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This fails spectacularly when the point of disagreement is one’s humanity, for example. I’m a lot less active here than I would be otherwise, and I know that’s

This fails spectacularly when the point of disagreement is one’s humanity, for example. I’m a lot less active here than I would be otherwise, and I know that’s the case for a lot of others who belong to groups that HN considers fair game. I largely consider it a hostile place to me and people like me, and because of this moderation attitude, it’s first mover dominance in certain areas is actively harmful. And no, I’m not going to expose myself by revealing by what aspects of my identity are regularly dehumanized on HN. Social cooling is just as much a phenomena on HN. By its very nature, it’s invisible unless it affects you directly. HN loses plenty of voices it’s never aware of.

FusionX 6y ago
I was sincerely hoping to hear your side. I wish your response wasn't this vague.
- stonecraftwolf 6y ago
  I get it. But I also don’t have much of a tolerance any more for dealing with abuse, and it’s not possible to be open about this stuff without also making yourself vulnerable to that abuse. I wish there was a solution to that, not least because I wish I could participate more frequently and more openly, but if there is a solution beyond moderation for this purpose I haven’t figured it out yet.
  - belorn 6y ago
    An option is to use a throwaway account for comments that would leak personal information if linked to a main account or personalized username.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      That's an option... but if the person behind the throwaway account still receives abuse, it doesn't matter that the abuse didn't come down on their main account. It's still abuse aimed at them as a person, and it still hurts just as much.
    - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
      Be careful about assuming that a throwaway account guarantees anonymity. Based on what HN moderators have said in posts to users misusing throwaway accounts to violate the HN guidelines, they are able to link throwaway accounts to primary accounts. That necessarily implies if HN suffers a severe security breach, all throwaway accounts may be linkable to the main account which would reveal the email address on the main account, if present, and enable researching of the user's identity based on posts on the main account.
  - raarts 6y ago
    Aren't you able to provide examples that you've seen happening to others in this site? Because if not nobody knows what you're referring to, and you could just as well haven't made the comment in the first place.
    - Leparamour 6y ago
      >Aren't you able to provide examples that you've seen happening to others in this site? Because if not nobody knows what you're referring to, and you could just as well haven't made the comment in the first place. Why the aggressive tone? You could activate "showdead" in the settings and watch any thread with controversial/political topics yourself.
  - danaliv 6y ago
    Just want to say: I feel you.
karmakaze 6y ago
I wasn't aware of this before, but can fully believe its existence. Even things like Apple, Java, or .Net incite personal or anti-personal reactions--you can probably guess which are which.
cudgy 6y ago
Totally understand the desire to not tip off personal details. However, it would be nice to hear what you consider to be blind spots on HN. I have found discussions here to be far more professional, courteous, and productive than most any other forum. Are there examples of better discussion forums? If so, how are they better?
CivBase 6y ago
I have never seen anyone on HN questioning another person's humanity. That's pretty messed up if it has happened. I understand why you wouldn't want to provide any additional details, but it's also hard to take your claims at face value given my own experience. Perhaps you could share examples which do not compromise your own identity?
- briefcomment 6y ago
  If you bring up Trump in any positive capacity, you are downvoted, and sometimes your values are called into question, as if there is literally only way way to think about Trump.
  - Jordrok 6y ago
    Of course, downvotes and disagreement are hardly an attack on a person's humanity. After all, what's more human than having stupid opinions?
    - briefcomment 6y ago
      What’s more dehumanizing than reducing a person to an inanimate nuisance that should be swept aside? A caring human tries to change other people’s minds, instead of signaling that someone else should just go away. Heathy disagreements and downvotes are hardly equivalent.
      - srean 6y ago
        One can lead a horse to the water but not make it drink it. After many a 'leading' it can become tiresome and a times pointless to have a discussion where the participants have strongly held incompatible beliefs.
        briefcomment 6y ago
        So then it makes sense to disappear comments? Downvoting wouldn’t be bad if comments remained, but only a few downvotes net will bury a comment point. Make it 50 downvoted net at least.
xupybd 6y ago
I've seen this argument before and agree that some people do this. But often and sadly I think it's a case of both sides not understanding each other. Often one group has a moral code that excludes the others choices. Taken to an extreme this can be a problem. And if that person is a close relative it can be a problem but at some point you just have to be okay that some strangers in the internet think your political leanings, lifestyle choices, religious beliefs, natural tendencies, etc are wrong. There are probably things they believe that you think are wrong. But if we stop trying to be right all the time we can just find a way to live peacefully and cooperatively.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
I'd urge you to reconsider. There are plenty of people here who don't agree with someone being dehumanized, no matter who they are. If it happens here, we want it to stop. We don't see much of that happening. But if it is happening and we're just blind to it, if someone doesn't tell us, then we can't fix it. Now, we can't totally fix it, the way HN currently works. If I make a point denying your humanity, that post can be downvoted to death, flagged, and I can be banned. But the post is still there, and everyone with showdead on can still see it. So, depending on how sensitive you are to what was said, "fixing" it may not actually be fixing it. You have your own reasons for deciding what you do. But I'd at least suggest that you give us some kind of hint, so that we can try to make HN better.
- farrarstan 6y ago
  Maybe twenty assholes piling on who politely refuse to take no for an answer is part of the problem
invalidOrTaken 6y ago
Are you a product manager?
dang 6y ago
"HN" isn't a person or even a coherent group. It can't "consider" anything anything. If you mean that a subset of HN users post things as horrible as you're describing, that's no doubt true, as it is on any large, open internet forum. When the long tail meets the bottom of the barrel, it generates dreck. The vast majority of it gets downvoted and/or flagged and/or moderated and/or autokilled. Some still gets through, and we ask people to tell us about those cases so we can moderate them. We can't see everything that gets posted here. That subset of users is not representative of the community, or even close to 10% of it. If I'm wrong about that I'm open to changing my mind, but that would require real data. People's generalizations about HN are unreliable. The unreliability is proportional to the passion and confidence of the pronouncement. Typically, someone has seen a few egregious cases (or even just one) and then makes a generalization from them. The pain of running into egregious comments is real and needs to be taken seriously (and I'm sorry that you don't feel that we do—that really sucks). But the generalization is a non sequitur. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... It even used to be a sport on Twitter for awhile to find the most egregious HN comments that hadn't been moderated yet and then pass them around as examples of things the HN moderators "agree" with (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20twitter%20sport&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). But of course we don't. Anyone can look through the moderation comments and if they find even one example of us doing anything other than trying to get people to recognize and respect each other's humanity, I'd like to see it. We've written thousands of emails trying to do the same. The assumption that we see everything that gets posted here is false (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...), as is the assumption that there's any way to stop anyone from making an account and posting what they choose. It takes time for moderation mechanisms to kick in. That's the way an open forum is, and if you think about it, it's rather amazing that HN isn't dominated by such shit.
- danaliv 6y ago

