hac... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7493856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7493856
- kuroguro 6y agoPaywall bypass https://archive.is/bbzan https://archive.is/bbzan
- nickthemagicman 6y agoI personally probably owe them both numerous dinners and drinks for their time and patience with me on certain emotional hotbutton topics. Thank you both for your work!
- _spoonman 6y agoThey really do a tremendous job and it's appreciated greatly.
- CalChris 6y agoAs someone who has been dinged by dang, I appreciate moderation.
- wpietri 6y ago100% agreed. And for a long time, too. Back in 2015 when they banned a notorious jerk, I sent them a cookie basket. I should probably do it again, as good moderation is woefully underappreciated.
- yowlingcat 6y ago+1. I was having a really bad day several months ago and in a spat with a higher karma user who I really thought was in the wrong. @dang stepped in and just about banned me -- but stopped short and said this: > There's clearly a pattern here. I'm not going to ban you now because you've also posted good comments, but please don't post any more personal attacks to HN, and please avoid tedious tit-for-tat entanglements with other users where the argument slides further to the right of the page as it slides further down in quality. It sounds pretty stupid to say that I had a change of heart moment there, but I did. Whether or not I disagreed with another user on the internet was besides the point -- what was I getting out of /engaging/ with it that way? Was I acting the way I would want someone else to behave in a community? Of course not. It turns out (as is often the case) that I was /extremely/ unhappy with my old job, burnt out and really struggling to keep it together and prevent the toxicity of my management chain from seeping into my personal life. Altogether very unsuccessfully, I might add. So I left. I didn't like the person I was turning into on the internet, pandemic or not. Now, in retrospect, while I don't disagree with the content of what I said, I cringe with how I said it, and that I even engaged in the first place. In large part because that kind of engagement goes against the spirit of this forum which I cherish so much and find a reprieve from much of the rest of the internet. A reprieve in large part due to the tireless, high quality work of @dang -- a reprieve that I myself threatened. Now isn't that self-destructive and ironic? Well, if you're reading this @dang, thanks for not banning me. You taught me a valuable lesson which I already knew but which just wasn't sinking in. I'd like to hope I am beginning to more deeply internalize the lesson you taught me that day.
- 6y ago
- Memosyne 6y agoI found this comment about the "shock" experienced by the author interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 > If you read the profile the New Yorker published about us last year, you'll find the author's own shock experience of HN encoded into that article (and it's something of a miracle of openness and intelligence that she was able to get past that—the shock experience really is that bad).
- dang 6y agoI suppose I should clarify that that was not based on anything Anna said to us. It was just my interpretation of (my memory of) what she wrote. So anybody can read the article and decide whether they agree.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- BoppreH 6y agoObligatory appreciation post for dang. Swift invisible action when facing bad faith actors; sporadic public call outs for quick attitude correction; and consistent helpful presence like multi-page reminders and clarifications on the inner workings of this forum. I find your style of moderation to be the golden standard on how to foster a healthy online community.
- throw1234651234 6y agoI will join. I was shadow-banned or something years ago and he told me I am posting into the void. Was really nice to know.
- lazyasciiart 6y agoSo he gets to shadowban you and then get credit for telling you he issued a secret crazy punishment?
- throw1234651234 6y ago1. I don't think it was him. He told me a while after I was banned. 2. I got warnings beforehand and deserved it.
- lazyasciiart 6y agoOh so he gets to shadowban other people and get credit for telling you about the secret crazy punishments they use here. Shadowbanning is psychopathy and if you disagree, then logically you should never have been told about it.
- remirk 6y agoUnfortunately the site doesn't let me read the post until I login or disable 'my adblocker', which I don't have enabled.
- Shared404 6y agoDang, the moderators here do a really good job. Thanks for everything!
- echelon 6y agoThanks dang! You've helped keep HN readable, corrected countless title and link errors, and prevented heated discussions from devolving into fights. I also am super thankful for your help getting my "Show HN" post to the front page. We all appreciate you.
- mayank 6y agoTIL it's "Dan G" and not the Chinese surname "Dang" that I'd always assumed.
- Isamu 6y agoI first assumed D. Ang
- 3np 6y agoI've been assuming literal dang as in "dang! the update crashed the OS"
- dang 6y agoYes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767296
- arthurcolle 6y agoSame here... so happy to get this reaffirmed by @dang himself in a sibling comment!
- arthurcolle 6y agoHaha yes I discovered this like a year ago, and still get a kick out of it when I'm so overloaded that I am reflecting on usernames as opposed to getting work done...
