4 ms·

It sounds like a insurmountable problem. What makes this even more interesting to me is that HN seems to have this working pretty well. I wonder how much of it

It sounds like a insurmountable problem. What makes this even more interesting to me is that HN seems to have this working pretty well. I wonder how much of it has to do with clear guidelines of what should be valued and what shouldn't and having a community that buys in to that. For example one learns quickly that Reddit-style humor comments are frowned upon because the community enforces it with downvotes and frequently explanations of etiquette.

etchalon 4y ago
I suspect HN succeeds due to heavy moderation, explicit community guidelines and a narrow topic set.
- blep_ 4y ago
  Some areas of reddit do similar things with similar results. AskHistorians and AskScience are the first two to come to mind. This may be a lot easier in places where there's an explicit point to discussion beyond the discussion itself - StackOverflow is another non-Reddit example. It's easier to tell people their behavior is unconstructive when it's clearly not contributing to the goal. HN's thing may just be to declare a particular type of conversation to be the goal.
- concinds 4y ago
  I think that has far more to do with this site being relatively low-traffic. Double the traffic, while keeping the exact same rules and topic, and it would become unreadable. It's easy to "moderate" when people clearly break the rules; but "moderation" can't do anything if the only problem is that most comments are uninsightful. Large numbers always ruin things, in real life or online. You can see that on this very website on Musk-related stories, with a terrible heat-to-light ratio in the comments. It's controversial, but if the average IQ was 120 rather than 100, I doubt you'd have 1/10th as many issues on massively popular social media; most of the moderation issues would go away. The problem comes from the bottom-up, and can't be fixed from the top down.
slg 4y ago
If we follow the logic of Yishan's thread, HN frowns upon and largely doesn't allow discussion that would fall into group 3 which removes most of the grounds for accusations of political and other biases in the moderation. As Yishan says, no one really cares about banning groups 1 and 2, so no one objects to when that is done here. Plus scale is a huge factor. Automated moderation can have its problems. Human moderation is expensive and hard to keep consistent if there are large teams of individuals that can't coordinate on everything. HN's size and its lack of desire for profit allow for a very small human moderation team that leads to consistency because it is always the same people making the decisions.
vkou 4y ago
HN works very well, because it's about as far from free speech as you can get on the internet, short of dang personally approving every post.
- swayvil 4y ago
  It's proof of the old adage : the best possible government is a benign dictator.
- prox 4y ago
  What kind of free speech is not allowed? What can’t you say right now that you feel should?
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    Category 1 from Yishan's thread, spam, obviously isn't allowed. But also thinking about house general framework of it all coming down to signal vs noise, most "noise" gets heavily punished on here. Reddit-style jokes frequently end in the light greys or even dead. I had my account shadow-banned over a decade ago because I made a penis joke and thought people didn't get the joke.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever, wherever, without any repercussions. It solely means the government can't restrict your expression. On a private platform you abide their rules.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - bandyaboot 4y ago
        You seem to be conflating the general principles of free speech with the specific protections defined by the US first amendment.
rsync 4y ago
I have a suspicion that the medium is the message at HN: No pictures and no avatars. I wonder how much bad behavior is weeded out by the interface itself ? A lot, I suspect …
- ChainOfFools 4y ago
  > No pictures and no avatars This is essentially moderation rule #0. it is unwritten, enforced before violation can occur, and generates zero complaints because it filters complainers out of the user pool from the start.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    The no-avatars rule also takes away some of the personalization aspect. If you set your account up with your nickname, your fancy unique profile picture and your favorite quote in the signature, and someone says you're wrong, you're much more invested because you've tied some of your identity to the account. If you've just arrived on the site, have been given a random name and someone says you're wrong, what do you care? You're not attached to that account at all, it's not "you", it's just a random account on a random website. I thought that was an interesting point on 4chan (and probably other sites before them), that your identity was set per thread (iirc they only later introduced the ability to have permanent accounts). That removes the possibility of you becoming attached to the random name.
    - randomdata 4y ago
      Why would one be concerned with being wrong at all? Being wrong, thus being able to learn, is the whole reason for having discussions with others. Once you’re confident that you can’t be wrong, you’re not going to care about the topic anymore. There is good reason why we don’t sit around talking about how 1+1=2 all day.
- jdp23 4y ago
  Nope. There's been abuse in text-only environments online since forever. And lots of people have left (or rarely post on) HN because of complaints about the enviroment here.
kjkjadksj 4y ago
The only thing HN has going for it imo is its size. Once it becomes a larger and therefore more attractive market for media, the propaganda will be a lot more heavy handed, like what happened to reddit as it grew from something no one used and into a mainstream platform. You definitely see propaganda posted on here already from time to time.

