3 ms·

Still seems odd to me. M___ is a comparatively formal term, and it appears a lot of slang is still allowed (in any event, that term is trivially easy to make up

Still seems odd to me. M___ is a comparatively formal term, and it appears a lot of slang is still allowed (in any event, that term is trivially easy to make up new words for). And even the circle word you mentioned, especially in the VC tech world is a pretty legit metaphor for a lot of stuff. Throwing out comments because they use a specific word is really low effort imo, on the same level as banning the f-word. I'd be surprised if it isn't mostly generating false positives.

sillysaurusx 4y ago
You're right that it probably is. My main frustration was with the "Posting too fast; please slow down" throwing away comments that you spent a half hour writing. I felt strongly that the user should get an override button, similar to vouch, which lets you post your comment anyway. Obviously, it'd be revokable if abused. But it's so easy for us to sit here and say all that when they're the ones in the field doing the work. If they added masterbation to the list, it's likely because they saw a lot of comments correlated with it -- comments that, again, would drive the average user away from HN over time, rather than keeping us together as a community. The false positives are "for the greater good" in that sense, i.e. the cost of doing business. It took me a long time to accept this, but there's honestly nothing wrong with that. I used to feel strongly that they were treating users immorally by taking such a callous attitude with them. What changed my mind was seeing how moderation is done on all the other websites. It made me appreciate that Dan is consistent – and especially that he's consistently clear with his expectations. The mod team has undoubtedly grown beyond himself by now (he's said as much), so it's also impressive that he's trained his team so well. All of the other mods enforce his same rules, which is no small feat. Just look at how hard it is for Facebook or Twitter or (heaven forbid) Twitch to get their mod team to be consistent. Dan's crew is so good that the moderation is almost invisible, which is as it should be. I guess all I'm saying is, similar to a canary in a coal mine, I'm highly sensitive to whether the mods seem to be overstepping and suppressing people or ideas. And if I had to point to a specific case of that happening since 2018, I don't think I'd be able to. Offtopic from moderation, but Dan's a talented hacker too. https://github.com/gruseom/numen/blob/master/numen.el https://github.com/gruseom/numen/blob/master/numen.el seems to be his only public-facing work, and it wasn't till I studied it that I saw just how capable he is at designing large systems. There are very few unnecessary parts in that codebase. I hope I get a chance to show him my Arc keyword args implementation someday. It dramatically simplified the printing routines https://github.com/tensorfork/tlarc/blob/feb06f0366bff642e6d0e911a7c196235648dd81/arc.arc#L748-L765 https://github.com/tensorfork/tlarc/blob/feb06f0366bff642e6d... and the dynamic form generators https://github.com/tensorfork/tlarc/blob/feb06f0366bff642e6d0e911a7c196235648dd81/srv.arc#L567-L652 https://github.com/tensorfork/tlarc/blob/feb06f0366bff642e6d.... Anyway, it just makes me feel a bit sad to see people saying he's low-effort. His efforts are concentrated in specific high-impact areas, which is as it should be. And most of it tends to be mostly invisible -- when he writes code to fight upvote rings or fend off DoS attacks, we don't see it at all, because he was successful. Time spent reconsidering whether "masterbation" should be banned is time not spent doing those other things. Or spent with his family, and having a life outside of work.
- causi 4y ago
  My main frustration was with the "Posting too fast; please slow down" throwing away comments that you spent a half hour writing. It's somewhat expected when you're commenting a lot and your recent comments have been being downvoted or flagged. It's rather infuriating, however, when neither of those are the case but one of your comments happened to trod on a mod's personal fixation.

sillysaurusx 4y ago

You're right that it probably is. My main frustration was with the "Posting too fast; please slow down" throwing away comments that you spent a half hour writing. I felt strongly that the user should get an override button, similar to vouch, which lets you post your comment anyway. Obviously, it'd be revokable if abused. But it's so easy for us to sit here and say all that when they're the ones in the field doing the work. If they added masterbation to the list, it's likely because they saw a lot of comments correlated with it -- comments that, again, would drive the average user away from HN over time, rather than keeping us together as a community. The false positives are "for the greater good" in that sense, i.e. the cost of doing business. It took me a long time to accept this, but there's honestly nothing wrong with that. I used to feel strongly that they were treating users immorally by taking such a callous attitude with them. What changed my mind was seeing how moderation is done on all the other websites. It made me appreciate that Dan is consistent – and especially that he's consistently clear with his expectations. The mod team has undoubtedly grown beyond himself by now (he's said as much), so it's also impressive that he's trained his team so well. All of the other mods enforce his same rules, which is no small feat. Just look at how hard it is for Facebook or Twitter or (heaven forbid) Twitch to get their mod team to be consistent. Dan's crew is so good that the moderation is almost invisible, which is as it should be. I guess all I'm saying is, similar to a canary in a coal mine, I'm highly sensitive to whether the mods seem to be overstepping and suppressing people or ideas. And if I had to point to a specific case of that happening since 2018, I don't think I'd be able to. Offtopic from moderation, but Dan's a talented hacker too. https://github.com/gruseom/numen/blob/master/numen.el https://github.com/gruseom/numen/blob/master/numen.el seems to be his only public-facing work, and it wasn't till I studied it that I saw just how capable he is at designing large systems. There are very few unnecessary parts in that codebase. I hope I get a chance to show him my Arc keyword args implementation someday. It dramatically simplified the printing routines https://github.com/tensorfork/tlarc/blob/feb06f0366bff642e6d0e911a7c196235648dd81/arc.arc#L748-L765 https://github.com/tensorfork/tlarc/blob/feb06f0366bff642e6d... and the dynamic form generators https://github.com/tensorfork/tlarc/blob/feb06f0366bff642e6d0e911a7c196235648dd81/srv.arc#L567-L652 https://github.com/tensorfork/tlarc/blob/feb06f0366bff642e6d.... Anyway, it just makes me feel a bit sad to see people saying he's low-effort. His efforts are concentrated in specific high-impact areas, which is as it should be. And most of it tends to be mostly invisible -- when he writes code to fight upvote rings or fend off DoS attacks, we don't see it at all, because he was successful. Time spent reconsidering whether "masterbation" should be banned is time not spent doing those other things. Or spent with his family, and having a life outside of work.

causi 4y ago
My main frustration was with the "Posting too fast; please slow down" throwing away comments that you spent a half hour writing. It's somewhat expected when you're commenting a lot and your recent comments have been being downvoted or flagged. It's rather infuriating, however, when neither of those are the case but one of your comments happened to trod on a mod's personal fixation.