- joshxyz 6y agoAlso surprised to learned that back then, but it's too late I already got used in reading it as "dang"
- chrisco255 6y agoThanks HN moderators! I think HN has one of the most balanced systems for moderating discussion on the web!
- ericjang 6y agoThank you, dang! Having to read so many pages of ceaseless bickering and techno pedantry must take a toll on the psyche. I appreciate all that you do!
- sillysaurusx 6y agoIt always bugged me that Scott never got a proper send-off. He’s been gone for a year now. He did so much work, but didn’t even get a thank-you-goodbye. But it’s not my place to make a fuss about it. I just wish I knew what ended up happening to him. (If you’re reading this, Scott, I hope you’ve been well!) We spent a few years doing some enjoyable work together on Lumen, a Lisp for JS and Lua. I’m not sure we were friends, but it was interesting to get to know him, especially before he was an HN mod. I wish I didn’t have a plane to catch in 30 minutes, otherwise I’d write up all the things I learned from working with him. But he was one of the most effective hackers I’ve ever seen. Crucially, in the communication department. If you had a question, Scott had an answer, or at least a lead, often within 5 minutes. I’ve never seen anything like it, before or since. He was not merely a fan of simplicity, but seemed to shun complexity the way outer space shuns air. One of the finest examples of his work is, in my opinion, a library he wrote for Lumen called Motor: https://github.com/sctb/motor https://github.com/sctb/motor To this day, any one of you can open any file in that repo and understand exactly what it’s doing at a glance. I challenge you to find anything surprising or confusing. I don’t understand why he seemed to vanish into thin air a year ago, but the explanation is probably mundane. He once shared some wonderful music he made, so I like to imagine he went off to make music in some quiet mountain town or something.
- tptacek 6y agoIt's really none of our business.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoI spent years of my life working with him, directly and indirectly. I got to know him on a personal level. None of your business, perhaps, but notice not one thank-you in this entire thread has been directed at sctb, and most readers probably have no clue who I’m talking about. That’s how little recognition he got. Scott Bell was instrumental to the business of Hacker News. He contributed in a thousand ways, both small and large.
- dang 6y ago
- Hnrobert42 6y agoWhen I first came to HN from reddit, I posted some jokey nonsense comment. A moderator gently scolded me. I really disliked it. Now, I see the wisdom of keeping the jokes to a minimum and focusing in thoughtful discussion. So thank you, mods.
- doc_gunthrop 6y agoThat's what impressed me when I first came across HN - the signal-to-noise ratio. The comments sections were always filled with thoughtfully written comments that provided useful insights into interesting topics. Thank you @dang for your diligence and commitment to the task.
- rv-de 6y agousername checks out
- augusto-moura 6y agothis is a thread about nonsense jokey comments, have you learned nothing? haha
- rathel 6y agoFor me the noise is still there, even if it takes another form. Jokes, puns and nastiness are swapped for hacker-y style rants (we know how idiosyncratic many of hackers are) or people who talk about things they lack the knowledge of. Ironically, under front page HN submissions where comments would give some context, often there are none. Who upvoted them all the way to the front page? People who want to feel intelligent? Edit: this may be related to the moderator's override function where they put some submissions manually on the front page.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- brian_herman__ 6y agoThanks Dang! I love your work this is a great place for discussion. Hopefully my comments are not too shitty.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tehjoker 6y agoI appreciate dang's moderation. It's generally fair and doesn't discriminate based on viewpoint. Flame wars are pretty tame here and usually devoid of personal attacks.
- soulofmischief 6y agoThanks, dang. <3
- KingFelix 6y agoTHanks dang!!!!!
- esoterica 6y ago> The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—often masks a deeper recklessness. Not that I disagree with the characterization, but the New Yorker criticizing other people for performative erudition is the funniest thing ever.
- lostphilosopher 6y agoHN remains one of the few "internet communities" where the impossible job of moderation is well done (IMO). Thanks dang!
- rossdavidh 6y agoEspecially appreciated at this time of year, and extra extra appreciated at this time in the four-year cycle.
- cedricd 6y agoThanks for all the work you do Daniel! I don't know how you manage it all.
- alexashka 6y agoModeration is great. Making changes that reduce the need for moderation are even better. If you were to ask yourself: how much more could we be doing with a big community of people who are mostly highly educated and technical? Is forums in the form we've had them since 1990 the optimal medium for a community? I don't think anyone would say yes and yet I don't see any effort on behalf of the people who run this place to experiment and do anything remotely interesting. The moderators on here do an admirable job but it ultimately feels to me like they're cops who are being asked to arrest people for smoking a joint. The solution to better policing is less policing, more community via better laws, the solution to better moderation is less moderation, more community, via better use of technology. For a place that talks about new, this place feels exactly like what I had 20+ years ago elsewhere.
