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The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)
- alphachloride 5y ago> The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational, dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative ... Reading this, I felt the description hit very close to home with regards to a substantive amount of discourse here. I also learned a new word!
- jabthedang 5y ago
- everybodyknows 5y ago2019. Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052
- dang 5y agoYes, these threads are starting to get a little less "lonely" aren't they. I guess once a year ("or so" - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) is ok. Macroexpanded: The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415 - Nov 2020 (291 comments) The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052 - Aug 2019 (777 comments)
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
- optimalsolver 5y agoI've noticed that all the online spaces I enjoy visiting are heavily moderated. Whenever I get linked to "free speech" loosely-moderated platforms, I usually hit the back button pretty quick.
- andrewfromx 5y agoI can't wait for https://www.deso.org/ https://www.deso.org/ to take off, not just for the value of the coin to increase, but to see lots of nodes taking over the responsibility of twitter/fb/youtube etc's what's okay and what's not. There will be someone willing to run a node that has all the stuff blocked or unblocked to suit everyone's tastes.
- simias 5y agoAnybody can run their own platform right now without involving any cryptononsense. That's how the net used to work after all. Anybody failing to understand what lead to the centralization is bound to reproduce the same mistakes. It's not a technical issue, it's a social one.
- andrewfromx 5y agoI'm a believer after watching "The Next Big Social Media Network Will Be On the Blockchain. Nader Al-Naji Tells Us Why." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFiPVGN3J2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFiPVGN3J2M
- cinntaile 5y agoIsn't that how the different Matrix servers work already?
- andrewfromx 5y agoIncentives! You have to listen to Nader Al-Naji explain the vision. It gives me goosebumps.
- kuharich 5y agoPast comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415
- awb 5y agoQuestion for the mods: In the old days I don’t remember as much political / world news allowed. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. But I’ve seen more types of TV news stories going through, like stories about political protests, stories about politics in Eastern Europe, free speech debates, etc. Without getting into the details of each particular submission I’m curious if you think the submission standards have remained consistent throughout the years or if your curation philosophy has changed at all and if so, in what ways? P.S. Thanks for all you do as mods and for making HN an a valuable and unique community. It’s awesome to go to a thread and see helpful links or comments that enhance the conversation.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoIt's very hard to define specific political content as separate from technology. I remember a single Covid scientific paper turning into a 500 post political discussion. Or tech giants and censorship and privacy. How does one separate tech from politics in this sense? Maybe society has become more political and it's making it's way to link aggregator sites?
- johannes1234321 5y agoI think it is more that tech (and tech companies) become more subjects of political debate.
- iqanq 5y agoPeople want to debate politics, but submissions about politics get killed. Therefore people end up using any excuse to debate politics in any thread.
- Aperocky 5y agoStill better than being unregulated. I don't come here to have political discussion, I want to find out what's interesting in tech, not to engage in flame wars (except the vim/emacs kind, that I fight).
- blurker 5y agoI appreciate the repost. It's quite timely for me, because I had recently been reading and participating in a post about HN's apparent toxicity. This has helped me to gain some more perspective on the topic. Especially about how moderation is done. I'm really impressed by the moderators, I honestly had no idea how many people were moderating HN or how they did things. I admire the patience and care it sounds like they put into the community.
- password4321 5y agoI missed it, thanks for the heads-up. I love you, Hacker News, but you’re toxic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30349222 2022-02-15
- astrange 5y agoHN is actually quite a lot less toxic than it was a few years ago. I'm not sure why, but I think the extremely cynical/100% rude communication style people just left for some reason. Even Mr. management-by-perkele Linus has lightened up these days. Don't know what they're all doing now, I would've said crypto but whenever I meet those people they're unreasonably positive.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- GoodJokes 5y ago
- emptyparadise 5y agoDang.
- dekhn 5y agoI mostly appreciate the mods (well, dang is the only one I've interacted with) but I'm pretty tired of being scolded for occasionally making one-sentence comments that lack substance, while in the meantime, the site tolerates people who write pages of absolutely untrue covid vax denialism but don't get any comments from the mods. At this point I'm actively looking for a replacement community that focuses much more on ML and Linux, and not on the social issues associated with machine learning, or social justice warriors messing up tech firms, or people who seem to get their "science" from Fox News.
