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Obviously not, since we’re discussing it on a site with content moderation right now that, in my opinion, works much better than sites without.

by anyfoo 6y ago

yesOkButt 6y ago
HN is hardly as diverse a site to moderate as YouTube and Reddit Should all forums rules conform to HN?
- tomcam 6y ago
  Downvoted for sophistry and complete lack of addition to the discourse. Or do you happen to do a better job moderating a site elsewhere?
- anyfoo 6y ago
  I personally don’t think your comment puts the effectiveness of moderation is in question, just the efficiency. So yes, I think places like YouTube and Reddit would greatly benefit from similar moderation (the rules don’t have to be exactly the same), but the difference in scale and, as you note, variability in the rules for different parts of those sites makes it so much harder to apply.
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    It's worth noting that IMO, the scale is not just volume (depth) but also cultural heterogeneity (breadth). HN is for all intents and purposes a single community with a stated set of values. It's not a constellation of communities some of which are polar opposites of one another. The question of moderating Reddit always boils down to /which subreddit/ -- I don't even know where to start with YouTube.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - kodah 6y ago
      > HN is for all intents and purposes a single community with a stated set of values In the sense that we all value curiosity, yes. We are all also very different. When political posts go up you see it; value, perspective, economic, and educational differences are all highlighted simultaneously. I think what keeps us from destroying each other is that the binds that bond are curiosity, and those bonds are strong enough for now. dang also sacrifices his sanity going around and nudging people back in the right direction. Those bonds are nothing to be understated though. I've tolerated some edgy opinions on this website, and probably given some too, but I also come here to learn about different perspectives and genuinely do enjoy them even if some offend or hurt me. Other people see those differences and talk about making lists.
      - yowlingcat 6y ago
        > Those bonds are nothing to be understated though... Other people see those differences and talk about making lists. Yes, exactly! I think you nailed the core of it. The communal drive to pursue curiosity is, for now, stronger than the communal drive to make lists; in comparison, there are many large subreddits where you couldn't expect the same thing.
    - krapp 6y ago
      > It's not a constellation of communities some of which are polar opposites of one another. It absolutely is, which is the main reason dang is constantly having to talk people down off of ledges. This site has old-school hackers and new school VC startup hackers, anarchists, communists, socialists, capitalists, libertarians, Libertarians, atheists and believers, alt-right white supremacists, BLM supporters, QAnons, scientists, "scientists", skeptics, shitposting memelords, furries, pro Stallmanite free software zealots, anti-Stallmanite free software zealots, Stallman agnostic free software zealots, FAANG millionaires and people living in their cars. Name a political position, no matter how repellent someone will come along to advocate it, sometimes just for kicks. Name a programming language, you'll find someone who loves it, someone who hates it, someone who's never heard of it, and probably the person who invented it. That diversity is one of the good things about this place, and one of the worst, because it brings out the worst in people. There's a very small domain in which discussion on Hacker News is merely contrarian and contentious, but stray outside of that tranquil oasis and you're suddenly in the Thunderdome being chased around a gladiatorial arena by an overclocked sea-lion and a troll with a sniper rifle. But the troll is civil, and that makes them better than the trolls on Reddit. It's honestly a wonder this place hasn't burned down yet. It's made me want to burn it down a few times.
- Etheryte 6y ago
  Au contraire, I'd argue HN is a very diverse site but it's the moderation by both users and moderators that makes it seem orderly and uniform. There are many stories that get flagged a-la blogspam, low quality, clickbait etc, and same with comments. Those that don't have merit by the community don't reach the wider audience. I think the conception that HN is uniform is a somewhat common misunderstanding, as evidenced by discussions on supposedly-trolls and the like: it isn't usually the case that someone is shilling or trolling, more often than not it's just someone with a different world view.
  - tqi 6y ago
    I think HN moderation works because it is relatively obscure and several orders of magnitude smaller than FB/Twitter/etc. I wonder long do it would take for HN to be completely overwhelmed if a large subreddit decided to come in and start trolling/spamming?
  - nullserver 6y ago
    HN is very heavy on Academics / Developers / Engineers. Very different demographics then world at large.
  - watwut 6y ago
    There are very few meaning of word diverse that HN conforms to. Education, profession, gender, hobbies, location, all tend to be from one cluster.
- dang 6y ago
  Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=community%20identity%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
proc0 6y ago
It's only under control, I think, because it's very specific in terms of content. The weakness many social networks have is that it's basically an open platform for any discussion, and that makes it harder to put boundaries around. It makes sense to heavily restrict subject matters on sites with specialized content but general social networks are still facing the issues mentioned in the article, IMHO.
- dang 6y ago
  I agree that being specific about content makes things easier, but HN is not so specific. Anything intellectually interesting is on topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and that makes for a lot of long, difficult explanations - e.g.: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
  - proc0 6y ago
    Sure, maybe it's not that constrained, but consider something like memes, which is expected of many sites, but definitely not here.
  - intended 6y ago
    Greater institutions have fallen; thats when we got the term Eternal September. It just takes the right influx of users to overcome the human moderators.
- Guest19023892 6y ago
  I think when the content becomes too broad then tribalism becomes more apparent as people start to form separate groups within the community. This creates a lot of drama as the tribes are forced to be under one roof. When the content is more specific, like PC master race, or people that drive VW bugs, then the community identifies itself as a single tribe, and they tend to treat each other well.
endisneigh 6y ago
As far as forums go HN is very low volume.
yakubin 6y ago
Another site with moderated comments is Ars Technica. It works out great for them. On the other side there is unmoderated Phoronix, which has the worst comment section that I've ever seen.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Is it worse than YouTube comments? I have never looked at it but that has to be something..
  - seriousquestion 6y ago
    YouTube comments are actually pretty good these days, I find.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      Most comments on YouTube are vacuous, it's not worth wading through them.
      - seriousquestion 6y ago
        You are right, not worth scrolling down beyond the top handful.
      - johnnyanmac 6y ago
        vacuous does not equate to toxic. I would gladly take an internet where the biggest problems on the internet were tired jokes and excessive emoji spam.

