3 ms·

Are you, though? It seems a lot more like you are trying to force a veneer of respectability over what is still a whole lot of pretty awful views here. I woul

Are you, though? It seems a lot more like you are trying to force a veneer of respectability over what is still a whole lot of pretty awful views here. I would be more impressed with an actual push towards trying to get people to genuinely be less awful, rather than trying to push them to be polite while doing so.

dang 6y ago
We don't give a shit about veneers. That canard is usually brought up by people making excuses for bad comments, as if they were somehow posting them out of principle. Anyone can read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html or slog through 50k moderation comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang (not that I recommend it) and evaluate what we're trying to do here, but the shortest way is to simply look at the first site guideline about comments: "Be kind." If you don't think that's about "getting people to be genuinely less awful", I don't know what to tell you. We're working overtime to try to do that. It is in no way easy, and if you claim to care about this, you should be helping to make it happen, not degrading this place further. As for "awful views", any large, open internet forum gets the full panoply. To go from seeing an "awful view" to imagining that moderators condone it in any way is a non sequitur. 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...
- user-the-name 6y ago
  What I am saying is that you are applying the rule of "Be kind" only at the most surface level. You are allowing very unkind posts, as long as they are phrased somewhat politely.
  - dang 6y ago
    I'd need to see specific examples where you think that is happening. Certainly it isn't our intention. If we're failing to enforce the guidelines as intended, I need to know about it. People bring this argument up semi-regularly, though always without links, and it has even become a bit of a trope. When I've asked for links in the past, what I've found is either (1) posts we missed (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...) or (2) posts where the interpretation of 'unkindness' is tendentious and mixed with ideological concerns. Of course interpretation is always involved. No two people would make the same set of moderation calls, there will always be edge cases where views differ, and there are cases where we just make mistakes, i.e. our initial interpretation changes after people point out things we didn't see. We're happy to correct those. But it also sometimes happens that people's interpretation goes through an ideological filter, such that pretty much any disagreement with their ideology strikes them as 'unkind'. We can't moderate HN that way. It stretches the meaning of the guideline beyond its scope, which has to do with how people treat each other, not how others treat their views—even if we personally agree with their views.

dang 6y ago

We don't give a shit about veneers. That canard is usually brought up by people making excuses for bad comments, as if they were somehow posting them out of principle. Anyone can read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html or slog through 50k moderation comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang (not that I recommend it) and evaluate what we're trying to do here, but the shortest way is to simply look at the first site guideline about comments: "Be kind." If you don't think that's about "getting people to be genuinely less awful", I don't know what to tell you. We're working overtime to try to do that. It is in no way easy, and if you claim to care about this, you should be helping to make it happen, not degrading this place further. As for "awful views", any large, open internet forum gets the full panoply. To go from seeing an "awful view" to imagining that moderators condone it in any way is a non sequitur. 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...

user-the-name 6y ago
What I am saying is that you are applying the rule of "Be kind" only at the most surface level. You are allowing very unkind posts, as long as they are phrased somewhat politely.
- dang 6y ago
  I'd need to see specific examples where you think that is happening. Certainly it isn't our intention. If we're failing to enforce the guidelines as intended, I need to know about it. People bring this argument up semi-regularly, though always without links, and it has even become a bit of a trope. When I've asked for links in the past, what I've found is either (1) posts we missed (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...) or (2) posts where the interpretation of 'unkindness' is tendentious and mixed with ideological concerns. Of course interpretation is always involved. No two people would make the same set of moderation calls, there will always be edge cases where views differ, and there are cases where we just make mistakes, i.e. our initial interpretation changes after people point out things we didn't see. We're happy to correct those. But it also sometimes happens that people's interpretation goes through an ideological filter, such that pretty much any disagreement with their ideology strikes them as 'unkind'. We can't moderate HN that way. It stretches the meaning of the guideline beyond its scope, which has to do with how people treat each other, not how others treat their views—even if we personally agree with their views.