etchalon 4y ago

I suspect HN succeeds due to heavy moderation, explicit community guidelines and a narrow topic set.

blep_ 4y ago
Some areas of reddit do similar things with similar results. AskHistorians and AskScience are the first two to come to mind. This may be a lot easier in places where there's an explicit point to discussion beyond the discussion itself - StackOverflow is another non-Reddit example. It's easier to tell people their behavior is unconstructive when it's clearly not contributing to the goal. HN's thing may just be to declare a particular type of conversation to be the goal.
concinds 4y ago
I think that has far more to do with this site being relatively low-traffic. Double the traffic, while keeping the exact same rules and topic, and it would become unreadable. It's easy to "moderate" when people clearly break the rules; but "moderation" can't do anything if the only problem is that most comments are uninsightful. Large numbers always ruin things, in real life or online. You can see that on this very website on Musk-related stories, with a terrible heat-to-light ratio in the comments. It's controversial, but if the average IQ was 120 rather than 100, I doubt you'd have 1/10th as many issues on massively popular social media; most of the moderation issues would go away. The problem comes from the bottom-up, and can't be fixed from the top down.

slg 4y ago

If we follow the logic of Yishan's thread, HN frowns upon and largely doesn't allow discussion that would fall into group 3 which removes most of the grounds for accusations of political and other biases in the moderation. As Yishan says, no one really cares about banning groups 1 and 2, so no one objects to when that is done here. Plus scale is a huge factor. Automated moderation can have its problems. Human moderation is expensive and hard to keep consistent if there are large teams of individuals that can't coordinate on everything. HN's size and its lack of desire for profit allow for a very small human moderation team that leads to consistency because it is always the same people making the decisions.

vkou 4y ago

HN works very well, because it's about as far from free speech as you can get on the internet, short of dang personally approving every post.

swayvil 4y ago
It's proof of the old adage : the best possible government is a benign dictator.
prox 4y ago
What kind of free speech is not allowed? What can’t you say right now that you feel should?
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  Category 1 from Yishan's thread, spam, obviously isn't allowed. But also thinking about house general framework of it all coming down to signal vs noise, most "noise" gets heavily punished on here. Reddit-style jokes frequently end in the light greys or even dead. I had my account shadow-banned over a decade ago because I made a penis joke and thought people didn't get the joke.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever, wherever, without any repercussions. It solely means the government can't restrict your expression. On a private platform you abide their rules.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - bandyaboot 4y ago
      You seem to be conflating the general principles of free speech with the specific protections defined by the US first amendment.

rsync 4y ago

I have a suspicion that the medium is the message at HN: No pictures and no avatars. I wonder how much bad behavior is weeded out by the interface itself ? A lot, I suspect …

ChainOfFools 4y ago
> No pictures and no avatars This is essentially moderation rule #0. it is unwritten, enforced before violation can occur, and generates zero complaints because it filters complainers out of the user pool from the start.
- luckylion 4y ago
  The no-avatars rule also takes away some of the personalization aspect. If you set your account up with your nickname, your fancy unique profile picture and your favorite quote in the signature, and someone says you're wrong, you're much more invested because you've tied some of your identity to the account. If you've just arrived on the site, have been given a random name and someone says you're wrong, what do you care? You're not attached to that account at all, it's not "you", it's just a random account on a random website. I thought that was an interesting point on 4chan (and probably other sites before them), that your identity was set per thread (iirc they only later introduced the ability to have permanent accounts). That removes the possibility of you becoming attached to the random name.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    Why would one be concerned with being wrong at all? Being wrong, thus being able to learn, is the whole reason for having discussions with others. Once you’re confident that you can’t be wrong, you’re not going to care about the topic anymore. There is good reason why we don’t sit around talking about how 1+1=2 all day.
jdp23 4y ago
Nope. There's been abuse in text-only environments online since forever. And lots of people have left (or rarely post on) HN because of complaints about the enviroment here.

kjkjadksj 4y ago

The only thing HN has going for it imo is its size. Once it becomes a larger and therefore more attractive market for media, the propaganda will be a lot more heavy handed, like what happened to reddit as it grew from something no one used and into a mainstream platform. You definitely see propaganda posted on here already from time to time.