- dang 6y agoIf you have concrete suggestions about how to reduce the need for moderation, I'd love to hear them.
- alexashka 6y agoYes, poll people who invest in YC start-ups if they'd be willing to invest in start-ups that improve upon HackerNews forums. That should generate a few million. Then hire somebody with a proven track record to oversee proposals for additions to existing HackerNews. In other words, get money, then crowdsource ideas, then pay people to implement ideas with most votes, then provide beta tests, then provide HackerNews add-ons for a small fee that would cover the expenses. Run it as a non-profit. --- Has this been tried before? Is this the first time you hear of such a proposal? --- I'll throw in two more ideas - make any action taken by a moderator public, with blanked out content that is flagrantly illegal (links to child pornography) Make it possible to dispute any moderator action for a fee, in other words move from a dictatorship to a democracy. HackerNews need not be a dictatorship where what moderators think is good, is what's going to be enforced upon the rest. There can be thousands of HackerNews that are filtered, sorted and moderated differently, based on people's preferences. This would be trivially made possible by asking people who'd be interested in such a service, to pay a small monthly fee. --- Trivial change - please make it possible to block specific users based on name/how long they've been registered on site for X-number of days. For example if I see someone routinely making comments I am not interested in, who does it benefit for me to continue reading their input? It only causes tension, it's like having to live with people you are fundamentally opposed to with no recourse other than leaving (no longer reading the comments section) I predict this feature alone would decrease tensions among regular readers significantly, making your job easier.
- throwaway4220 6y agoThis place is amazing, and I learned so much about a variety of topics. Most of my MD colleagues use Twitter or Facebook, where the signal-to-noise is much, much lower. I assume there have been plenty of spin-offs from HN (I would LOVE to have a similar forum for discussing medical issues; Can I fork the codebase somehow?), but I do think the secret sauce is moderation. Also, politically, I'm "an enlightened centrist" lol and nearly all of the political spectrum here is represented well IMO, and even personal attacks/strawman arguments are not immediately banned but first discouraged. Thanks dang!
- saagarjha 6y agoTwitter can have a very high signal-to-noise ratio if you follow the right people.
- cgriswald 6y agoCan it? Last I used it (which was a long time ago) Twitter itself added noise to my feed.
- chki 6y agoYou can (and I propose you should) use Twitter with the chronological timeline feature enabled. It's why Twitter is usable for me while Facebook is not.
- inglor_cz 6y agoTwitter deliberately promotes outrage. While hateful screaming is nothing new in the world of politics (or elsewhere), for Twitter and other ad-sellers this is a way to capture attention of users and drag them into flame wars. See this blog for one case thereof: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=46541 https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=46541
- kody 6y agoI don't see "so and so Liked this tweet" in my feed, and I only see get a handful of promoted tweets, so it feels like they've eased up on adding noise to our feeds. I also set my location (arbitrarily) to Cook Islands, and now my "$LocalArea trends" widget is empty (thank God), so with aggressive culling I now have a Twitter feed that shows me what I asked to see.
- Vaslo 6y agoI’ve put up a bunch of stories, most get no traction. However on the weekend once in a while I get a message from HN that one of my stories is pretty interesting and I should repost it. While every other service relies completely on some algorithm, it’s good to see a place like HN where people are jumping in and trying to stabilize things.
- skinnymuch 6y agoWow interesting. I didn’t know that happens. Who contacts you and how?
- saagarjha 6y agoThe moderators email you, I think.
- prawn 6y agoOne email used 2017-2019 has the format: "We thought you might like to know that we put [HN link] in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page sometime in the next 24 hours." Another I got a few times in 2015 starts: "[link] looks good, but didn't get much attention. Would you care to repost it? You can do so here: [link]." Former might be a newer version of the latter, going by email dates.
- skinnymuch 6y agoCool
- mcguire 6y ago"N-gate, a satirical Web site with the slogan “We can’t both be right” (a NAND gate is a kind of logic gate that only outputs “false” if all of its inputs read “true”), offers a weekly summary of Hacker News discussions, dubbed “webshit weekly.” The N-gate entry about a Hacker News discussion of a Times article on the crashes of two Boeing 737 airliners, in Indonesia and Ethiopia, is typical. “Discussing a pair of crashes that killed almost three hundred and fifty people,” it reads, “Hacker News can’t decide whether the failure was one of user experience or branding. Other Hackernews”—as it calls commenters—“think that this plane would have worked better if it were designed by programmers with a tendency to work late for free. A majority of the comments are Hackernews incorrecting one another about FAA regulations, avionics, and lift.”" That's brilliant! :-D I'll have to check out N-gate. Oh, this post? Typical newyorker puff piece, too long to read and unrelated to technology. Someone should flag it.
