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Despegar's comment gets to the heart of why the Cuban vaccine is interesting. Nobody would be surprised if a nation with open trade with the US could manufactur

Despegar's comment gets to the heart of why the Cuban vaccine is interesting. Nobody would be surprised if a nation with open trade with the US could manufacture something at this quality level; most of them are manufacturing Pifzer and Moderna.

dang 5y ago
Good point, but it doesn't matter because the ideological bullhorn drowns that out and guarantees a flamewar. Just look at the responses it generated. We made it to "you want all the Jews in Israel to die" in three hops.
- morelisp 5y ago
  That seems to have less to do with what Despegar actually wrote - which is the focus of your criticism - and more to do with the increasingly conspiratorial "conservative" (i.e. memetic-right) portion of its audience HN's moderation has tolerated over the years. (The shift is not specific to HN, but different moderation policies could have provided better outcomes, and have in other fora.)
  - dang 5y ago
    Everyone thinks the problem is caused by the people they disagree with. After dealing with literally hundreds of thousands of HN comments I can tell you that experience has taught me entirely otherwise. This goes along with the view that the forum would be a peaceful and productive place if only those people (the ones I disagree with) were moderated and banned, and therefore it is the moderators' fault when flamewars happen on HN. Much as I'm deeply interested in improving as a moderator, I don't think this view is realistic. In fact the solution is in the opposite direction: less blaming of the others, more effort to see one's own contributions more clearly. Needless to say this applies irrespective of political or ideological or geographical identification. (And yes, I need to do more of this too - for example it's clear that I could have handled this particular case much better. I was hasty and (ironically?) a little inflamed myself, not because of anything to do with Cuba or vaccines but because I didn't want to spend a second afternoon in a row dealing with a really nasty political flamewar. As a result I created a meta version of the same thing. Such lessons are expensive, which is fortunate.) p.s. I see that your replies are getting rate-limited. That doesn't seem fair, so I'll turn that off for now. In return I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from this sort of destructive comment in the future: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26848534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26848534. That's why we rate limit accounts. Actually you've done so much of that that we could easily have banned you and a rate limit was a mild response; but I don't want to throttle anyone from responding to me in a discussion about moderation.
    - morelisp 5y ago
      > we could easily have banned you "oh no" (You're not really engaging the points raised and I find the low-key threat hilarious, so no, I won't be responding further.)
- baybal2 5y ago
  Daniel, the truth of the matter is that "you want all the Jews in Israel to die" type of post can, and is being thrown everywhere completely regardless of the merit of original conversation. And yes, it's a perfect tactic to sink any topic on a site with any kind of automoderation. You cannot properly discuss anything moderately controversial if any topic can get framed, and sunk as "flamebait" because moderately controversial topics are "flamebait". People have heated discussions about matters of ideology, that's the very obvious truth of life. The more important is the matter, the more, longer, louder, and more emotionally people will argue.
  - dang 5y ago
    That's an argument for unmoderated flamewar. That's not what HN is. If you're imagining a version of HN that is "like the current HN, but without the current moderation practices," you'll have to forgive me for considering that a fantasy. There's also no evidence that anybody said that as a "discussion sinking" tactic. On the contrary, the simplest explanation easily applies: people responded to flamebait with more flamebait, which cascaded into flamewar. This is one of the most common phenomena that exists here, and one doesn't need sinister constructs to understand it.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      I am not calling for it, what I told is topics turning into flamewar regardless of merits of original conversation, and that any important topic sinks very quickly.

dang 5y ago

Good point, but it doesn't matter because the ideological bullhorn drowns that out and guarantees a flamewar. Just look at the responses it generated. We made it to "you want all the Jews in Israel to die" in three hops.

morelisp 5y ago
That seems to have less to do with what Despegar actually wrote - which is the focus of your criticism - and more to do with the increasingly conspiratorial "conservative" (i.e. memetic-right) portion of its audience HN's moderation has tolerated over the years. (The shift is not specific to HN, but different moderation policies could have provided better outcomes, and have in other fora.)
- dang 5y ago
  Everyone thinks the problem is caused by the people they disagree with. After dealing with literally hundreds of thousands of HN comments I can tell you that experience has taught me entirely otherwise. This goes along with the view that the forum would be a peaceful and productive place if only those people (the ones I disagree with) were moderated and banned, and therefore it is the moderators' fault when flamewars happen on HN. Much as I'm deeply interested in improving as a moderator, I don't think this view is realistic. In fact the solution is in the opposite direction: less blaming of the others, more effort to see one's own contributions more clearly. Needless to say this applies irrespective of political or ideological or geographical identification. (And yes, I need to do more of this too - for example it's clear that I could have handled this particular case much better. I was hasty and (ironically?) a little inflamed myself, not because of anything to do with Cuba or vaccines but because I didn't want to spend a second afternoon in a row dealing with a really nasty political flamewar. As a result I created a meta version of the same thing. Such lessons are expensive, which is fortunate.) p.s. I see that your replies are getting rate-limited. That doesn't seem fair, so I'll turn that off for now. In return I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from this sort of destructive comment in the future: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26848534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26848534. That's why we rate limit accounts. Actually you've done so much of that that we could easily have banned you and a rate limit was a mild response; but I don't want to throttle anyone from responding to me in a discussion about moderation.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    > we could easily have banned you "oh no" (You're not really engaging the points raised and I find the low-key threat hilarious, so no, I won't be responding further.)
baybal2 5y ago
Daniel, the truth of the matter is that "you want all the Jews in Israel to die" type of post can, and is being thrown everywhere completely regardless of the merit of original conversation. And yes, it's a perfect tactic to sink any topic on a site with any kind of automoderation. You cannot properly discuss anything moderately controversial if any topic can get framed, and sunk as "flamebait" because moderately controversial topics are "flamebait". People have heated discussions about matters of ideology, that's the very obvious truth of life. The more important is the matter, the more, longer, louder, and more emotionally people will argue.
- dang 5y ago
  That's an argument for unmoderated flamewar. That's not what HN is. If you're imagining a version of HN that is "like the current HN, but without the current moderation practices," you'll have to forgive me for considering that a fantasy. There's also no evidence that anybody said that as a "discussion sinking" tactic. On the contrary, the simplest explanation easily applies: people responded to flamebait with more flamebait, which cascaded into flamewar. This is one of the most common phenomena that exists here, and one doesn't need sinister constructs to understand it.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    I am not calling for it, what I told is topics turning into flamewar regardless of merits of original conversation, and that any important topic sinks very quickly.