4 ms·

>If you first fix this, and then have something to say about other people's bad behavior, or about moderation failures, I'd be happy to address it. After I fix

by trasz 4y ago

>If you first fix this, and then have something to say about other people's bad behavior, or about moderation failures, I'd be happy to address it. After I fix it, what should I do next time I encounter a racist comment? Should I just pretend it’s not there? And no, I don’t believe the natural fate of forums is self-destruction. We have plenty of examples showing otherwise, from Usenet to 4chan to the entire scientific publication system. The fate of every _commercial_ forum is self-destruction, because it self-regulates into something that doesn’t quite align with the commercial owner’s best interest, because it’s different from users’ best interest - and it appears that this problem can only be toned down, but not fixed in a sustainable way. An example of this is the vast majority of current startup culture.

dang 4y ago
The site guidelines answer that question. You're changing the subject a bit, though, because most of the abusive comments you've posted here have nothing to do with that scenario.
- trasz 4y ago
  That’s one way to see it. Another is that those “abusive comments” aren’t abusive in any way - in fact abusive comments are widely tolerated here - but they are politically incorrect to you. Did you warn users who posted “abusive comments” towards covid denialists or flat earthers?
  - dang 4y ago
    It's not just in the eye of the beholder - the comments that I've scolded you about, including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32279605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32279605 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32279588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32279588 in this thread, were obviously breaking the site guidelines. If you don't stop doing this, we will ban you. If you're asking whether we moderate, scold, and ban other accounts that break the site guidelines, regardless of which views they're for or against, the answer is certainly. That does't mean we catch every case, but that's because we don't come close to reading everything that gets posted here. There's far too much. Re "politically incorrect to you": every politically passionate user who gets moderated here feels like the mods must secretly be conniving with the other side. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22always%20feels%22%20mods%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... This perception is a function of political passion. People either don't notice the cases going the other way, or discount them.
    - trasz 4y ago
      So like I said, not showing enough respect towards fringe theories is obviously breaking the guidelines. Fine, I’ll comply. I don’t feel like you’re “with the other side” - of course your interests here are different than mine, but that’s orthogonal. What I do feel is that certain topics - like the fringe theories on religion and politics - are a taboo here. And that’s a problem, because same way you can’t understand computer architecture without at least general grasp on manufacturing, or the fashionable web technologies without understanding the startup business model, the same way you can’t understand the world without understanding the forces governing it - including the pathological cases, which appear to be a taboo here. Don’t you think enforcing taboos goes against the hacker ethos?
      - dang 4y ago
        That's not an accurate description of what we're doing. It's all much simpler than that.

by trasz 4y ago

dang 4y ago

The site guidelines answer that question. You're changing the subject a bit, though, because most of the abusive comments you've posted here have nothing to do with that scenario.

trasz 4y ago
That’s one way to see it. Another is that those “abusive comments” aren’t abusive in any way - in fact abusive comments are widely tolerated here - but they are politically incorrect to you. Did you warn users who posted “abusive comments” towards covid denialists or flat earthers?
- dang 4y ago
  It's not just in the eye of the beholder - the comments that I've scolded you about, including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32279605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32279605 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32279588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32279588 in this thread, were obviously breaking the site guidelines. If you don't stop doing this, we will ban you. If you're asking whether we moderate, scold, and ban other accounts that break the site guidelines, regardless of which views they're for or against, the answer is certainly. That does't mean we catch every case, but that's because we don't come close to reading everything that gets posted here. There's far too much. Re "politically incorrect to you": every politically passionate user who gets moderated here feels like the mods must secretly be conniving with the other side. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22always%20feels%22%20mods%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... This perception is a function of political passion. People either don't notice the cases going the other way, or discount them.
  - trasz 4y ago
    So like I said, not showing enough respect towards fringe theories is obviously breaking the guidelines. Fine, I’ll comply. I don’t feel like you’re “with the other side” - of course your interests here are different than mine, but that’s orthogonal. What I do feel is that certain topics - like the fringe theories on religion and politics - are a taboo here. And that’s a problem, because same way you can’t understand computer architecture without at least general grasp on manufacturing, or the fashionable web technologies without understanding the startup business model, the same way you can’t understand the world without understanding the forces governing it - including the pathological cases, which appear to be a taboo here. Don’t you think enforcing taboos goes against the hacker ethos?
    - dang 4y ago
      That's not an accurate description of what we're doing. It's all much simpler than that.