- Razengan 6y agoWhen I first discovered HN, it was like a breath of fresh air compared to Reddit etc. I have since lost faith. HN likes to masquerade as some sort of upscale establishment, high and above the petty squabbles of Eslewhere, but in the end this place too devolves into a predictable echo chamber just like the rest of them, when it comes to any topic on which people have varied opinions. This is not a place for dissenting views (such as this comment). This community does not brook any disagreement, because this service is not designed for it. This did not happen overnight; for more than a year I have been watching perfectly fine comments getting buried in the gray for not siding with the prevailing mob on divisive topics. Even neutral, soft-spoken stances get struck down. One can now reliably predict what the majority of comments are going to be like, just by reading the title of a post. I've brought this up several times with dang, but apparently you're not able to appreciate these problems until you try participating as a regular user. And let's not even mention the awful UI design with its vendetta against eyes, low light and small screens. HN is broken, and one of the major indicators of a broken service is a tone-deaf management who continues to insist that everything is Working As Intended.
- joe_the_user 6y agoHN likes to masquerade as some sort of upscale establishment, high and above the petty squabbles of Eslewhere, but in the end this place too devolves into a predictable echo chamber just like the rest of them, when it comes to any topic on which people have varied opinions. This isn't a place where dissenting opinions get upvotes. Why should they? I think a fair of posters with plenty of karma are still willing to post things that get massively downvoted and cause a reaction. I'm getting better at it. I keep a mental model of how I've reacted to HN, look at the page - "there's the reaction, down five or ten points", "hmm, I'm guess down and up votes balanced", "ah, that was a crowd pleaser". I don't think hn is more broken than America or the Internet or whatever.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Razengan 6y ago> I don't think hn is more broken than America or the Internet or whatever. But HN wants to be different, with its quirky rules like not being allowed to downvote posts and replies, or needing a certain amount of karma to be able to downvote comments, and the time limits on edits etc., instead of just following the basic Reddit model. So clearly someone at HN thought that a simple free-for-all system wasn't good enough, prone to abuse, and decided to make some changes, but HN isn't good enough either; it's still too easy for 3-4 downvoters to prevent thousands of people from seeing a comment they don't want to be seen. It's too easy to suppress a side or view with fewer supporters here. One thing HN should have borrowed is how some subreddits don't show a post/comment's score until N hours have passed. If votes don't affect a comment's visibility for a while then everybody may have a chance to be heard. For more severe violations like spam or harassment, there's always the Flag button.
- Raphmedia 6y agoI've been confronted by Dang a long while ago in an account I lost the access to since. I was hurt, but it was also a very educative experience. Most of my life has been spent moderating online communities. Needless to say why, I am trying to mimic the style of moderation I have been on the receiving end of. Keep up the good work!
- chris_wot 6y agoI got told repeatedly that I "knew why" I was rate limited, but never given an actual explanation. Then it was lifted. Go figure.
- tptacek 6y agoThe actual comment does not match your story. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16268353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16268353
- chris_wot 6y agoOh really? I'm curious, I've kept all the emails. Did you read those emails, and if so, how? Do you know why I was rate limited? The thread he referred to wasn't actually one I started. I made one comment in it. dang stated that "I'll try to give you more of a response later when I have time", but this never eventuated. Incidentally, it was a very difficult time of my life, so I was genuinely reaching out to find out what I had done. His responses didn't help. I don't intend to comment further. Edit: redacted a small part of this comment. It's unlikely to have been helpful, and it's unlikely the one I'm responding to would care.
- tptacek 6y agoI think the veracity of your description of the linked thread is probably similar to that of your description of these emails.
- 6y ago
- NiceWayToDoIT 6y agoFunny enough, listening to the narrator's voice gave me an impression of very serious and somewhat condescending note. Personally, I do not consider HN in that way. I think about HN as a place where we share ideas, playful place regardless of how complex a topic is. The main point is to put in the spotlight ideas, not people. Attacking an idea is ok, attacking people is not.
- chrisandchips 6y agoDang's done a super great job, especially recently with some huge threads related to the election. I would like to raise one point that's tangentially related: why is it not easier to find a page explaining the community guidelines ? AFAIK you have to look them up yourself. The navbar has links to new, threads, past, comments, ask, show, jobs and submit, but none of them even give a clear redirect link to get to the guidelines ... wouldn't it make sense to add them to nav, or configure the site such that they're displayed the first time you visit ? Always seemed a bit funny to me from a design perspective.
