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IMO flagging on HN falls into this darkness too. Frequently people are flagged without knowing why. Would be nice if flaggers had to provide a short sentence of

IMO flagging on HN falls into this darkness too. Frequently people are flagged without knowing why. Would be nice if flaggers had to provide a short sentence of why...

timr 6y ago
HN has a real problem with both voting-based and flag-based censorship. Graying out comments has led to a weaponization of the downvote. One of the few things I like about reddit is that downvotes don't hide comments (immediately, anyway).
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  They don't here. Turn on "showdead" in your profile.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    Showdead is a killer feature IMHO. I love it.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  I get downvoted lots and lots but it’s not censorship. If you don’t like your audience here, go find or build it elsewhere. No one is stopping you. But you’re not entitled to this one.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Exactly. This is the home of the HN community. They get to choose the mode of engagement. I, too, am frequently downvoted and often flagged when communicating civilly. This is, imho, just fine.
    - eyelidlessness 6y ago
      I’ve only been flagged once (that I recall) and I definitely wished I had some explanation. But I don’t feel suppressed by not having it. Just baffled. But then I’m baffled by a lot of what gets me downvoted too, and it’s... well, a heterogeneous community where I have some outlier opinions so I just carry on.
  - timr 6y ago
    Sure. If you don't like your opinions being hidden, you just have to go build your own community of millions of people. Simple. And of course, nobody should be concerned that the communication channels for ~all forms of public debate are privately owned. Look: I don't mind being downvoted. I don't care about karma points. But the HN system is one where downvoted comments are hidden, which is itself a form of censorship. Marginal opinions are routinely buried -- and I'm not even talking about my own. I upvote unfairly grayed-out comments that I disagree with, all the time. It is deeply ironic, for example, that my parent comment about censorship is now hidden at the bottom of the page, in light gray, because one person downvoted it.
    - eyelidlessness 6y ago
      > Sure. If you don't like your opinions being hidden, you just have to go build your own community of millions of people. Simple. No less simple than someone building it for you while you reject the idea that they might have conditions on sharing it with you. > I don't mind being downvoted. I don't care about karma points. But the HN system is one where downvoted comments are hidden, which is itself a form of censorship. Moderating a private property isn’t censorship. It’s not. If HN or FB or whatever controlled your access to basic internet protocols sure. That would be dystopian and would be an example of censorship. You’re just failing to meet social expectations in a community you’re willingly participating in, and experiencing the consequences of that. It’s no more censorship than not being invited to someone’s birthday party. > It is deeply ironic, for example, that my parent comment about censorship is now hidden at the bottom of the page, in light gray, because one person downvoted it. That... isn’t how the algorithm works, and I’ve been downvoted enough to know it. You’ve likely gotten a lot of upvotes and downvotes leaving an average of -1 (which is -2 btw, you start at +1), but the volume of downvotes is much greater than average. I don’t know the precise formula but I know with certainty that one downvote doesn’t get me greyed.
      - timr 6y ago
        "Moderating a private property isn’t censorship. It’s not." Yeah, I get it. That's why I said what I said about all public debate being moved to private property. "I don’t know the precise formula but I know with certainty that one downvote doesn’t get me greyed." I don't know, and don't care. The graying out of comments happens quickly, and people use it to hide comments they don't like.
mistermann 6y ago
It would be informative to have a url we can go to to see all articles that have been either flagged and removed, or ~downgraded also. HN is a private website of course, and has no obligation whatsoever to provide this level of insight.
vosper 6y ago
> Would be nice if flaggers had to provide a short sentence of why... Yes, and same for up and downvotes: I'd like to require a selection from a small set of required tags, and for the aggregates to be visible (perhaps with a delay). I'd actually like up and down values to be applied to individual tags - for example, I might add +1 to the "correct" score of a story, but -1 for "rude / unkind" (we could bikeshed the names all day, but I don't think any realistic set would be worse than the zero info you get today when your comment goes grey but no-one has taken the time to explain why) I'm pretty sure this is what Slashdot used to do?
- zbentley 6y ago
  > I'm pretty sure this is what Slashdot used to do? Yes, that's definitely a community we should emulate. /s
  - vosper 6y ago
    I'm not sure that Slashdot's community is/was inherently a result of their voting/tagging system. Their heyday was a long time ago, and the communoty standards were different to here. It was maybe somewhere between reddit and HN (I'm not sure either existed in Slashdot's hayday)
- 1123581321 6y ago
  Most of the good discussion here happens without much mutual upvoting or downvoting. Frequent downvoters fit other users into political/technical/social narratives that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, and the downvoted would reflect that.
  - vosper 6y ago
    You're probably right, but I'll give you a concrete example: here's a post from today that was downvoted when I commented on it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25280929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25280929 It appeared to be making a factual claim about how MDM works, (and here's where I get subjective) counter to a prevailing narrative in the thread. It's not downvoted anymore, but there was no explanation available (and there still isn't). Was the comment wrong? Did people just not like it? Did they think it was off-topic to what it was replying to, or missing the point? We'll never know. I'd like to know :) Also, I think a system like I'm proposing would make it easier to find the quality comments and threads, and avoid (if you want to) the controversial stuff, the hot-takes, the me-too comments, the pandering to the HN crowd / tropes - etc...

