3 ms·

Hm, it certainly looks a lot like "improve the quality of the threads" == suppress industry critique.

by lvs 5y ago

dang 5y ago
"Industry critique" fills virtually every HN thread. With suppression like that, who needs amplifiers? Most people who see a moderation decision they dislike leap straight to the idea that the moderators secretly hold $VIEW, ignoring (or not noticing) all the moderation decisions going the opposite way. In reality, we just don't care— I don't have words to describe how profoundly we don't care about commenter opinions. All that was sandblasted out of my brain years ago. The weariness that arises at the thought of caring about commenter opinions is enough to make me want to lie on the floor for a week. The only thing I care about is trying to prevent this place from plunging to the bottom of the internet barrel, and that only because it's my job. That's the true answer, by the way, to all the accusations of $BIAS that people fire from all directions every day: existential weariness has destroyed the ability to care. It turns out that's a decent proxy for neutrality. Not perfect, of course, but enough as a first pass filter.
- raspasov 5y ago
  If it’s not for dang, this place would turn into a 4chan. Thank you, dang!
- lvs 5y ago
  No doubt a thankless job, but your claims to being unbiased are obviously going to be faced with skepticism when you label industry critique as "predictable" or "mean" and censor it. It's your perception that it fills every thread, but my perception is that the industry cheerleading in this community is wildly untethered. I think you probably wouldn't deny that your goal is to stem generalized negativity, based on the bias that negativity is bad and positivity is good "for discussion." It's not as if that bias has no consequence. If you were being consistent about this, by the way, you'd be censoring the banal security and bug sanctimony that dominates every thread on that topic. A buffer overrun? Good heavens! An unsalted pw hash? Fetch my inhaler!
  - dang 5y ago
    It's not possible to be consistent because it's physically not possible to read everything, or even close. I'm sure you're right that there are tropes of reaction in particular areas that deserve to get moderated by the same principles (of avoiding repetition etc.) and I don't doubt that you see some of them more clearly than I do. If you want to help with that, you could let us know when you see them, particularly when they're sitting at the top of a thread, choking out more interesting discussion. Downweighting those is probably the single biggest thing we can do to help discussion quality. I wouldn't use the word "negative" - that covers way too many things. We're not trying to exclude negativity. We're trying to prevent certain common forms of it from dominating. I don't think it's so hard to understand why—this place would cease to be interesting if they did dominate. Thoughtful critique is always welcome, and we don't label that "predictable" because it isn't. Re "industry cheerleading in this community is wildly untethered" - such perceptions are conditioned by the passions of the perceiver. If you had opposite passions, you'd have opposite perceptions. The data set has more than enough data points to satisfy all of these. That is by far the most consistent phenomenon I've observed on HN; nothing else comes close.
    - lvs 5y ago
      Sometimes a thoughtful critique can be obvious and widely held, as I think it was here. Endeavoring to belabor a simple argument or feign a unique thought process has little intrinsic value. Sometimes a spade is a spade, and that should be OK -- if indeed the goal is to be intellectually honest. But perhaps the goal is to steer the good fortunes of the tech industry and venture capitalists and the investor class, and that certainly would not surprise me greatly on an internet forum run by a venture capital firm.
- nfc 5y ago
  Hi dang, thanks for the amazing work you do moderating HN. Reading your words "The weariness that arises at the thought of caring about commenter opinions" got me thinking about how the unique experience (even if perhaps not specially positive) that a moderator has to go through can influence his view of the world. I hope this equilibrium that you seem to have reached makes you happy, I can imagine how moderating can be an ungrateful job.
- depressedpanda 5y ago
  I think you're doing a great job, but if that job burdens you with existential weariness maybe you should look for something else to do, for your own sake? This is just a commenter opinion, though, so feel free to not care about it :-)
  - dang 5y ago
    Thanks! - all of you who replied were being kind. Even lvs was being kind—it's all relative :) I'm fine and didn't mean the comment to sound complainy. The reason I put it that way is that the alternative (going on about how little I care what people post) would have sounded like a putdown, which would be worse. It's just hard to communicate this phenomenon—the desensitizing effect of sheer quantity on the brain—in a way that captures what it feels like. Having the inside of one's brain sandblasted is the closest I've gotten so far. Imagine that your fingertips were sandblasted for years - they'd get pretty desensitized. Well, that's the reaction I have to commenter opinions. Note: I'm not saying that makes me/us unbiased; bias has many forms, and "I am not biased" would be a dumb thing to say in any case, since it is often unconscious. I am, though, saying that commenters who rush to "you just disagree with my opinions!" as an explanation for moderator action do not know what they're talking about—not in the putdown sense, but quite literally.