Obviously not, since we’re discussing it on a site with content moderation right now that, in my opinion, works much better than sites without.

by anyfoo 6y ago

Obviously not, since we’re discussing it on a site with content moderation right now that, in my opinion, works much better than sites without.

yesOkButt 6y ago

HN is hardly as diverse a site to moderate as YouTube and Reddit Should all forums rules conform to HN?

tomcam 6y ago
Downvoted for sophistry and complete lack of addition to the discourse. Or do you happen to do a better job moderating a site elsewhere?
anyfoo 6y ago
I personally don’t think your comment puts the effectiveness of moderation is in question, just the efficiency. So yes, I think places like YouTube and Reddit would greatly benefit from similar moderation (the rules don’t have to be exactly the same), but the difference in scale and, as you note, variability in the rules for different parts of those sites makes it so much harder to apply.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  It's worth noting that IMO, the scale is not just volume (depth) but also cultural heterogeneity (breadth). HN is for all intents and purposes a single community with a stated set of values. It's not a constellation of communities some of which are polar opposites of one another. The question of moderating Reddit always boils down to /which subreddit/ -- I don't even know where to start with YouTube.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - kodah 6y ago
    > HN is for all intents and purposes a single community with a stated set of values In the sense that we all value curiosity, yes. We are all also very different. When political posts go up you see it; value, perspective, economic, and educational differences are all highlighted simultaneously. I think what keeps us from destroying each other is that the binds that bond are curiosity, and those bonds are strong enough for now. dang also sacrifices his sanity going around and nudging people back in the right direction. Those bonds are nothing to be understated though. I've tolerated some edgy opinions on this website, and probably given some too, but I also come here to learn about different perspectives and genuinely do enjoy them even if some offend or hurt me. Other people see those differences and talk about making lists.
    - yowlingcat 6y ago
      > Those bonds are nothing to be understated though... Other people see those differences and talk about making lists. Yes, exactly! I think you nailed the core of it. The communal drive to pursue curiosity is, for now, stronger than the communal drive to make lists; in comparison, there are many large subreddits where you couldn't expect the same thing.
  - krapp 6y ago
    > It's not a constellation of communities some of which are polar opposites of one another. It absolutely is, which is the main reason dang is constantly having to talk people down off of ledges. This site has old-school hackers and new school VC startup hackers, anarchists, communists, socialists, capitalists, libertarians, Libertarians, atheists and believers, alt-right white supremacists, BLM supporters, QAnons, scientists, "scientists", skeptics, shitposting memelords, furries, pro Stallmanite free software zealots, anti-Stallmanite free software zealots, Stallman agnostic free software zealots, FAANG millionaires and people living in their cars. Name a political position, no matter how repellent someone will come along to advocate it, sometimes just for kicks. Name a programming language, you'll find someone who loves it, someone who hates it, someone who's never heard of it, and probably the person who invented it. That diversity is one of the good things about this place, and one of the worst, because it brings out the worst in people. There's a very small domain in which discussion on Hacker News is merely contrarian and contentious, but stray outside of that tranquil oasis and you're suddenly in the Thunderdome being chased around a gladiatorial arena by an overclocked sea-lion and a troll with a sniper rifle. But the troll is civil, and that makes them better than the trolls on Reddit. It's honestly a wonder this place hasn't burned down yet. It's made me want to burn it down a few times.