- Tenoke 5y ago1. I've never seen a 'absolutely untrue covid vax denialism' that doesn't get downvoted to death here. 2. Just because others make bad comments, it doesn't mean you should, too. 3. Your type of bad comment is the one there's a rule against, while there's no explicit rule about being wrong.
- tptacek 5y agoStop making insubstantial one-line comments, please.
- ciphol 5y agoOK, I will.
- dekhn 5y agoMy "insubstantial" one-line comments are often more valuable to readers of HN than pagelong of pseudointellectual debate (I watch my upvotes carefully. Which reminds me: is there a tool to track votes and comments on my comments?)
- pvg 5y agoLame things get upvoted all the time so watching your upvotes is not really a measure of 'value'. Adding more lame things to the site just because it already has lame things only makes it lamer, not better.
- ProAm 5y agoGood ol Dang, hero to some, voice of reason to others [1] [1] http://cosmonautdreams.com/images/dang.jpg http://cosmonautdreams.com/images/dang.jpg
- dqpb 5y agoAlso a bully and an autocrat.
- pkilgore 5y agoI missed this the first time around, thanks for posting! Mods, probably don't say it enough, but most of us deeply appreciate you!
- doublerabbit 5y agoThis thread gave me the sudden urge to backdate HN on WebArchive. What's amusing is the post on the front-page: "Web 2.0 is a bubble for 3 reasons" yet seeing the same for Web 3.0. HN from 2007 http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/https://news.ycombinator.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/https://news.ycomb... Edit: Strange downvotes...
- dqv 5y agoIf you’d like to have a deeper dive, HN has a way to see previous front pages: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2022-01-16 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2022-01-16
- doublerabbit 5y agoOh cool, you learn something new every day. Although, WebArchive has a frozen-in-time feel to it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ciphol 5y agoCherrypicking comments from a discussion forum with thousands of participants and no barriers to entry is a pretty weak way of criticizing the forum.
- skyechurch 5y agoThere should be little badges, like employees at nuclear power plants wear, except if you exceed a certain threshold of online discourse you are quarantined in a wifi free zone until you have decontaminated. Irl most people oti are not as weird or insane as you would guess from interacting with them, the exceptions are those driven insane by internet dscourse. Tldr Hacker News is seriously the worst moderated forum with the worst posters, except for all the other ones.
- e40 5y agoThis article made me appreciate dang and anyone that has anything to do with the site so much more. Big thanks to all.
- ebbflowgo 5y agoIn a remote-first/tech world, our lives are lonely, by design. We no longer have the social touch points we typically had. Water cooler talk, coffee walks, after-work drinks with the team, and work sports are no longer a thing. Vibehut.io is a great solution to get your social fix. Vetted video calls based on your existing social platform and crypto holdings.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago> Water cooler talk, coffee walks, after-work drinks with the team, and work sports are no longer a thing. I would take HN over the water cooler talk, after work drinks and work sports. Coffee walks ... probably worth keeping. Possibly an occasional workplace lunch too. But then again, I've worked "alone" at home for more than 20 years, and so the social side of working life has felt fairly foreign to me forever.
- psahgal 5y agoI'd just like to say "thank you" to the moderators for helping make Hacker News such an interesting site. I've been reading Hacker News for years and it's really helped me keep on top of emerging trends in technology! Sometimes I've seen tech news hit Hacker News before even the major news outlets have a chance to report. It's pretty impressive. Keep up the good work!
- summari 5y ago
- tbagman 5y agoJust to say it explicitly, dang, you're doing a great job.
- manholio 5y agoRegarding the throwaway accounts, I wish there was some way to delete old comments. I think I have the moral right to control their lifetime, and occasional gaps in 5 year old discussions will not really matter to anyone. Without such an option the logical alternative is to periodically cycle your username, amassing somewhat of a sockpuppet army if you are so inclined.
