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From https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-vall
by kccqzy 4y ago
From https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...
> The site’s real-life moderators are Daniel Gackle and Scott Bell, two wildly polite old friends. […] Gackle and Bell, by contrast, practice a personal, focussed, and slow approach to moderation, which they see as a conversational act. They treat their community like an encounter group or Esalen workshop; often, they correspond with individual Hacker News readers over e-mail, coaching and encouraging them in long, heartfelt exchanges.
My impression is that it's just an old-fashioned manual process.
- kennethrc 4y agoHuh. Been pronouncing it in my head as "dang!" (like the "expletive") all this time
- jjice 4y agoOh man I just got this too. Dan G. Jeez. I'm going to pretend I didn't see that, but what a minor change to something I interact with every day. Neat!
- daxfohl 4y agoIt's like that Seinfeld episode. https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/Donna_Chang https://seinfeld.fandom.com/wiki/Donna_Chang
- tjr 4y agoNot necessarily wrong though! https://jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.5.0.dos.txt https://jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.5.0.dos.txt Login names are often used as nicknames, pronounce[d] if possible and spelled if necessary. My wife and I met at MIT, and she still calls me "Gliss", because my login name was GLS. "Guy" sounds very weird to her.
- benatkin 4y agoSome are more than just logins or nicknames, they're handles. I will never use substack.com* after they stole substack's handle. * as a publisher or a subscriber, and to some extent even as a reader
- Zecc 4y agoMy thoughts go to the person in my college whose login, based on their initials, was `acne`.
- spindle 4y agoThere's no way I'm ever going to stop pronouncing it "dang!". I'm sure dang knows this.
- brundolf 4y ago"Dang" is a last name some people have, I assumed it was that for a long time
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dang 4y agoI do too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25061563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25061563
- pkrotich 4y agoSame here - reminds me of a lawyer named “So Sue” - cannot find the reference but I thought it must be interesting seeing her name on legal papers.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago> often, they correspond with individual Hacker News readers over e-mail, coaching and encouraging them in long, heartfelt exchanges I've been part of a brief but very positive exchange like this with dang, and it's not an exaggeration. This is part of why I still visit the site; there's a real personal touch that makes this forum what it is. I felt stupid about a comment I'd left and thought "ugh, I should ask someone to delete this". dang responded saying it was a great comment and that I should consider keeping it as it was the kind of content he felt made HN a constructive and interesting place. I was totally caught off-guard.
- daniel_iversen 4y agoI also had the pleasure of dang’s help and kindness when I posted something that could be seen as inappropriate as our company was in the process of our public listing, and he was kind enough to help me delete it.
- mettamage 4y agoSimilar experiences here
- swyx 4y agowait what? dang responded to a thought you had? i mean he’s good but nobodys THAT good
- flangola7 4y agoI wonder how (if?) they prevent NLP bots and influence campaigns.
- dang 4y agoNLP bots we're just in the early stages of dealing with. So far we're relying on community members to tell us about them (so if you think you're seeing that, please let us know! hn@ycombinator.com). Influence campaigns are an older problem, so we have many years' worth of defenses built up, although it's an arms race where the influencers also evolve. I'm aware that I didn't answer the "how" part of your question—the trouble is that there's no secure way to do it, so everything relies on a stack of ad hoc techniques that would stop working if we published them. It's basically the old "I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you" joke. But the answer to the "if" part is yes.
- tptacek 4y agoBell hasn't been affiliated with HN in quite awhile, for whatever that's worth.
- divbzero 4y agoThere is at least one macro that dang uses, for expanding past threads about a topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34913653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34913653 But on the whole it does seem like the old-fashioned method of clear consistent communication.
- keyle 4y agoThanks, this let me down the rabbit hole of finding out what "Esalen" is about... Fascinating.
- avhception 4y agoMind sharing?
- veqq 4y agoEsalen's a retreat for the human potential movement, which centers on selfactualizing yourself, through New Age spiritual things, alternative medicine etc.
- bobleeswagger 4y ago> often, they correspond with individual Hacker News readers over e-mail, coaching and encouraging them in long, heartfelt exchanges. I think this is outdated, or flat out not true. I have had particularly sour engagements with dang specifically. I asked him to reach out to me via email and he just kept pushing the matter in public. Pretty poor handling all around, and completely lacking inclusivity or self-awareness for a "seasoned professional." I'm glad it's daisies and roses for most of you, but some of us have not seen such kindness. Ultimately you have to ask yourself if moderation has fostered an environment of growth and evolution, or an echo chamber. In my experience I have seen more of the latter on HN, and it's concerning.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kergonath 4y ago> I think this is outdated, or flat out not true. It is entirely true, as of a couple of weeks ago.
- bobleeswagger 4y agoLike I said, I'm still waiting to experience it. As far as I can tell, most moderation of HN is done in public, not in private over email.
- dang 4y agoI probably spend more time in email than on the site, unfortunately—or at least it feels that way. I hear you that you didn't get a satisfying email response, and I'm sorry about that. It's possible that I screwed up. Actually, it's likely that I screwed up, because you're posting this some time later and it's my job not to leave people feeling this way. Without details, though, it's impossible to say what happened. I probably wouldn't email a user who just said "email me" in a public comment. But if you wrote in to hn@ycombinator.com and I didn't read or hear you or reply in a way that met your concern, then I'm sorry.
- password4321 4y agoMost recent discussion (Feb 2022): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040 Specific mention of a custom browser extension: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040#30378776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040#30378776
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mooreds 4y agoI've received a few emails from Dang and can confirm it's a very human interaction, even if he is slapping your wrist for behavior that breaks site norms.
- corobo 4y agoDan has a great way of telling you off that makes you come out of the situation like ".. aye, that's fair actually. No worries, I'll avoid doing it in future" You don't often see de-escalation on the internet. Especially between moderator and user when they could just as easily disappear you from the site. It works well.