4 ms·

I consistently wonder why posts critical of HN-affiliated companies that have stats like upvotes per hour and number of comments that would theoretically make t

by kolbe 4y ago

I consistently wonder why posts critical of HN-affiliated companies that have stats like upvotes per hour and number of comments that would theoretically make them the top story getting pushed off the front page. Are there people whose upvotes count for more than others? Or are these actively suppressed? Either way, it makes it hard to have important/robust conversations when the people seeing them gets suppressed

dang 4y ago
I'm afraid I don't understand the first bit - but in case this is what you meant: we definitely don't moderate HN to suppress criticism of YC-funded startups. That's actually the #1 thing of all things we don't do. There's tons of past explanation at 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... but the short version is that we know the community's good will is the only value HN has, so we try never to do anything that would damage that. Re the second bit: there aren't any accounts whose upvotes count for more, but if accounts upvote too many bad* comments and/or get involved in voting rings, we sometimes make their votes not count anymore. * By "bad" I mean bad relative to HN's intended purpose as defined here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Relative to that, "bad" means snark, flamewar, ideological battle, etc. — all the things that zap intellectual curiosity.
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  This makes me think twice about upvoting dying comments that I think are constructive but just happen to go against popular consensus. I have a lot of karma and an account over a decade old. So I probably have nothing to worry about. But is agreeing with comments killed by down vote really a red flag?
  - dang 4y ago
    Your account's fine and the posts you've been upvoting (I took a quick look) seem fine. What we're really trying to avoid is garden-variety flamewar. > is agreeing with comments killed by down vote really a red flag? On the contrary, that's a good contribution and we hope everyone will do it when good comments (that don't break the site guideline) have been unfairly downvoted. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corrective%20upvote https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... p.s. It's always the good users who worry about these things!
    - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
      Okay, I replied before you edited your comment to add the bit about what constitutes a "bad" comment. I definitely don't upvote those comments. :) Thanks, dang.
      - dang 4y ago
        Sorry - I'm a compulsive self-editor and I have to see the post in 'reality' before I can tell what's wrong with it. I have the delay setting in my profile set to 1 minute but more is not practical.
        jacquesm 4y ago
        > Sorry - I'm a compulsive self-editor and I have to see the post in 'reality' before I can tell what's wrong with it. I have the exact same thing. I check a comment three times, it looks fine. Hit 'reply', the page refreshes and I spot a whole raft of things that are wrong with it. Very frustrating. Maybe a 'preview' button would help?
        dang 4y ago
        The 'delay' setting is there for this (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) - not sure if that suits you or not. Everyone seems to have a slightly different way of working.
- kolbe 4y ago
  Then what is the algorithm for determining where something should be ranked. I see submissions with 400 votes in two hours being ranked far below ones with 100 votes in 10 hours, and often the variable seems to be the article is critical of ChatGPT or a YC portfolio company. What else goes into the rankings?
  - dang 4y ago
    "How are stories ranked" is near the top of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Does that answer your question? In terms of moderator action: we might downweight ChatGPT topics (for oar against) if they seem repetitive rather than significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). But we don't downweight posts that are critical of YC companies—or rather, we do so less than we would downweight similar threads on other topics. See 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....
    - kolbe 4y ago
      That link doesn't really tell us. We're a very analytical bunch here, and when I see one story that should have a 10x higher rank according to the "basic algorithm" being ranked lower, that means these "other factors" are much more than a slight twiddling. And when you don't provide the full algorithm, just a hand waive, it makes it difficult to ascertain what's really happening. Are you sure there aren't abuses from your portfolio companies managers/employees to flag negative stories? I imagine Sam, for example, knows exactly what he has to do to get ChatGPT criticism guided off the stage. Edit: for example, do you know what happened with this story? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35245626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35245626 This is a very interesting/important topic. This was a new topic. It was really hot in the first hour, and just got smashed off the front page.
      - 4y ago
- commoner 4y ago
  > Re the second bit: there aren't any accounts whose upvotes count for more, but if accounts upvote too many bad* comments and/or get involved in voting rings, we sometimes make their votes not count anymore. Thanks for confirming this. There was some speculation last year about partial shadow bans for voting,* and it's good to hear an authoritative answer. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30317059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30317059 When this happens to an HN account, is it permanent or can it be reversed if the account stops upvoting "bad" comments? If it's permanent, affected users would like to know. Evaluating comments and determining whether they should be voted on can take a long time, and the affected users could save a lot of time if they knew that their votes would never count again.
  - dang 4y ago
    It's not permanent in the sense that we remove the penalty when we see that the user has shifted their behavior. That could be either because someone emails us or because we (randomly) take a look at the situation and change things. I know that's problematic because it depends on us seeing things and manually doing them. I'd love to automate it—not just because it would be fairer but because it would be less work for us! But I don't know how to write code to do that.

