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Yeah but if you found out a quicker and more efficient way to stop people from reading HN, every business would want it because their workers would stop bloviat

Yeah but if you found out a quicker and more efficient way to stop people from reading HN, every business would want it because their workers would stop bloviating 4 hours a day for those who know what it is, and the rest of the world would continue on ignorant of it as it always has. But it's not worth anything. Sometimes you just can't clean up garbage. Graham has too many dishonest people in YC. They're like gollum and want their precious but think they're Gandalf. We all know HN mods fuck around with rankings, but you know how I know they fuck around with rankings? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27062309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27062309 This post has 30 upvotes, it got those 30 upvotes in 30 minutes. It's now at the very, very, very bottom of this thread just above all the dead guys because it is critical of Graham. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27046196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27046196 This post has over 60 upvotes and is critical but is also completely relevant. It has been "detached" by dang.

AlexCoventry 5y ago
How do you determine how many upvotes a post has received?
- gitrog 5y ago
  They're his posts?
  - AlexCoventry 5y ago
    Oh, of course. Thanks.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- themdangrules 5y ago
  I would login to my other account if I hadn't thrown the password away. Persecuted? No. Pretty damn aware of the many times that people immediately downvoted every comment of mine they could? Yes. I'm a bog boy, I don't care about Internet points, but I also don't enjoy spending my days with people so petty and small. Grown, professional adults no less. If I feel persecuted, maybe it's because I like a lot of HNers know what bullying feels like. Feels like bullying. This applies to myself as well, but just because people have bullied you doesn't mean you aren't also a bully. You might even be more likely to be that because of learned behavior. HN is full of psuedointellectual high brow bullies. Not to smear all you fine people. It's not everyone, just an uncomfortable percentage. What proof would you accept? I mean in the second one, you can literally see where dang has detached it, without a reason as to why. In a topic discussing politics and tribalism. There will be no proof of it, there's nothing to prove, but if that isn't evidence of moderator intervention (without transparency, no less), what is? This is why even for all that I've learned form HN over the years (would love to not read it at all), I hate the discussion. It's so toxic. I'm getting probably rightly moderated but HN is full of people being ugly to each other on an hourly basis. I'm part of the demographic that should most appreciate HN, I can't imagine how people that aren't feel.
  - dang 5y ago
    I agree with you about people being ugly to each other, but it's easy to fall into doing that oneself even while perceiving all the ugliness as coming from others. This is the core problem here. It may be the core problem in other places too. The solution has to include each of us seeing how we too add ugliness, and for this there's a difficult precondition: we have to be willing to look at that regardless of how badly other people are behaving. It always feels like the other person started it and did worse. Putting attention primarily on that feeling, which is what most of us do, is a recipe for a downward spiral—one can justify literally anything that way. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22other%20person%22%20%22started%20it%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
samatman 5y ago
This is not proof of what you think it is. It may be evidence but it isn't proof. dang detaching off-topic subthreads is the opposite of mods opaquely fucking around with rankings. He explicitly detached the thread, and posted that he had done so. That's a judgement call which you're welcome to disagree with and I'm not going to affirm or second-guess because I don't care much. As to the other: we don't know how HN sorts comments, but I would be surprised if it was as simple as the highest-valued comments floating to the top. It is far more likely given what we know about moderation goals, that controversial comments are penalized. So maybe your comment got 50 upvotes and 20 downvotes? The mods don't want us making huge subthreads about stuff which people disagree about, for the most part: they want some of that, but anything which is drawing a lot of karma from both sides is that much more likely to draw low-quality replies. Again, this isn't a comment about your comment: pretend I didn't read it, I barely did in fact. But it certainly doesn't prove that dang put his thumb on the scale. The mods here seem to be pretty transparent about how everything works, without leaking actual formulas which are subject to change and could provide ammunition with which to game the system.
- themdangrules 5y ago
  > dang detaching off-topic subthreads is the opposite of mods opaquely fucking around with rankings. He explicitly detached the thread, and posted that he had done so. That's a judgement call which you're welcome to disagree with and I'm not going to affirm or second-guess because I don't care much. Yeah, you don't care about it much, it wasn't you that it happened to. I don't care that much either. I do care about this easily abused behavior, though. > As to the other: we don't know how HN sorts comments, but I would be surprised if it was as simple as the highest-valued comments floating to the top. It is far more likely given what we know about moderation goals, that controversial comments are penalized. I know, as do anyone that has experienced it, that they are penalized. If you say sane but controversial things around here you get downvoted, hidden, silenced. This sounds melodramatic, but think about what you are saying - HN is looking for boring, safe, everyone agrees commentary. > So maybe your comment got 50 upvotes and 20 downvotes? The mods don't want us making huge subthreads about stuff which people disagree about, for the most part: they want some of that, but anything which is drawing a lot of karma from both sides is that much more likely to draw low-quality replies. > Again, this isn't a comment about your comment: pretend I didn't read it, I barely did in fact. With all due respect, I know. I can tell. > But it certainly doesn't prove that dang put his thumb on the scale. The mods here seem to be pretty transparent about how everything works, without leaking actual formulas which are subject to change and could provide ammunition with which to game the system. Yeah that's how abuse works, that's how loopholes work. Rules for me and not for you. Rules that are arbitrarily applied. That's what I've never gotten about HN. You guys are so smart, but it's like you skipped politics 101.