- dang 6y agoThey're in the footer on every page. Not enough?
- grayclhn 6y agoI've been reading this site for almost 10 years and never noticed them until you just pointed it out. I don't think many people look at the footer. :) (They're also not in the footer of the comment page and a link in the otherwise empty header could be useful for new users.)
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoThe one thing I did notice in the article is that there is a a forum dedicated to outrageous things HN says. I mean, I always knew this is a public forum and whatnot, but I thought it has less mainstream appeal, which is the reason the conversation don't devolve easily into name calling if fallacies don't work ( or fallacies are called out for what they are ). edit: made it more generic
- alexchamberlain 6y agoSomewhat ironically that hashtag seems to be dominated by a few people; that being said, they have identified people saying outrageous things. Probably worth flagging rather than increasing its visibility?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoCan you elaborate on identifying people? I typically try to keep things sufficiently vague, but I also do hold somewhat strong opinions on a few subjects.
- alexchamberlain 6y agoSorry, that was careless language; I meant they have identified some outrageous comments - most (if not all) the screenshot exclude the username.
- chrisweekly 6y ago> "[dang] later told me that he sees frustration at work as part of the DNA of Hacker News. “The instinct that there simply has to be a better way to build systems, and the yearning to connect with it,” he said. “If you can’t do that at your job, and few can, then you can at least dream and read and argue about it on the Internet. Hacker News is the inverse image of many people’s jobs, overlaid on top of each other—an escape valve for frustrated idealists.” ^ My favorite line in the whole piece. It resonates.
- ducttapecrown 6y agoThe phrase inverse image means something specific in mathematics, so I'm getting confused trying to connect that meaning with dang's quote—like, what is the function?
- egypturnash 6y agoI think "photo-negative" might be another analogy for this that does not trigger attempts to search for this meaning. So might "boolean NOT", to maybe be a bit more programmerly.
- caf 6y agoI think the mathematical term "complement" might be more in line with the intended meaning.
- inopinatus 6y agoFigure and ground.
- op03 6y agoCan it be more than an escape valve? What kind of patterns can channel or harness all that escaping energy? Also feels like there are too many escape valves on the internet and too few patterns to harness all the potential energy.
- sonofhans 6y agoThank you, dang! More than anything, what makes this place a joy to frequent is the quality of the discourse. Your guiding hand is visible in the curation of both articles and comments. Community sites like HN fall into many common pathologies. Your laser focus on avoiding those traps, and intentionally chasing positive models, has me always looking forward to loading the site and diving into the discourse.
- mcguire 6y ago"For decades, the phrase “Eternal September” has been used to describe the tipping point for a message board or online community—the inclusion, or invasion, of new users who dramatically change the existing subculture. (The term originated in September, 1993, after America Online made Usenet, a decades-old message-board system, accessible to many of its members, who were new to the Internet.)" Actually, it predates that; referring to when a new crop of undergraduates would arrive at schools on the Internet.
- rdiddly 6y agoProps to the Mod Squad. What they're doing is working. An army of bots couldn't do it better. Never underestimate the power of anthropogenic cognitive input, a.k.a. people thinking about stuff.
- part1of2 6y ago> site’s anti-abuse systems, many of which Bell and Gackle have written themselves. That sounds interesting! How were these built? In the same Arc language? Any chance this can be open sourced?
- dang 6y agoIn Arc, yes. Unfortunately not, because we don't know how to write anti-abuse systems that keep working once people know what they are.
- dwd 6y agoUnfortunate but very true; it's always interesting to see what other people have in their bag of tricks - but a magician should never tell. I would guess that you have rules based on patterns of observed behaviour, and that they do 80-90% of the effective blocking.
- part1of2 6y agoI get it, thanks. Instead, Could you write about them, rather than the code? I'm picturing lessons learned, don't try ABC it's a waste of time, and so on..
- webmaven 6y agoI'd actually like to see a series of 'lessons learned', or 'things we tried that didn't work' (including code, if possible/prudent).
- outworlder 6y agoI got slapped around by a large trout, I mean, by dang, once. Rather than getting annoyed, as would often happen elsewhere, I was ashamed. Because dang was right and I was wrong. Thanks for that.
- dang 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XeDvKqI4E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XeDvKqI4E
- PestoDiRucola 6y agoThe greatest thing I took out from this article is the @shit_hn_says twitter account. Absolutely hilarious!
- jdkee 6y agoAfter spending the late 1990s and 2000s on Slashdot, with the trolling and toxic flamewars, HN reflects how a mature social commenting site should be.
