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How do you feel about HN's approach - flagged or heavily downvoted comments are invisible if you are not logged in or if you have not changed "showdead" from th

by smcl 4y ago

How do you feel about HN's approach - flagged or heavily downvoted comments are invisible if you are not logged in or if you have not changed "showdead" from the default unchecked state (at which point they're rendered in a hard-to-read colour)?

mrtksn 4y ago
I don't like it when it's due to low score, it is an oppression of unpopular opinions. I like it when it's about flagged posts. I have the option enabled to show these posts and I would vouch if there's something worthy in it. So spam and other BS is "removed" but I still can take a look at it and see it for myself. Overall, I think HN is one of the best moderated online places.
- smcl 4y ago
  So this is unusual to me, because flagging feels more open to abuse than the comment score. Indeed this very thing happened to me recently: - user A says vaguely racist thing - user B calls person out for racist thing - user A cannot downvote a reply, so they flag it instead - making it disappear So both can silence someone, but in one case many people need to disagree with someone and in the other you just need one person (or one person with an alt account if you want to go and revert a "vouch"). So if anything flagging is more prone to abuse than downvoting. I try to read greytext comments when I can and vouch whenever it looks unjust (and do something similar for downvoted posts) but from the looks of things not many people do. edit: might as well include my example - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 So I'd understand if I was downvoted and called out for my confrontational response to racism. Because at that point I'd reply that actually treating this kind of casual xenophobic comment as unserious and mocking the person is the most effective counter to this kind of behavious. Getting bogged down in debating the merits or worth of any individual person or where they might "belong" is exactly what this kind of person wants to do.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    That's where you judge the moderation. The moderation quality defines the community quality. The good thing about HN is that the moderators are reachable and they do respond intelligently. Unlike AI moderation, you can send an e-mail about it and dang will respond to you and explain why something happen and you can discuss it. I had my account restricted multiple times and restored once we got on the same page(I don't agree with everything but once I see their point, I can work with it). I had wrongfully flagged comments unflagged by sending them an e-mail too. It's not perfect but it's pretty good and miles ahead than anything else online.
    - smcl 4y ago
      So in my case the comment didn't desperately need unflagging - someone could wave the comment guidelines in my face and I'd probably concede that such an open confrontation broke at least one. But yeah I guess you can overturn a flagging more easily than being downvoted.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        The real key is that there's a moderator, and the community is small enough that he can check things manually. Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to destruction eventually. My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does. Reddit somewhat has this, but there is still a site-wide issue.
        mrtksn 4y ago
        >Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to destruction eventually. >My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does. I agree with this. In real life situations you can see it too, the larger the crowd the stupider their total behaviour becomes. Large crowds are good for certain things though, but mostly primal stuff like singing and chanting.
godshatter 4y ago
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I myself prefer giving the users the moderation tools that affect only their view of the content. Users trying to save other users from posts they personally disagree with, in my opinion, can lead to echo chambers just by itself. Let me configure my account so that I can block or mute specific users or highlight keywords I can add to a list or allow users to tag posts. That way others can express their opinions in more ways than just commenting and I can use that data to determine if I want to read the existing comments or not. I do think HN is one of the better moderation systems since this is one of the saner places on the internet and you can still configure things so you can at least see all the content, though you can't interact with it all. I would just prefer it if I was in charge of saving myself from bad opinions or whatever motivates people to down vote posts into oblivion.
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
  Nobody wants to reinvent moderation and have a list of keywords and such that they have to maintain.

by smcl 4y ago

mrtksn 4y ago

I don't like it when it's due to low score, it is an oppression of unpopular opinions. I like it when it's about flagged posts. I have the option enabled to show these posts and I would vouch if there's something worthy in it. So spam and other BS is "removed" but I still can take a look at it and see it for myself. Overall, I think HN is one of the best moderated online places.

smcl 4y ago
So this is unusual to me, because flagging feels more open to abuse than the comment score. Indeed this very thing happened to me recently: - user A says vaguely racist thing - user B calls person out for racist thing - user A cannot downvote a reply, so they flag it instead - making it disappear So both can silence someone, but in one case many people need to disagree with someone and in the other you just need one person (or one person with an alt account if you want to go and revert a "vouch"). So if anything flagging is more prone to abuse than downvoting. I try to read greytext comments when I can and vouch whenever it looks unjust (and do something similar for downvoted posts) but from the looks of things not many people do. edit: might as well include my example - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 So I'd understand if I was downvoted and called out for my confrontational response to racism. Because at that point I'd reply that actually treating this kind of casual xenophobic comment as unserious and mocking the person is the most effective counter to this kind of behavious. Getting bogged down in debating the merits or worth of any individual person or where they might "belong" is exactly what this kind of person wants to do.
- mrtksn 4y ago
  That's where you judge the moderation. The moderation quality defines the community quality. The good thing about HN is that the moderators are reachable and they do respond intelligently. Unlike AI moderation, you can send an e-mail about it and dang will respond to you and explain why something happen and you can discuss it. I had my account restricted multiple times and restored once we got on the same page(I don't agree with everything but once I see their point, I can work with it). I had wrongfully flagged comments unflagged by sending them an e-mail too. It's not perfect but it's pretty good and miles ahead than anything else online.
  - smcl 4y ago
    So in my case the comment didn't desperately need unflagging - someone could wave the comment guidelines in my face and I'd probably concede that such an open confrontation broke at least one. But yeah I guess you can overturn a flagging more easily than being downvoted.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The real key is that there's a moderator, and the community is small enough that he can check things manually. Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to destruction eventually. My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does. Reddit somewhat has this, but there is still a site-wide issue.
      - mrtksn 4y ago
        >Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to destruction eventually. >My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does. I agree with this. In real life situations you can see it too, the larger the crowd the stupider their total behaviour becomes. Large crowds are good for certain things though, but mostly primal stuff like singing and chanting.

godshatter 4y ago

I'm not the person you're responding to, but I myself prefer giving the users the moderation tools that affect only their view of the content. Users trying to save other users from posts they personally disagree with, in my opinion, can lead to echo chambers just by itself. Let me configure my account so that I can block or mute specific users or highlight keywords I can add to a list or allow users to tag posts. That way others can express their opinions in more ways than just commenting and I can use that data to determine if I want to read the existing comments or not. I do think HN is one of the better moderation systems since this is one of the saner places on the internet and you can still configure things so you can at least see all the content, though you can't interact with it all. I would just prefer it if I was in charge of saving myself from bad opinions or whatever motivates people to down vote posts into oblivion.

x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
Nobody wants to reinvent moderation and have a list of keywords and such that they have to maintain.