3 ms·

This is a serious, non-sarcastic response: honestly, sincerely, in my experience as a HN reader off and on for years, a commenter for 6 months, and occasional a

by _qulr 6y ago

This is a serious, non-sarcastic response: honestly, sincerely, in my experience as a HN reader off and on for years, a commenter for 6 months, and occasional author of submitted articles (usually submitted by someone other than me) that have reached #1, violation of the HN guidelines is the norm on HN, and abiding by the guidelines is the exception. I myself have been personally attacked on here, or been interpreted uncharitably, etc., countless times. Mostly with no moderators intervening. In general I have no objection to "policing" the comments, if it is done well, and consistently, but the problem with policing, not just on HN but in general, is the selective, arbitrary enforcement of rules. Just looking at the current case, for example, why was my reply flagged, but the comment I replied to, which you also cited as violating the guidelines, was not flagged? Moreover, IMO this whole submission seems to be a strange time to be pedantic about enforcing the guidelines. After all, the submission itself was flagged as very low quality, and many of the commenters were justifiably complaining about the low quality of the submission and wondering why it was #1. The author is deserving of some rebuke, especially for the "nefariously hides itself from Activity Monitor" bit, which is technically false, indeed impossible. The author should know better, being or having been a Mac software engineer himself. In fairness, HN is no worse off than any other site that allows comments from the general public. HN wants to believe that its comments are higher quality than other sites, but the reality is that it's not really true, and it's hard to see how that will ever become true. Maybe it was true in the distant past when HN was less trafficked, I don't know.

_qulr 6y ago
It's amusing that my reply was downvoted, as if that even matters down in a 2 person thread of replies to a flagged comment in a flagged submission. (And I already have more "karma" than I'll ever need. Does anything above 500 matter?) More proof that HN is as juvenile as any other site. (I realize that talking about downvoting is against the guidelines. Which is a very convenient way of avoiding the undeniable fact that upvoting and downvoting behavior on HN is highly irrational.)
dang 6y ago
There are several points here—happy to respond. > violation of the HN guidelines is the norm on HN It happens much more than we'd prefer, but to say "the norm" is a huge exaggeration. I understand how it can feel like the norm—it's common enough to run into frequently, and painful experiences leave a stronger imprint than pleasant ones [1]. But these false feelings of generality are dangerous because they lead to an attitude of why-bother. Current toxin levels, though bad enough to produce symptoms, at least aren't fatal. Why-bother would kill the community if it spread. > selective, arbitrary enforcement of rules HN moderation is inconsistent in one way but consistent in another—call them strong and weak consistency. Strong consistency would be "every post that breaks the guidelines gets moderated in the same way". That would require moderators to read all the posts, and there are far too many for that to be feasible. Weak consistency would be "when a post does get moderated, the mods do it consistently and even-handedly". That's at least possible, and what we're shooting for. We don't get everything right but we're open to hearing about and fixing our mistakes. 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 [2]. (You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.) > why was my reply flagged, but the comment I replied to, which you also cited as violating the guidelines, was not flagged? Users flagged one more than the other. Your post violated the guidelines worse, so I don't think that was unfair. > this whole submission seems to be a strange time to be pedantic about enforcing the guidelines That's not how moderation works. When users break the guidelines and we see it, we ask them not to. Keep in mind that we don't necessarily read the threads in order—sometimes we do, but other times we're looking in via more random-access views. The guidelines don't change relative to the submission, so I don't see why moderation should. [1] 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... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=likeliest%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

by _qulr 6y ago

_qulr 6y ago

It's amusing that my reply was downvoted, as if that even matters down in a 2 person thread of replies to a flagged comment in a flagged submission. (And I already have more "karma" than I'll ever need. Does anything above 500 matter?) More proof that HN is as juvenile as any other site. (I realize that talking about downvoting is against the guidelines. Which is a very convenient way of avoiding the undeniable fact that upvoting and downvoting behavior on HN is highly irrational.)

dang 6y ago

There are several points here—happy to respond. > violation of the HN guidelines is the norm on HN It happens much more than we'd prefer, but to say "the norm" is a huge exaggeration. I understand how it can feel like the norm—it's common enough to run into frequently, and painful experiences leave a stronger imprint than pleasant ones [1]. But these false feelings of generality are dangerous because they lead to an attitude of why-bother. Current toxin levels, though bad enough to produce symptoms, at least aren't fatal. Why-bother would kill the community if it spread. > selective, arbitrary enforcement of rules HN moderation is inconsistent in one way but consistent in another—call them strong and weak consistency. Strong consistency would be "every post that breaks the guidelines gets moderated in the same way". That would require moderators to read all the posts, and there are far too many for that to be feasible. Weak consistency would be "when a post does get moderated, the mods do it consistently and even-handedly". That's at least possible, and what we're shooting for. We don't get everything right but we're open to hearing about and fixing our mistakes. 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 [2]. (You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.) > why was my reply flagged, but the comment I replied to, which you also cited as violating the guidelines, was not flagged? Users flagged one more than the other. Your post violated the guidelines worse, so I don't think that was unfair. > this whole submission seems to be a strange time to be pedantic about enforcing the guidelines That's not how moderation works. When users break the guidelines and we see it, we ask them not to. Keep in mind that we don't necessarily read the threads in order—sometimes we do, but other times we're looking in via more random-access views. The guidelines don't change relative to the submission, so I don't see why moderation should. [1] 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... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=likeliest%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...