- birdyrooster 6y agoThank you dang for helping me to see the light and stop creating flame wars.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mikewarot 6y agoI find that NH is a great jumping off point for adventures I didn't even know I wanted to take. For instance, in this story I learned that some people can down-vote, and a lot of work is done in the background to keep goofballs like me from derailing things. I too would like to thank the moderators. Further, and more interestingly to me, I learn that HN is written in a LISP variant called ARC... I've never understood LISP, and especially never thought that anything useful could be built with it... at least at the subconscious level, yet I know AutoCad and Emacs are built around it. I have similar feelings about Prolog, which I tried once and just didn't grok. Is there an IDE for lisp?
- blast 6y agoThere are several IDEs for specific Lisps, like Dr Racket or the Lispworks implementation of Common Lisp. There's also Emacs, which is kind of like a Lisp-based IDE, and Slime is a really good Common Lisp plugin for it.
- mikewarot 6y agoI tried Portacle, and my experience was utter frustration. Once you go astray, there's no way to know what is going on. It threw me into so sort of debugger, with no obvious way out. Lispworks looks like exactly what I want, except it seems to be in the Delphi business model, thus I can't afford it. DrRacket looks better... but it doesn't seem to be lisp? I thank you for the lifeline. If only Borland had made TurboLisp back in the day.
- xtiansimon 6y agoCool write up. I love HN
- neilv 6y agoI love this article, and it's one of the things I point colleagues to, every time I introduce them to HN.
- telltruth 6y agoI really appreciate @dang for such an attentive hard work. He definitely deserves kudos. But here's the rub. You will not see this post. I have been secretely ghosted out so all my comments goes to bottom no matter how thoughful or informative it may be. There is no way for me to de-ghosted. He or other mod probably did this to me for some reason I don't even know or remember. The moderation at HN is like life sentense that you don't even know why and when you got it and then cannot be challanged.
- dfcowell 6y agoFor what it’s worth, you aren’t invisible.
- cm2012 6y agoI see this comment.
- bxk1 6y agoThey basically do account downweighting for people they don't like. Just make a new account with clean cookies and if you are using the same IP check your comment visibility from other IPs from time to time, as they record which accounts were on which IP and might invent some other bullshit measure against you in the future as more people become aware of the downweighting.
- saagarjha 6y agoWe can see you. Also, commenters that are actually shadowbanned (which is a thing that happens, to be clear) show up to users who choose to have them appear. These users can “vouch” for your posts if they look reasonable and get you unbanned. So you’re not completely out of luck if you end up in such a situation. Also, usually asking the moderators though email works as a way to get your questions answered.
- NewOrderNow 6y agoExcept for the rich insulting the poor. Dang allows rich people to say some fucked up shit, but if you defend your honor in that situation, you are the asshole. Classism exists everywhere.
- NewOrderNow 6y agoDownvoting won't change the truth, it just shows that your are rich
- atum47 6y agoWell, when I got my first meaningful job as a software engineer I made sure to come here and thank the awesome people of HN - I usually talk to Dang, but I'm sure everyone is nice. I have vanished from several places like twitter, reddit, linkedin... HN is the place I come daily to read the news and often share my personal projects. Thanks Dang - and everyone else - I sure appreciate you.
- laksdjfkasljdf 6y agoNow only if they published "The Lonely Work of Writing for Hacker News, only to be shadow banned or sent away with a Typing Too Fast Message After You Put in the Work"
- darkerside 6y agoLovely article, and a terrific final line. Summing up the cleverness, inanity, ambiguity, and camaraderie that I only seem to find on the internet. Thanks mods for all you do, that which we see and that we don't.
- bra-ket 6y agoThanks for flagging flame trolls like us. People tend to get carried away in a heat of discussion, but eventually return to the mean of civility after cool-down period. Other places just impose ban frivolously, which doesn't help long term, bans destroy the community, methinks. Moderate moderation like yours is the way to go, and I'm not saying it as a kiss ass. Edit: dang, what moderation tools do you think could be helpful. What part of your job can be automated via ML/NLP? What is your least favorite, repetitive or time consuming manual algorithm as a mod?
- dang 6y agoI do think that there is room for ML/NLP tools to be useful but we haven't done much with that yet. Probably looking through the flagged comments is the least favorite, as well as most repetitive and time consuming manual activity, for all the mods who do it.
- bra-ket 6y agoSo the first problem seems to be classifying user-flagged comments based on rules violations. And if this ML labeling is successful then do all the unflagging, or whatever is the most easily automated , most frequent action, to reduce the queue for manual processing.
- js2 6y agoMods are reviewing every flagged comment? I don't flag comments often, but I'll be even more careful now when I do if that's the case. Suggestion: when flagging a comment, allow the flagger to state which guideline they think the comment violates (I believe both reddit and FB do this).