AlexCoventry 5y ago

How do you determine how many upvotes a post has received?

gitrog 5y ago
They're his posts?
- AlexCoventry 5y ago
  Oh, of course. Thanks.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

themdangrules 5y ago
I would login to my other account if I hadn't thrown the password away. Persecuted? No. Pretty damn aware of the many times that people immediately downvoted every comment of mine they could? Yes. I'm a bog boy, I don't care about Internet points, but I also don't enjoy spending my days with people so petty and small. Grown, professional adults no less. If I feel persecuted, maybe it's because I like a lot of HNers know what bullying feels like. Feels like bullying. This applies to myself as well, but just because people have bullied you doesn't mean you aren't also a bully. You might even be more likely to be that because of learned behavior. HN is full of psuedointellectual high brow bullies. Not to smear all you fine people. It's not everyone, just an uncomfortable percentage. What proof would you accept? I mean in the second one, you can literally see where dang has detached it, without a reason as to why. In a topic discussing politics and tribalism. There will be no proof of it, there's nothing to prove, but if that isn't evidence of moderator intervention (without transparency, no less), what is? This is why even for all that I've learned form HN over the years (would love to not read it at all), I hate the discussion. It's so toxic. I'm getting probably rightly moderated but HN is full of people being ugly to each other on an hourly basis. I'm part of the demographic that should most appreciate HN, I can't imagine how people that aren't feel.
- dang 5y ago
  I agree with you about people being ugly to each other, but it's easy to fall into doing that oneself even while perceiving all the ugliness as coming from others. This is the core problem here. It may be the core problem in other places too. The solution has to include each of us seeing how we too add ugliness, and for this there's a difficult precondition: we have to be willing to look at that regardless of how badly other people are behaving. It always feels like the other person started it and did worse. Putting attention primarily on that feeling, which is what most of us do, is a recipe for a downward spiral—one can justify literally anything that way. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22other%20person%22%20%22started%20it%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

samatman 5y ago

This is not proof of what you think it is. It may be evidence but it isn't proof. dang detaching off-topic subthreads is the opposite of mods opaquely fucking around with rankings. He explicitly detached the thread, and posted that he had done so. That's a judgement call which you're welcome to disagree with and I'm not going to affirm or second-guess because I don't care much. As to the other: we don't know how HN sorts comments, but I would be surprised if it was as simple as the highest-valued comments floating to the top. It is far more likely given what we know about moderation goals, that controversial comments are penalized. So maybe your comment got 50 upvotes and 20 downvotes? The mods don't want us making huge subthreads about stuff which people disagree about, for the most part: they want some of that, but anything which is drawing a lot of karma from both sides is that much more likely to draw low-quality replies. Again, this isn't a comment about your comment: pretend I didn't read it, I barely did in fact. But it certainly doesn't prove that dang put his thumb on the scale. The mods here seem to be pretty transparent about how everything works, without leaking actual formulas which are subject to change and could provide ammunition with which to game the system.

themdangrules 5y ago
> dang detaching off-topic subthreads is the opposite of mods opaquely fucking around with rankings. He explicitly detached the thread, and posted that he had done so. That's a judgement call which you're welcome to disagree with and I'm not going to affirm or second-guess because I don't care much. Yeah, you don't care about it much, it wasn't you that it happened to. I don't care that much either. I do care about this easily abused behavior, though. > As to the other: we don't know how HN sorts comments, but I would be surprised if it was as simple as the highest-valued comments floating to the top. It is far more likely given what we know about moderation goals, that controversial comments are penalized. I know, as do anyone that has experienced it, that they are penalized. If you say sane but controversial things around here you get downvoted, hidden, silenced. This sounds melodramatic, but think about what you are saying - HN is looking for boring, safe, everyone agrees commentary. > So maybe your comment got 50 upvotes and 20 downvotes? The mods don't want us making huge subthreads about stuff which people disagree about, for the most part: they want some of that, but anything which is drawing a lot of karma from both sides is that much more likely to draw low-quality replies. > Again, this isn't a comment about your comment: pretend I didn't read it, I barely did in fact. With all due respect, I know. I can tell. > But it certainly doesn't prove that dang put his thumb on the scale. The mods here seem to be pretty transparent about how everything works, without leaking actual formulas which are subject to change and could provide ammunition with which to game the system. Yeah that's how abuse works, that's how loopholes work. Rules for me and not for you. Rules that are arbitrarily applied. That's what I've never gotten about HN. You guys are so smart, but it's like you skipped politics 101.