by kolbe 4y ago

dang 4y ago

I'm afraid I don't understand the first bit - but in case this is what you meant: we definitely don't moderate HN to suppress criticism of YC-funded startups. That's actually the #1 thing of all things we don't do. There's tons of past explanation at 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... but the short version is that we know the community's good will is the only value HN has, so we try never to do anything that would damage that. Re the second bit: there aren't any accounts whose upvotes count for more, but if accounts upvote too many bad* comments and/or get involved in voting rings, we sometimes make their votes not count anymore. * By "bad" I mean bad relative to HN's intended purpose as defined here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Relative to that, "bad" means snark, flamewar, ideological battle, etc. — all the things that zap intellectual curiosity.

MacsHeadroom 4y ago
This makes me think twice about upvoting dying comments that I think are constructive but just happen to go against popular consensus. I have a lot of karma and an account over a decade old. So I probably have nothing to worry about. But is agreeing with comments killed by down vote really a red flag?
- dang 4y ago
  Your account's fine and the posts you've been upvoting (I took a quick look) seem fine. What we're really trying to avoid is garden-variety flamewar. > is agreeing with comments killed by down vote really a red flag? On the contrary, that's a good contribution and we hope everyone will do it when good comments (that don't break the site guideline) have been unfairly downvoted. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corrective%20upvote https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... p.s. It's always the good users who worry about these things!
  - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
    Okay, I replied before you edited your comment to add the bit about what constitutes a "bad" comment. I definitely don't upvote those comments. :) Thanks, dang.
    - dang 4y ago
      Sorry - I'm a compulsive self-editor and I have to see the post in 'reality' before I can tell what's wrong with it. I have the delay setting in my profile set to 1 minute but more is not practical.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        > Sorry - I'm a compulsive self-editor and I have to see the post in 'reality' before I can tell what's wrong with it. I have the exact same thing. I check a comment three times, it looks fine. Hit 'reply', the page refreshes and I spot a whole raft of things that are wrong with it. Very frustrating. Maybe a 'preview' button would help?
        dang 4y ago
        The 'delay' setting is there for this (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) - not sure if that suits you or not. Everyone seems to have a slightly different way of working.
kolbe 4y ago
Then what is the algorithm for determining where something should be ranked. I see submissions with 400 votes in two hours being ranked far below ones with 100 votes in 10 hours, and often the variable seems to be the article is critical of ChatGPT or a YC portfolio company. What else goes into the rankings?
- dang 4y ago
  "How are stories ranked" is near the top of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Does that answer your question? In terms of moderator action: we might downweight ChatGPT topics (for oar against) if they seem repetitive rather than significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). But we don't downweight posts that are critical of YC companies—or rather, we do so less than we would downweight similar threads on other topics. See 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....
  - kolbe 4y ago
    That link doesn't really tell us. We're a very analytical bunch here, and when I see one story that should have a 10x higher rank according to the "basic algorithm" being ranked lower, that means these "other factors" are much more than a slight twiddling. And when you don't provide the full algorithm, just a hand waive, it makes it difficult to ascertain what's really happening. Are you sure there aren't abuses from your portfolio companies managers/employees to flag negative stories? I imagine Sam, for example, knows exactly what he has to do to get ChatGPT criticism guided off the stage. Edit: for example, do you know what happened with this story? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35245626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35245626 This is a very interesting/important topic. This was a new topic. It was really hot in the first hour, and just got smashed off the front page.
    - 4y ago
commoner 4y ago
> Re the second bit: there aren't any accounts whose upvotes count for more, but if accounts upvote too many bad* comments and/or get involved in voting rings, we sometimes make their votes not count anymore. Thanks for confirming this. There was some speculation last year about partial shadow bans for voting,* and it's good to hear an authoritative answer. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30317059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30317059 When this happens to an HN account, is it permanent or can it be reversed if the account stops upvoting "bad" comments? If it's permanent, affected users would like to know. Evaluating comments and determining whether they should be voted on can take a long time, and the affected users could save a lot of time if they knew that their votes would never count again.
- dang 4y ago
  It's not permanent in the sense that we remove the penalty when we see that the user has shifted their behavior. That could be either because someone emails us or because we (randomly) take a look at the situation and change things. I know that's problematic because it depends on us seeing things and manually doing them. I'd love to automate it—not just because it would be fairer but because it would be less work for us! But I don't know how to write code to do that.