- raverbashing 6y agoI'm not sure how many of those flags are just misclicks or "I don't like this" button, but I guess the noise level is higher than expected
- 6y ago
- zadkey 6y agoWherever you are dang, we appreciate you, and want to thank you for helping make this a wonderful community.
- madrox 6y agoModeration is the hardest, most subjective problem on the internet today. Plus, it doesn't scale well. Part of me wonders if the way we design the forums themselves lend itself to this problem. Is there a way to design forums so that the need for moderation is lessened or unneeded? I think the answer is no, but I'd like to think it's yes.
- dang 6y agoI'd like to think that too—it would be so much easier—but I'm pretty sure the answer is no, and I think I know why. It's because the moderation problems are all traceable back to the fundamental things we struggle with as human beings. Pain and misunderstanding in relationships, mostly. I do still have one optimistic belief about this, which is that groups have a kind of consciousness (call it culture) and that this can develop over time, and get more organized. To the extent that that happens, moderation is not needed so much. Moderation is there to try to provide the organization that the group can't do for itself, so it's always a substitute and not a very good one.
- carapace 6y agoYou remind me of Bucky Fuller's trim tab metaphor: > Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. > It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_tab#Trim_tab_as_a_metaphor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_tab#Trim_tab_as_a_metapho... - - - - And thank you!
- Karunamon 6y agoThis is a truly amazing place. I know there are some haters out there, (your ngates and your shithnsays's), but HN is a truly unique board, with overall quality discussion, and a high SNR, and the moderation policy is a huge part of all of this. So seriously, thanks dang. I think we've come to blows a few times, probably even not-so-kind ones, but whatever you're doing here works and you should probably keep doing it :)
- platz 6y ago> What provides relief at a community level is when people find ability in themselves to acknowledge truth in what the other is saying.
- bikamonki 6y agoI only have two doors to enter the web each day: HN and Twitter. On Twitter, I try hard do a better job moderating content by carefully selecting who to follow; however, much noise is unavoidable. (Twitter needs to rethink itself) On the other door, this door, I ALWAYS end up in the right spots. This is the best site on the web, no doubt. Here I discover, I learn, I get inspired. I get downvoted too :) Thanks mods!
- thunderbong 6y agoThanks Dang and Sam! I don't think I've read as many comments as I have on this thread and neither have I read every line of any other New York Times article as diligently!
- guru4consulting 6y agoThanks Dang for all your hardwork in maintaining HN to be a wonderful and sane place in internet. I always worry and wonder how HN can stay this way in future. I hope you, Sam, and other moderators write a journal of your thoughts, all the lessons learned in moderating HN.. that could help future moderators.
- felix12777 6y agoYou're not alone. We read and learned so much from you. And your moderation makes our knowledge hunt simpler. I'm wondering what would be your next milestone to make HN more useful?
- dang 6y agoThe next big milestones are to finish a new Arc implementation that should help with our performance issues—I've been stuck on that forever. And then to build the next version of the API.
- RobertRoberts 6y agoMaybe Dang will never read this, but I appreciate the patience and logical (useful and firm) directions he gave when I stepped outside the posting rules for HN. Thanks Dang, I actually learned something from how you dealt calmly with a random internet poster. Cheers, and bravo.
- dang 6y agoI did read this and appreciate your posting it!
- totemandtoken 6y agoObviously, to echo everyone else's sentiments, I'm grateful for dang and tbh the hn community at large. But one thing I keep thinking back to is the abysmal discussion of the Event Horizon Telescope black hole pictures. I think they were shown around the time of this interview. I remember for the first time the threads on hn felt unmoderated or overwhelmed [1]. Like someone sucked all the air out the room, metaphorically speaking. I don't mean this as a criticism of dan or anyone else behind hn (you can even see he was actively trying to flag the worst offenders), but I just wonder what it was like behind the scenes for hn that day, how prevalent that sort of thing is, how concerned mods should be of that sort of thing in the future, etc. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086
- blackflame7000 6y agoIf you Unban me things would be slightly less lonely!
- dang 6y agoWe can't do that yet because you're still posting too many unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. But if you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- blackflame7000 6y agoHere’s my reason: The election is over so lets have a time of healing? My entire comment history is like 10,000 up and 8,600 down if I had to wager, it’s still net positive on the community. I’ll refrain from anything political.. until oct of 2024, deal?
- anoncow 6y agoThank you dang! It's been 7 years since I moved away from Slashdot. HN has kept me sane and informed.
