5 ms·

Conflict-of-interest evident in the HN re-title-fication of this post. Recall that making something less salacious when you are the subject is quite different

Conflict-of-interest evident in the HN re-title-fication of this post. Recall that making something less salacious when you are the subject is quite different from toning down clickbait headlines when you're wearing your neutral-editorial hat. Original title was 'Why are some YC companies breaking the law?' And frankly, that's a great question. Admittedly not-so-great is the absence of any specific example on the OP, but that's another matter. The post is about law-abidingness and to change that to protect YC on a chat board run by YC is sketch, YC.

dang 4y ago
I changed the title as part of moderating this thread less than we normally would. We moderate HN threads less, not more, when YC or YC startups are part of the story—this has been established practice since the beginning: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... The way we'd normally moderate a thread like this is by downweighting it as a generic riler-upper (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%20riler%20upper&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Posts like the OP are extremely common, because the internet is perpetually noticing something seemingly outrageous, jumping to the most extreme interpretation, exclaiming angrily, and then egging itself on. That's how the medium works. If we didn't downweight such posts, the front page would be be nothing but sensational/indignant material; there'd be no room for anything else. This is a no-brainer as a moderation call, and this practice has also been established on HN since the beginning. However, because the thread mentions YC startups, I haven't touched it or done what we normally would. Editing sensational/indignant titles to be more neutral and reflect the substance of a story (not that there's really a story here) is another well-established moderation practice on HN, again for what ought to be obvious reasons: if we didn't do it, then the front page would consist of nothing but that. So in this case I limited myself to the minimum viable title edit, while letting the post continue to burn at a much higher rank on the front page than it would ever normally get away with. For me the real conflict or tradeoff here is: how do we balance the need to not suppress criticisms (even when they are unfair or untrue—because the good will of the community is more important, in fact it's the only asset HN really has), with the need to preserve HN for its intended purpose. The ecosystem is fragile and takes a lot of tending to, and one of the most important forms of tending—which only moderators can really provide—is to not allow garden-variety internet indignation to drown out the quieter, more interesting material that HN is supposed to be for. It should be clear why the rule is "we moderate less when YC is the story", rather than "we moderate not at all"—the latter would be a loophole you could drive a convoy of trucks through. Therefore, when I asked myself what was the minimum reasonable thing to do, editing the sensational or (to use your word) salacious title to accurate reflect what (little) substance the post actually included, while not downweighting the submission the way we usually would, seemed to me the right tradeoff. This post doesn't deserve the hours on the front page that it's getting, but that's the local price we pay in favor of a global optimization. Edit: I changed the title again after posting this, in response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33973106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33973106, which made a fair point.
- braingenious 4y ago
  That was a lot of words. The “minimum” reasonable thing to do would have been to leave the thread alone if it is in fact your policy to moderate YC threads less than usual. Can you point to some non-YC posts that you have explicitly removed references to breaking the law from? It is, in fact, breaking the law to list NYC jobs without providing salary range in the same way that it is breaking the law to jaywalk or piss on the subway. Do you find references to those laws to be salacious and sensational? It was a mundane observation that these companies were breaking the law in the same way that it is a mundane observation that editing a title to obscure that gives the impression that it was not motivated by some sort of stoic adherence to some objective ideal. Was “TikTok is an illegal fork of OBS” a sensational, salacious title?
  - dang 4y ago
    I admit it was a lot of words, but I believe that lot of words already answered most of your points. As for the rest...I generally haven't found it to be a good use of time to answer that sort of cross-examination. The bulk of the community seems quite happy when we explain our thinking in good faith and don't do anything too extreme, but the cross-examiner is usually impossible to satisfy. I'm not talking about you here! but in my past experience, patiently answering a cross-examination usually only produces a longer cross-examination. I'd rather spend those resources making HN better for the rest of the community. But you did get me curious to see if I could find a past example of this kind of title edit. I did find one from earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30680267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30680267. We changed "Google Fi Illegally Bricked My iPhone 11 Pro Max" to "Google Fi bricked my iPhone 11 Pro Max (2020)" That's a typical example of HN moderation because we not only took out the sensational/disputable word, we also added the year—which besides being a normal edit, has the side effect of damping the riler-upper aspect. (The internet only likes to get angry about fresh things.) Re the Tiktok bit, you seem to be asking about this post: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29592103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29592103 - Dec 2021. I couldn't find any record of us moderating that post, so my first thought was that perhaps we just didn't see it. But I commented several times in the thread, so that can't be it either. Given that https://twitter.com/Naaackers/status/1471494415306788870 https://twitter.com/Naaackers/status/1471494415306788870 was exactly the sort of riler-upper that we routinely downweight, and in this case neglected to, my guess is that I was too busy in the comments and forgot to look at the article. In a case like that, it would be normal to add a question mark as a way of making the title more neutral. We did that, for example, here: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33343681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33343681 - Oct 2022 (246 comments) Now I have added another lot of words. I hope some of this is useful!