FusionX 6y ago

I was sincerely hoping to hear your side. I wish your response wasn't this vague.

stonecraftwolf 6y ago
I get it. But I also don’t have much of a tolerance any more for dealing with abuse, and it’s not possible to be open about this stuff without also making yourself vulnerable to that abuse. I wish there was a solution to that, not least because I wish I could participate more frequently and more openly, but if there is a solution beyond moderation for this purpose I haven’t figured it out yet.
- belorn 6y ago
  An option is to use a throwaway account for comments that would leak personal information if linked to a main account or personalized username.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    That's an option... but if the person behind the throwaway account still receives abuse, it doesn't matter that the abuse didn't come down on their main account. It's still abuse aimed at them as a person, and it still hurts just as much.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    Be careful about assuming that a throwaway account guarantees anonymity. Based on what HN moderators have said in posts to users misusing throwaway accounts to violate the HN guidelines, they are able to link throwaway accounts to primary accounts. That necessarily implies if HN suffers a severe security breach, all throwaway accounts may be linkable to the main account which would reveal the email address on the main account, if present, and enable researching of the user's identity based on posts on the main account.
- raarts 6y ago
  Aren't you able to provide examples that you've seen happening to others in this site? Because if not nobody knows what you're referring to, and you could just as well haven't made the comment in the first place.
  - Leparamour 6y ago
    >Aren't you able to provide examples that you've seen happening to others in this site? Because if not nobody knows what you're referring to, and you could just as well haven't made the comment in the first place. Why the aggressive tone? You could activate "showdead" in the settings and watch any thread with controversial/political topics yourself.
- danaliv 6y ago
  Just want to say: I feel you.

karmakaze 6y ago

I wasn't aware of this before, but can fully believe its existence. Even things like Apple, Java, or .Net incite personal or anti-personal reactions--you can probably guess which are which.

cudgy 6y ago

Totally understand the desire to not tip off personal details. However, it would be nice to hear what you consider to be blind spots on HN. I have found discussions here to be far more professional, courteous, and productive than most any other forum. Are there examples of better discussion forums? If so, how are they better?