- rswail 6y agoHN reminds me of ye olde days of Usenet, where you browsed sci.space and learned orbital mechanics, or comp.lang.c or x.y.z just for fun. The content isn't always enlightening, but most of it is, or at least intelligent and thought provoking. Twitter is fine for following individuals, lwn.net for Linux specific stuff, even slashdot on occasion, although slashdot often ends up being a repeat of the stories that are here.
- brunojppb 6y agoI come from a very small town in Brazil in the middle of nowhere. I was interested in Tech since I was a kid, but had zero influence around me. I was a police officer for many years when I decided to go to university and study computer science. There, by a recommendation of a great professor, I got introduced to Hacker News. First time I saw this website, my mind was blown by the amount of rich information and links pointing me to gold pages on the web I have never heard of. But this was just the shallow surface. Once I discovered the comments section and started reading the threads, I was once again astonished by the rich content and discussions going on. Sometimes, I spend hours just reading brilliant comments here and learning from people way smarter than me. Thanks for this community and the moderators for making this happen :D
- dang 6y agoThat's great to read. Very glad you found your way here! HN has connected many people with their 'tribe' over the years, both online and in person with each other. I think that is the best aspect of what PG created with this site. I also think that we could maybe find new ways to encourage more real-world connections. It feels to me like a lot of potential energy could turn kinetic if that happened.
- DanBC 6y agoHave you heard of Randomised Coffee Trials? Here's an example of one (healthcare) community that try them: https://q.health.org.uk/community/rcts/ https://q.health.org.uk/community/rcts/ > How does it work? > Every member who signs up will be sent the name of another randomly-chosen member on the 1st of every month. Each pair can arrange a brief informal meet-up at a time that suits both parties – be it a phone call, Skype call, Google Hangout or even a coffee in person. > “RCTs have given me the opportunity to talk to people who work in areas that I don’t usually come across in my day to day work.” Lesley Goodburn, Patient Experience Consultant > RCTs allow Q members to connect with a new member each month and hear about what other colleagues are working on and share any ideas and inspiration. There are no rules here – RCTs should be viewed as an informal opportunity to connect with peers, however if scheduling means that you can’t meet that month then it’s ok. > We think you’ll enjoy these fun and fruitful conversations – it’s organised serendipity. Matthew Mezey, Q’s Community Manager has written a blog about the benefits of RCTs. And here's a link to that blog: https://q.health.org.uk/blog-post/easy-time-light-impact-heavy-join-qs-randomised-coffee-trial-chats/ https://q.health.org.uk/blog-post/easy-time-light-impact-hea...
- batirch 6y agoHackerNews is my go to place for any type of tech question. Recently, I had RSI because of related sports injury. I learnt VIM shortcuts, bought Microsoft Egonomic keyboard and logi mouse based on suggestions here. I am learning tones of stuff on technologies that I use daily. I really wish I had like-minded friends in real life who are hackernews fans. Hit me up if anyone currently in or visits Dubai, UAE.
- abhinav22 6y agoAwesome, I am in Dubai too. Always cool to see another HN user here :-)
- rkagerer 6y agoI just want to say I love this community and am grateful for the heroic work Daniel (dang) and others have devoted through the years to maintain it, both technical and social. The article showcased some of the more extreme comments out of what I've found to be, overall, a cornucopia of informative and thoughtful discourse. This quote in particular was poignant and I think epitomizes a core value that makes this place special: There’s often a strong wish to solve these contentious problems by changing the software, and, to the extent that we’ve tried things like that, we haven’t found it to work. What does seem to work better is personal interaction, over and over and over again, with individual users. That, case by case by case, seems to move the needle.
- toxik 6y agoTo dang the mang!
- creativityEng 6y agoPlease stop being selective. Hyperbole is hyperbole, even if you like the message. My biggest issue are the double standards.
- secondcoming 6y agoCondé Nast's CMP is not GDPR compliant.
- antepodius 6y agoHE DOES IT FOR FREE
- ignoramous 6y agoIt is also lonely work to be commenting on Hacker News on pages that do not make the front page. Anyhow, for dang and stcb (founder market fit!), I believe, with abuse in online communities on the rise, is an opportunity to dust up that YC application (stamp of approval!) and apply with a startup idea that can be repeatably (software eating the world!) sold to other companies grappling with this problem (product market fit!) unless they agree to a merger (acquihire by Stripe incoming!). Mark my words, this is going to happen someday.
- NewOrderNow 6y agoDoes anyone here actually want to have a discussion on why you are all just giving a giant circle jerk while there are gripes that you downvote into oblivion. You cunts really aren't any different than reddit.
- NewOrderNow 6y agoI think you are all cunts. I would say this to your face.
- GreeniFi 6y agoThanks Dang!