dang 4y ago

I changed the title as part of moderating this thread less than we normally would. We moderate HN threads less, not more, when YC or YC startups are part of the story—this has been established practice since the beginning: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... The way we'd normally moderate a thread like this is by downweighting it as a generic riler-upper (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%20riler%20upper&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Posts like the OP are extremely common, because the internet is perpetually noticing something seemingly outrageous, jumping to the most extreme interpretation, exclaiming angrily, and then egging itself on. That's how the medium works. If we didn't downweight such posts, the front page would be be nothing but sensational/indignant material; there'd be no room for anything else. This is a no-brainer as a moderation call, and this practice has also been established on HN since the beginning. However, because the thread mentions YC startups, I haven't touched it or done what we normally would. Editing sensational/indignant titles to be more neutral and reflect the substance of a story (not that there's really a story here) is another well-established moderation practice on HN, again for what ought to be obvious reasons: if we didn't do it, then the front page would consist of nothing but that. So in this case I limited myself to the minimum viable title edit, while letting the post continue to burn at a much higher rank on the front page than it would ever normally get away with. For me the real conflict or tradeoff here is: how do we balance the need to not suppress criticisms (even when they are unfair or untrue—because the good will of the community is more important, in fact it's the only asset HN really has), with the need to preserve HN for its intended purpose. The ecosystem is fragile and takes a lot of tending to, and one of the most important forms of tending—which only moderators can really provide—is to not allow garden-variety internet indignation to drown out the quieter, more interesting material that HN is supposed to be for. It should be clear why the rule is "we moderate less when YC is the story", rather than "we moderate not at all"—the latter would be a loophole you could drive a convoy of trucks through. Therefore, when I asked myself what was the minimum reasonable thing to do, editing the sensational or (to use your word) salacious title to accurate reflect what (little) substance the post actually included, while not downweighting the submission the way we usually would, seemed to me the right tradeoff. This post doesn't deserve the hours on the front page that it's getting, but that's the local price we pay in favor of a global optimization. Edit: I changed the title again after posting this, in response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33973106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33973106, which made a fair point.

braingenious 4y ago
That was a lot of words. The “minimum” reasonable thing to do would have been to leave the thread alone if it is in fact your policy to moderate YC threads less than usual. Can you point to some non-YC posts that you have explicitly removed references to breaking the law from? It is, in fact, breaking the law to list NYC jobs without providing salary range in the same way that it is breaking the law to jaywalk or piss on the subway. Do you find references to those laws to be salacious and sensational? It was a mundane observation that these companies were breaking the law in the same way that it is a mundane observation that editing a title to obscure that gives the impression that it was not motivated by some sort of stoic adherence to some objective ideal. Was “TikTok is an illegal fork of OBS” a sensational, salacious title?
- dang 4y ago
  I admit it was a lot of words, but I believe that lot of words already answered most of your points. As for the rest...I generally haven't found it to be a good use of time to answer that sort of cross-examination. The bulk of the community seems quite happy when we explain our thinking in good faith and don't do anything too extreme, but the cross-examiner is usually impossible to satisfy. I'm not talking about you here! but in my past experience, patiently answering a cross-examination usually only produces a longer cross-examination. I'd rather spend those resources making HN better for the rest of the community. But you did get me curious to see if I could find a past example of this kind of title edit. I did find one from earlier this year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30680267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30680267. We changed "Google Fi Illegally Bricked My iPhone 11 Pro Max" to "Google Fi bricked my iPhone 11 Pro Max (2020)" That's a typical example of HN moderation because we not only took out the sensational/disputable word, we also added the year—which besides being a normal edit, has the side effect of damping the riler-upper aspect. (The internet only likes to get angry about fresh things.) Re the Tiktok bit, you seem to be asking about this post: TikTok streaming software is an illegal fork of OBS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29592103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29592103 - Dec 2021. I couldn't find any record of us moderating that post, so my first thought was that perhaps we just didn't see it. But I commented several times in the thread, so that can't be it either. Given that https://twitter.com/Naaackers/status/1471494415306788870 https://twitter.com/Naaackers/status/1471494415306788870 was exactly the sort of riler-upper that we routinely downweight, and in this case neglected to, my guess is that I was too busy in the comments and forgot to look at the article. In a case like that, it would be normal to add a question mark as a way of making the title more neutral. We did that, for example, here: The only way of being anonymous in Sweden is illegal? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33343681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33343681 - Oct 2022 (246 comments) Now I have added another lot of words. I hope some of this is useful!