Etheryte 6y ago
Au contraire, I'd argue HN is a very diverse site but it's the moderation by both users and moderators that makes it seem orderly and uniform. There are many stories that get flagged a-la blogspam, low quality, clickbait etc, and same with comments. Those that don't have merit by the community don't reach the wider audience. I think the conception that HN is uniform is a somewhat common misunderstanding, as evidenced by discussions on supposedly-trolls and the like: it isn't usually the case that someone is shilling or trolling, more often than not it's just someone with a different world view.
- tqi 6y ago
  I think HN moderation works because it is relatively obscure and several orders of magnitude smaller than FB/Twitter/etc. I wonder long do it would take for HN to be completely overwhelmed if a large subreddit decided to come in and start trolling/spamming?
- nullserver 6y ago
  HN is very heavy on Academics / Developers / Engineers. Very different demographics then world at large.
- watwut 6y ago
  There are very few meaning of word diverse that HN conforms to. Education, profession, gender, hobbies, location, all tend to be from one cluster.
dang 6y ago
Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=community%20identity%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

proc0 6y ago

It's only under control, I think, because it's very specific in terms of content. The weakness many social networks have is that it's basically an open platform for any discussion, and that makes it harder to put boundaries around. It makes sense to heavily restrict subject matters on sites with specialized content but general social networks are still facing the issues mentioned in the article, IMHO.

dang 6y ago
I agree that being specific about content makes things easier, but HN is not so specific. Anything intellectually interesting is on topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and that makes for a lot of long, difficult explanations - e.g.: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- proc0 6y ago
  Sure, maybe it's not that constrained, but consider something like memes, which is expected of many sites, but definitely not here.
- intended 6y ago
  Greater institutions have fallen; thats when we got the term Eternal September. It just takes the right influx of users to overcome the human moderators.
Guest19023892 6y ago
I think when the content becomes too broad then tribalism becomes more apparent as people start to form separate groups within the community. This creates a lot of drama as the tribes are forced to be under one roof. When the content is more specific, like PC master race, or people that drive VW bugs, then the community identifies itself as a single tribe, and they tend to treat each other well.

endisneigh 6y ago

As far as forums go HN is very low volume.

yakubin 6y ago

Another site with moderated comments is Ars Technica. It works out great for them. On the other side there is unmoderated Phoronix, which has the worst comment section that I've ever seen.

tinus_hn 6y ago
Is it worse than YouTube comments? I have never looked at it but that has to be something..
- seriousquestion 6y ago
  YouTube comments are actually pretty good these days, I find.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Most comments on YouTube are vacuous, it's not worth wading through them.
    - seriousquestion 6y ago
      You are right, not worth scrolling down beyond the top handful.
    - johnnyanmac 6y ago
      vacuous does not equate to toxic. I would gladly take an internet where the biggest problems on the internet were tired jokes and excessive emoji spam.