Hm, it certainly looks a lot like "improve the quality of the threads" == suppress industry critique.

by lvs 5y ago

Hm, it certainly looks a lot like "improve the quality of the threads" == suppress industry critique.

dang 5y ago

"Industry critique" fills virtually every HN thread. With suppression like that, who needs amplifiers? Most people who see a moderation decision they dislike leap straight to the idea that the moderators secretly hold $VIEW, ignoring (or not noticing) all the moderation decisions going the opposite way. In reality, we just don't care— I don't have words to describe how profoundly we don't care about commenter opinions. All that was sandblasted out of my brain years ago. The weariness that arises at the thought of caring about commenter opinions is enough to make me want to lie on the floor for a week. The only thing I care about is trying to prevent this place from plunging to the bottom of the internet barrel, and that only because it's my job. That's the true answer, by the way, to all the accusations of $BIAS that people fire from all directions every day: existential weariness has destroyed the ability to care. It turns out that's a decent proxy for neutrality. Not perfect, of course, but enough as a first pass filter.

raspasov 5y ago
If it’s not for dang, this place would turn into a 4chan. Thank you, dang!
lvs 5y ago
No doubt a thankless job, but your claims to being unbiased are obviously going to be faced with skepticism when you label industry critique as "predictable" or "mean" and censor it. It's your perception that it fills every thread, but my perception is that the industry cheerleading in this community is wildly untethered. I think you probably wouldn't deny that your goal is to stem generalized negativity, based on the bias that negativity is bad and positivity is good "for discussion." It's not as if that bias has no consequence. If you were being consistent about this, by the way, you'd be censoring the banal security and bug sanctimony that dominates every thread on that topic. A buffer overrun? Good heavens! An unsalted pw hash? Fetch my inhaler!
- dang 5y ago
  It's not possible to be consistent because it's physically not possible to read everything, or even close. I'm sure you're right that there are tropes of reaction in particular areas that deserve to get moderated by the same principles (of avoiding repetition etc.) and I don't doubt that you see some of them more clearly than I do. If you want to help with that, you could let us know when you see them, particularly when they're sitting at the top of a thread, choking out more interesting discussion. Downweighting those is probably the single biggest thing we can do to help discussion quality. I wouldn't use the word "negative" - that covers way too many things. We're not trying to exclude negativity. We're trying to prevent certain common forms of it from dominating. I don't think it's so hard to understand why—this place would cease to be interesting if they did dominate. Thoughtful critique is always welcome, and we don't label that "predictable" because it isn't. Re "industry cheerleading in this community is wildly untethered" - such perceptions are conditioned by the passions of the perceiver. If you had opposite passions, you'd have opposite perceptions. The data set has more than enough data points to satisfy all of these. That is by far the most consistent phenomenon I've observed on HN; nothing else comes close.
  - lvs 5y ago
    Sometimes a thoughtful critique can be obvious and widely held, as I think it was here. Endeavoring to belabor a simple argument or feign a unique thought process has little intrinsic value. Sometimes a spade is a spade, and that should be OK -- if indeed the goal is to be intellectually honest. But perhaps the goal is to steer the good fortunes of the tech industry and venture capitalists and the investor class, and that certainly would not surprise me greatly on an internet forum run by a venture capital firm.
nfc 5y ago
Hi dang, thanks for the amazing work you do moderating HN. Reading your words "The weariness that arises at the thought of caring about commenter opinions" got me thinking about how the unique experience (even if perhaps not specially positive) that a moderator has to go through can influence his view of the world. I hope this equilibrium that you seem to have reached makes you happy, I can imagine how moderating can be an ungrateful job.
depressedpanda 5y ago
I think you're doing a great job, but if that job burdens you with existential weariness maybe you should look for something else to do, for your own sake? This is just a commenter opinion, though, so feel free to not care about it :-)
- dang 5y ago
  Thanks! - all of you who replied were being kind. Even lvs was being kind—it's all relative :) I'm fine and didn't mean the comment to sound complainy. The reason I put it that way is that the alternative (going on about how little I care what people post) would have sounded like a putdown, which would be worse. It's just hard to communicate this phenomenon—the desensitizing effect of sheer quantity on the brain—in a way that captures what it feels like. Having the inside of one's brain sandblasted is the closest I've gotten so far. Imagine that your fingertips were sandblasted for years - they'd get pretty desensitized. Well, that's the reaction I have to commenter opinions. Note: I'm not saying that makes me/us unbiased; bias has many forms, and "I am not biased" would be a dumb thing to say in any case, since it is often unconscious. I am, though, saying that commenters who rush to "you just disagree with my opinions!" as an explanation for moderator action do not know what they're talking about—not in the putdown sense, but quite literally.