- bckr 5y agoThis nearly brought me to tears. dang and Scott's story was really moving. The humanistic approach, the amount of work to make this website so good. Falling off a mountain and realizing you need a job & need to give up on your startup... novel-worthy stuff.
- foldr 5y agoOne thing that puzzles me is why HN does not have a policy of banning users who post explicitly racist comments. I sometimes (unwisely) get sucked into arguing with these people. However, this is essentially impossible to do within the site guidelines, as you either have to have a respectful discussion with a racist (which only legitimizes them) or call them out for being a racist (which isn't allowed). I'm aware that racist comments often get flagged, but then again, they also often don't. And users who post such comments are able to continue contributing to the site. I won't post links to examples here because, again, that is probably not within the site guidelines. But I'm happy to supply on request.
- dang 5y agoWe do ban such accounts, and I've personally banned god knows how many of them. You're always welcome to email links to hn@ycombinator.com if you want us to take a look. Keep in mind that we don't see everything that gets posted here—not even close. For outrageously bigoted comments, the odds are high that we just haven't seen it yet. Any sufficiently large open forum is going to get those, and given that we don't know how to write software to detect them, there's an inevitable time lag before they get dealt with. Outside that extreme sort of comment, though, the problem is not as simple as it sounds, or feels, because there's no consensus on how to define or interpret these terms. That means any particular moderation call is going to end up feeling wrong to a sizeable subset of users—good-faith users, not bigots or trolls. Put a few of those data points together and pretty much every reader is going to find a pattern to dislike. It's literally impossible to avoid this, even if we could see everything. One consequence is that we/I regularly get lambasted with every horrible label that exists in polite society (a clarifying example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22941387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22941387), because most people misinterpret a sequence of bad-data-point experiences to mean "the mods must agree with and support this kind of thing". I wish I could get across to people how these perceptions are unavoidable given the stochastics of the site (HN is a statistical cloud) and how our brains deal with randomness (by strongly overinterpreting it). I've been writing about this for years - a lot of which shows up in these links: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - but it doesn't really land. Even if one knows these things intellectually, it doesn't change how they feel, and the feeling determines everything.
- dqpb 5y ago
- yamrzou 5y agoQuestion for the mods (@dang): Do you not experience some kind of information overload from monitoring all those stories and comments on HN? How are you able to handle all of that? Otherwise I just want to say thank you for maintaining this forum and making sure it stays interesting.
- dang 5y agoAt first it's like being paid to eat cheesecake: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20cheesecake&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... You stop enjoying the cheesecake, and then you stop eating it. Later, it's like having one's brain sandblasted: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20sandblast&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... I don't remember most details but I pattern-match quickly. It's probably not so different from doing any other rather-specific thing enough times. I also wrote a browser extension with a lot of keyboard shortcuts that by now has close to 10 years of learning baked into it. It doesn't make any decisions but it lets me do repetitive things faster. One of these years I want to open source it (or make it a profile option to serve as JS) so people who like keyboard shortcuts can flip around the threads more easily. It just requires surgery to take out the mod-only bits, which is a bit like separating conjoined twins.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y agoYou have created an expert system for HN comment threads implemented as a browser extension and with a knowledge base encoded as keyboard shortcuts. Now all you need to do is to use machine learning to learn the shortcuts, and then use them. Then you will have automated half of your job :P
- bennysomething 5y ago"to make space for a more inclusive, wider-ranging vision of technology" What on earth does this mean!? Hacker news will probably go the way of Reddit, steady decline in quality, and everything infected with politics.
- dang 5y agoPlease see the links at the bottom of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I spent a lot of time getting those just right :) Note that the last one or two actually predate Hacker News, because it was called Startup News for the few first months.
- gpas 5y agoIn this site I've learned to be careful of what I write on the internet. I keep returning because almost everyone follows the same rule: write if you have something interesting to say politely, otherwise read and move on. It's quite the opposite of other famous communities (except for some subs on reddit) where everyone is fighting for karma points with memes and copycat comments or evidently pushing their agendas. Thanks to you dang and to everyone involved for moderating such an interesting place.