IMO flagging on HN falls into this darkness too. Frequently people are flagged without knowing why. Would be nice if flaggers had to provide a short sentence of why...

timr 6y ago

HN has a real problem with both voting-based and flag-based censorship. Graying out comments has led to a weaponization of the downvote. One of the few things I like about reddit is that downvotes don't hide comments (immediately, anyway).

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
They don't here. Turn on "showdead" in your profile.
- freedomben 6y ago
  Showdead is a killer feature IMHO. I love it.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
I get downvoted lots and lots but it’s not censorship. If you don’t like your audience here, go find or build it elsewhere. No one is stopping you. But you’re not entitled to this one.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Exactly. This is the home of the HN community. They get to choose the mode of engagement. I, too, am frequently downvoted and often flagged when communicating civilly. This is, imho, just fine.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    I’ve only been flagged once (that I recall) and I definitely wished I had some explanation. But I don’t feel suppressed by not having it. Just baffled. But then I’m baffled by a lot of what gets me downvoted too, and it’s... well, a heterogeneous community where I have some outlier opinions so I just carry on.
- timr 6y ago
  Sure. If you don't like your opinions being hidden, you just have to go build your own community of millions of people. Simple. And of course, nobody should be concerned that the communication channels for ~all forms of public debate are privately owned. Look: I don't mind being downvoted. I don't care about karma points. But the HN system is one where downvoted comments are hidden, which is itself a form of censorship. Marginal opinions are routinely buried -- and I'm not even talking about my own. I upvote unfairly grayed-out comments that I disagree with, all the time. It is deeply ironic, for example, that my parent comment about censorship is now hidden at the bottom of the page, in light gray, because one person downvoted it.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    > Sure. If you don't like your opinions being hidden, you just have to go build your own community of millions of people. Simple. No less simple than someone building it for you while you reject the idea that they might have conditions on sharing it with you. > I don't mind being downvoted. I don't care about karma points. But the HN system is one where downvoted comments are hidden, which is itself a form of censorship. Moderating a private property isn’t censorship. It’s not. If HN or FB or whatever controlled your access to basic internet protocols sure. That would be dystopian and would be an example of censorship. You’re just failing to meet social expectations in a community you’re willingly participating in, and experiencing the consequences of that. It’s no more censorship than not being invited to someone’s birthday party. > It is deeply ironic, for example, that my parent comment about censorship is now hidden at the bottom of the page, in light gray, because one person downvoted it. That... isn’t how the algorithm works, and I’ve been downvoted enough to know it. You’ve likely gotten a lot of upvotes and downvotes leaving an average of -1 (which is -2 btw, you start at +1), but the volume of downvotes is much greater than average. I don’t know the precise formula but I know with certainty that one downvote doesn’t get me greyed.
    - timr 6y ago
      "Moderating a private property isn’t censorship. It’s not." Yeah, I get it. That's why I said what I said about all public debate being moved to private property. "I don’t know the precise formula but I know with certainty that one downvote doesn’t get me greyed." I don't know, and don't care. The graying out of comments happens quickly, and people use it to hide comments they don't like.

mistermann 6y ago

It would be informative to have a url we can go to to see all articles that have been either flagged and removed, or ~downgraded also. HN is a private website of course, and has no obligation whatsoever to provide this level of insight.

vosper 6y ago

> Would be nice if flaggers had to provide a short sentence of why... Yes, and same for up and downvotes: I'd like to require a selection from a small set of required tags, and for the aggregates to be visible (perhaps with a delay). I'd actually like up and down values to be applied to individual tags - for example, I might add +1 to the "correct" score of a story, but -1 for "rude / unkind" (we could bikeshed the names all day, but I don't think any realistic set would be worse than the zero info you get today when your comment goes grey but no-one has taken the time to explain why) I'm pretty sure this is what Slashdot used to do?

zbentley 6y ago
> I'm pretty sure this is what Slashdot used to do? Yes, that's definitely a community we should emulate. /s
- vosper 6y ago
  I'm not sure that Slashdot's community is/was inherently a result of their voting/tagging system. Their heyday was a long time ago, and the communoty standards were different to here. It was maybe somewhere between reddit and HN (I'm not sure either existed in Slashdot's hayday)
1123581321 6y ago
Most of the good discussion here happens without much mutual upvoting or downvoting. Frequent downvoters fit other users into political/technical/social narratives that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, and the downvoted would reflect that.
- vosper 6y ago
  You're probably right, but I'll give you a concrete example: here's a post from today that was downvoted when I commented on it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25280929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25280929 It appeared to be making a factual claim about how MDM works, (and here's where I get subjective) counter to a prevailing narrative in the thread. It's not downvoted anymore, but there was no explanation available (and there still isn't). Was the comment wrong? Did people just not like it? Did they think it was off-topic to what it was replying to, or missing the point? We'll never know. I'd like to know :) Also, I think a system like I'm proposing would make it easier to find the quality comments and threads, and avoid (if you want to) the controversial stuff, the hot-takes, the me-too comments, the pandering to the HN crowd / tropes - etc...