CivBase 6y ago

I have never seen anyone on HN questioning another person's humanity. That's pretty messed up if it has happened. I understand why you wouldn't want to provide any additional details, but it's also hard to take your claims at face value given my own experience. Perhaps you could share examples which do not compromise your own identity?

briefcomment 6y ago
If you bring up Trump in any positive capacity, you are downvoted, and sometimes your values are called into question, as if there is literally only way way to think about Trump.
- Jordrok 6y ago
  Of course, downvotes and disagreement are hardly an attack on a person's humanity. After all, what's more human than having stupid opinions?
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    What’s more dehumanizing than reducing a person to an inanimate nuisance that should be swept aside? A caring human tries to change other people’s minds, instead of signaling that someone else should just go away. Heathy disagreements and downvotes are hardly equivalent.
    - srean 6y ago
      One can lead a horse to the water but not make it drink it. After many a 'leading' it can become tiresome and a times pointless to have a discussion where the participants have strongly held incompatible beliefs.
      - briefcomment 6y ago
        So then it makes sense to disappear comments? Downvoting wouldn’t be bad if comments remained, but only a few downvotes net will bury a comment point. Make it 50 downvoted net at least.

xupybd 6y ago

I've seen this argument before and agree that some people do this. But often and sadly I think it's a case of both sides not understanding each other. Often one group has a moral code that excludes the others choices. Taken to an extreme this can be a problem. And if that person is a close relative it can be a problem but at some point you just have to be okay that some strangers in the internet think your political leanings, lifestyle choices, religious beliefs, natural tendencies, etc are wrong. There are probably things they believe that you think are wrong. But if we stop trying to be right all the time we can just find a way to live peacefully and cooperatively.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

I'd urge you to reconsider. There are plenty of people here who don't agree with someone being dehumanized, no matter who they are. If it happens here, we want it to stop. We don't see much of that happening. But if it is happening and we're just blind to it, if someone doesn't tell us, then we can't fix it. Now, we can't totally fix it, the way HN currently works. If I make a point denying your humanity, that post can be downvoted to death, flagged, and I can be banned. But the post is still there, and everyone with showdead on can still see it. So, depending on how sensitive you are to what was said, "fixing" it may not actually be fixing it. You have your own reasons for deciding what you do. But I'd at least suggest that you give us some kind of hint, so that we can try to make HN better.

farrarstan 6y ago
Maybe twenty assholes piling on who politely refuse to take no for an answer is part of the problem

invalidOrTaken 6y ago

Are you a product manager?

dang 6y ago

"HN" isn't a person or even a coherent group. It can't "consider" anything anything. If you mean that a subset of HN users post things as horrible as you're describing, that's no doubt true, as it is on any large, open internet forum. When the long tail meets the bottom of the barrel, it generates dreck. The vast majority of it gets downvoted and/or flagged and/or moderated and/or autokilled. Some still gets through, and we ask people to tell us about those cases so we can moderate them. We can't see everything that gets posted here. That subset of users is not representative of the community, or even close to 10% of it. If I'm wrong about that I'm open to changing my mind, but that would require real data. People's generalizations about HN are unreliable. The unreliability is proportional to the passion and confidence of the pronouncement. Typically, someone has seen a few egregious cases (or even just one) and then makes a generalization from them. The pain of running into egregious comments is real and needs to be taken seriously (and I'm sorry that you don't feel that we do—that really sucks). But the generalization is a non sequitur. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... It even used to be a sport on Twitter for awhile to find the most egregious HN comments that hadn't been moderated yet and then pass them around as examples of things the HN moderators "agree" with (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20twitter%20sport&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). But of course we don't. Anyone can look through the moderation comments and if they find even one example of us doing anything other than trying to get people to recognize and respect each other's humanity, I'd like to see it. We've written thousands of emails trying to do the same. The assumption that we see everything that gets posted here is false (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...), as is the assumption that there's any way to stop anyone from making an account and posting what they choose. It takes time for moderation mechanisms to kick in. That's the way an open forum is, and if you think about it, it's rather amazing that HN isn't dominated by such shit.

danaliv 6y ago