- worik 5y agoLoved this. A peek behind the curtain, and what I see is what I expect. What a fantastic job you all (both? still?) do. Truly anarchism in action. A wonderful thing. Nothing should last foever - long may you run!
- nickdrozd 5y ago> In an Emacs file, Gackle collects a list of contradictory statements that people have used to describe Hacker News. dang, could you please describe your Emacs setup?
- dang 5y agoI use a vanilla Emacs that I download the binary of and that flickers annoyingly on the M1 Macbook I started using recently. My .emacs file is 861 lines long and, like anyone else's, contains years' worth of accumulated gizmos. Not sure what else to say!
- nickdrozd 5y agoI'm sure it seems unremarkable to you, but you are on the borderline of being a prominent enough user that your config is ipso facto noteworthy. (Less prominent than someone like Donald Knuth, but more prominent than someone like me.) Anyway, thanks for all the moderating work!
- tptacek 5y agoAre you using Homebrew's `emacs-mac` (IIRC, the Homebrew packaging of "railwaycat Emacs", which you can also install directly)? It's holding up well on my M1. Obviously, the other thing to say here is to share your emacs configuration, as is the tradition. But your call! :)
- redbell 5y agoLong read but it worth every letter written, well done! A few bullets.. 1. Does the moderators use some form of automation to extract suspicious posts/comments or they go manually scanning all posts with the full threads? I'm just finding it to be extremely difficult to monitor 24/7 manually. 2. It's really an interesting story this "SkySheet" and just heard about it. 3. I believe this article would be of another level if it was recorded as a podcast where we can hear their natural voices in a live discussion. 4. Am I the only one who find it extremely difficult to understand why [some] HNewsers don't and, won't follow the site guidelines, go blind and write whatever will fill this gap in their ego?!
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y agoThe secret that nobody tells you about HN is that it's not moderated by dang and sctb, but by dang, sctb and all users. In a sort of emergent way by users, of course, because we just downvote the kinds of comments we don't want to see (and some probably actively look out for comments that break the site guidelines) and upvote the ones we want to see. Hence the constant chatter about the "hive mind" etc. I guess. If you have a large body of users up- and down-voting what they think is right/wrong behaviour there's going to be _some_ tendencies that come out on top in every thread, and perhaps in the site as a whole. But that's not to say that what these top-tendencies are won't fluctuate wildly, even in the same day. It's complicated. A simulation would be interesting.
- nkurz 5y agoGood point about user involvement, but I'd wager that there are at least 3 more "secrets". The first is that a lot of the moderation is done algorithmically. Things like "flamewar detector" cool down stories that look like they are getting too many comments. The second is that user flagging plays a very large role. For better or worse, if some tiny percentage of users think a comment or story is inappropriate for the site, it disappears. User vouching then plays a smaller but also important role in reviving some of these. The last is that 'sctb' is no longer involved, and 'dang' is the sole remaining moderator. Sometimes I think he encourages people to believe that 'sctb' is still involved because he'd be embarrassed if people knew how much time and effort he puts into the site.
- shepardrtc 5y agoI've gotten lit up by dang a few times - and I usually disagree with his criticism, though in retrospect he's probably correct - but I've always been impressed with his dedication to this site. It takes a lot for someone to be a moderator, especially with the amount of text coming through this site. I've often wondered if was actually an AI that gained sentience yet doesn't realize that he's an AI. > Gackle, whose name is pronounced “Gack-lee” and who declined to share his age, is a muscular, bald, and loquacious father of two and a devoted fan of the Canadian sketch-comedy show “The Kids in the Hall.” So... an AI that can do deepfakes as well? Amazing.
- beeboop 5y agodang does a generally good job, though there have been times that HN has allowed some discussion that I find quite immoral and heinous, and I was chastised by dang for speaking out against it with strong words. However I get that I am very far left, and this is a website that is generally pro-capitalism, even despite its many failings - and that I am the outsider in this perspective.