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I love hating on moderation and I'm always ready to be critical of it, and of dang, if it's warranted. But I will say "monarchy is bad" comments are boring and

by 93po 4y ago

I love hating on moderation and I'm always ready to be critical of it, and of dang, if it's warranted. But I will say "monarchy is bad" comments are boring and don't lead to interesting discussion. There's a million other places to express that if you want.

encryptluks2 4y ago
But hundreds of comments repeating the most boring things like "she will be missed" aren't better left for the I Love Being Ruled Over Facebook Group?
- dang 4y ago
  (That's pretty funny.) This is the point I was trying to make at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 by quoting pg's 15-year-old bit about how empty positive comments aren't so bad (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). It's true that they don't contain any more information than empty negative comments, but they don't degrade the threads the way empty negative comments do. Unfortunately people took that as some sort of pro-monarchist stance!
  - teddyh 4y ago
    All advocates of temperance and moderation are preservers of the status quo. Therefore advocates of change naturally fall afoul of the moderators.
    - tptacek 4y ago
      They certainly do when their advocacy takes the form of sneering.
      - teddyh 4y ago
        Tone policing is a form of moderation.
        tptacek 4y ago
        Yes, of course it is.
  - nojonestownpls 4y ago
    Who decides what's "empty positive" vs "empty negative"? What you frame as pro-monarchist vs anti- can be as easily framed as anti-egalitarian vs pro-egalitarian. So anti-egalitarian empty comments were allowed, while pro-egalitarian ones were held to a higher standard. "Empty" praises and supports for one side of the position - a political position in a complex issue, not just "Thanks" like PG writes - are not really empty, they're the tools of populist campaigns.
- 93po 4y ago
  I will accept boring positivity over boring negativity any day, and as dang responded, that is basically his approach here too. I think boring comments in general should be dissuaded but frankly this post on HN was never going to generate much interesting convo anyway
digianarchist 4y ago
- gorgoiler 4y ago
  It isn’t just a person who is gone. Through complete coincidence of timing, her reign saw her become head of state for the entire post-war United Kingdom. Life was different back then, in a way that is more complex than being defined by the things we didn’t have. Entire continents were owned by London, fields were hand harvested by men in tweed with scythes, it was illegal to compete with the government telephone monopoly and/or be gay, and goods were hoisted off ships in cargo nets. It’s hard enough to look back at the 1980s and see what a shockingly different country the UK was, let alone to the 60s and 50s. Elizabeth was present for the post war reconstruction of Europe, the emancipation of the working classes, and ironically the end of most people’s deference to anything except money or celebrity. On top of all this she also represented a beloved family member to which many of us can relate, especially those of us who have lost that grandma, mother, or sister. Her death is both a single flower dying, and the last flower of its species dying.
  - digianarchist 4y ago
    >On top of all this she also represented a beloved family member to which many of us can relate, especially those of us who have lost that grandma, mother, or sister. She represents a bygone institution that will one day cease to exist, quite possibly the last monarch to die with the title in Australia and hopefully elsewhere. >Her death is both a single flower dying, and the last flower of its species dying. This is exactly what my previous comment was getting at. This is HN not poetry corner.
ycombinete 4y ago
> I love hating on moderation and I'm always ready to be critical of it, and of dang That's an oddly positive attitude to hatred.
- 93po 4y ago
  Sort of tongue in cheek, but the visible effects of moderation are awful in 90% of circumstances across the internet. Granted we don't see the benefit of the non-visible parts, but on reddit especially there are endless stories of communities being ruined by moderation, and moderation being used to force community behavior that suit the moderator's agendas. There instances, like HN, where the platform isn't trying to be used for making money or pushing an agenda. Moderation on this tends to be good, but that set of circumstances is rare

by 93po 4y ago

encryptluks2 4y ago

But hundreds of comments repeating the most boring things like "she will be missed" aren't better left for the I Love Being Ruled Over Facebook Group?

dang 4y ago
(That's pretty funny.) This is the point I was trying to make at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32769925 by quoting pg's 15-year-old bit about how empty positive comments aren't so bad (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). It's true that they don't contain any more information than empty negative comments, but they don't degrade the threads the way empty negative comments do. Unfortunately people took that as some sort of pro-monarchist stance!
- teddyh 4y ago
  All advocates of temperance and moderation are preservers of the status quo. Therefore advocates of change naturally fall afoul of the moderators.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    They certainly do when their advocacy takes the form of sneering.
    - teddyh 4y ago
      Tone policing is a form of moderation.
      - tptacek 4y ago
        Yes, of course it is.
- nojonestownpls 4y ago
  Who decides what's "empty positive" vs "empty negative"? What you frame as pro-monarchist vs anti- can be as easily framed as anti-egalitarian vs pro-egalitarian. So anti-egalitarian empty comments were allowed, while pro-egalitarian ones were held to a higher standard. "Empty" praises and supports for one side of the position - a political position in a complex issue, not just "Thanks" like PG writes - are not really empty, they're the tools of populist campaigns.
93po 4y ago
I will accept boring positivity over boring negativity any day, and as dang responded, that is basically his approach here too. I think boring comments in general should be dissuaded but frankly this post on HN was never going to generate much interesting convo anyway

digianarchist 4y ago

gorgoiler 4y ago
It isn’t just a person who is gone. Through complete coincidence of timing, her reign saw her become head of state for the entire post-war United Kingdom. Life was different back then, in a way that is more complex than being defined by the things we didn’t have. Entire continents were owned by London, fields were hand harvested by men in tweed with scythes, it was illegal to compete with the government telephone monopoly and/or be gay, and goods were hoisted off ships in cargo nets. It’s hard enough to look back at the 1980s and see what a shockingly different country the UK was, let alone to the 60s and 50s. Elizabeth was present for the post war reconstruction of Europe, the emancipation of the working classes, and ironically the end of most people’s deference to anything except money or celebrity. On top of all this she also represented a beloved family member to which many of us can relate, especially those of us who have lost that grandma, mother, or sister. Her death is both a single flower dying, and the last flower of its species dying.
- digianarchist 4y ago
  >On top of all this she also represented a beloved family member to which many of us can relate, especially those of us who have lost that grandma, mother, or sister. She represents a bygone institution that will one day cease to exist, quite possibly the last monarch to die with the title in Australia and hopefully elsewhere. >Her death is both a single flower dying, and the last flower of its species dying. This is exactly what my previous comment was getting at. This is HN not poetry corner.

ycombinete 4y ago

> I love hating on moderation and I'm always ready to be critical of it, and of dang That's an oddly positive attitude to hatred.

93po 4y ago
Sort of tongue in cheek, but the visible effects of moderation are awful in 90% of circumstances across the internet. Granted we don't see the benefit of the non-visible parts, but on reddit especially there are endless stories of communities being ruined by moderation, and moderation being used to force community behavior that suit the moderator's agendas. There instances, like HN, where the platform isn't trying to be used for making money or pushing an agenda. Moderation on this tends to be good, but that set of circumstances is rare