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I'm sure there must be some back story here. What are these people's concerns? They seem to believe that HN is a bastion for harassment. Of all the forums I rea

I'm sure there must be some back story here. What are these people's concerns? They seem to believe that HN is a bastion for harassment. Of all the forums I read, this seems the most benign by a large margin.

throwawayadvsec 3y ago
unless you're debating some small irrelevant controversial piece of tech it's usually pretty civil yes
- mathrawka 3y ago
  WAIT, are you insulting my emacs? /s of course I would like to know the backstory, since this made the front page though.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
It's the standard "Every time I hear something I disagree with it means they're harassing/fake news/going down the toilet" nonsense. The funny thing is this person's post is way more unhinged than hardly any comment that I see bubble to the top of HN. I made a similar point related to all the comments I see about "Well, it's well known that HN hates crypto..." No, I don't "hate crypto", I've done a rational assessment of it, and I'm not willing to buy whatever snake oil is being sold this week. You can reasonably disagree with my assessment, but I see this all the time where people try to say "HN hates crypto..." because we're all just emotional, or my other favorite, that we just missed out on the early boom and are bitter we didn't get rich.
wlesieutre 3y ago
Post here mentions harassment in HN comment sections: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110503331622393719 https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110503331622393719 Which is surprising to me too, because the comments I've seen on every Asahi Linux post have been pretty overwhelmingly positive and impressed by their progress. Was there some drama that I missed? Or maybe they're complaining about some non-Asahi related comment threads, but I have no idea what.
- CuriousCosmic 3y ago
  Whenever there is news regarding one of the members of the Asahi Linux team or their contributions, people write a bunch of really shitty comments trying to dig up the identity of that participant who very clearly does not want their real name associated with that identity or the project. That and in the beginning there were a lot of very negative "they didn't really write that. someone else must have done the hard work for them" type comments as well. So as a response the team wanted to just stop their stuff from showing up on HN but then the noreferrer thing happened and now we are here.
  - pseudosavant 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    Oh, about the main developer being a vtuber? I can imagine people being shitty about that, but I always read through the Asahi posts when I see them and I've yet to see it come up here.
    - ladberg 3y ago
      Not just being a vtuber, but outing them as an alter ego of marcan. Not exactly the nicest thing to do on HN's part (and I'm probably complicit by posting this comment), but also the information is already "out there" and blocking HN to keep it under wraps isn't a great strategy.
      - uberman 3y ago
        Wait, so this is about a virtual avatar identity project leader possibly being the alter ego of one of the other project leads? I just naturally assumed that to be the case after doing a search on "Asahi Linux" as I knew nothing about that project.
      - mfalcao 3y ago
        If that is actually him and he doesn't want to be associated with that persona then making this video [0] was a weird choice... But in any case it seems natural that people are curious about this, after all it's a popular project and listing virtual avatars as members is strange. At this point he should probably just own it if it is indeed him. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=effHrj0qmwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=effHrj0qmwk
nickdothutton 3y ago
I found this [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35251905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35251905
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 3y ago
  That comment is quoting its parent comment in order to object to it. The parent comment was flagged and we banned the account that posted it. I'm not sure what else we should have done there.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    Personally I would hold up HN's moderation up as an example of how to preserve civility without suppressing ideas. I don't think you can "do better" for one group without doing worse for another.
  - nickdothutton 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - detaro 3y ago
    > and we banned the account that posted it I'm not sure what else we should have done there. Take a moderator action at the time and not a month later?
    - Anthony-G 3y ago
      Good moderation requires time for deliberation and careful judgement. Hasty decisions will lead to bad decisions and given the huge volume of comments that Hacker News gets, Dan does a sterling job.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
wmf 3y ago
I've seen some... unproductive comments about Asahi Lina and of course they never go away because every HN thread is a 101 thread. And the Alyssa thread was probably a disaster but I didn't read it for that reason.
0_____0 3y ago
My opinion: HN has a particular culture and attitude to discussion that can be grating for non-users. One example: HNers tend to approach topics as if they have a solid grasp on the context of a matter, and are often negative, hence dang's plea against 'middlebrow dismissal.' Another example: the common practice of leading rebuttals to a comment with "No. \n" While that's OK here, there are a lot of people who would qualify that as "really fucking annoying." HN culture leaks onto sites that get linked to by it, and fairly enough, not everybody is down with that.
- _cenw 3y ago
  Oh, I feel it's pretty grating too, as a user. There's also a pretty hard bias in what is considered political and what is not. When I happen to disclose my identity (which is considered very political, apparently), even if it is topical, I roll dice on having that comment be purged to hell no matter the value of the contribution. Depends a bit on the time of day, even.
- linster 3y ago
  The other HN tell I’ve started seeing in work chats is excessive italics. I’m not five, I know the gravity of what you’re writing. For example, often HN users need to scold their readers into a hair-splitting debate around semantics. The other one I’ve seen is pretend-gaslighting-as-begging-the-question: “Can we all stop pretending that object-oriented programming is an efficient way to build software?”
  - jackvalentine 3y ago
    Yeah you’ve sold me. I’m out of here.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 000ooo000 3y ago
  I use that leading "No" as a marker for comments I can safely ignore. I think there's a fair chance the author lacks enough humility for an honest reflection on their position if they think it's appropriate to start their contribution to a discussion with a single paragraph of "No." It's somehow a more grating version of "well ackshually".
1attice 3y ago
[flagged]
- xena 3y ago
  As someone who is regularly falling victim to the rightward lurch (for having committed the dastardly crime of the wrong hormone activating in-utero), the only reason I don't actively block Hacker News readers is that I make ad money off of them. That is the only reason it's worth the abuse vector to me. dang, if you are reading this, please take a moment to seriously consider the actions you have taken today. I understand your desire for the community that Hacker News could be, but that is so far away from what it is today that it's almost laughable. Yes, this is a no-win situation but that's bascially how it is globally when trying to be centerist about any issue. I use Hacker News referers to change the page slightly (mostly to add a deserved "hey, can you please not be an asshole, thanks" via this code: https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/686cc58fb6fc8f2e3bf0197e9b385c94aff77c9f/src/tmpl/nag.rs#L39-L49 https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/686cc58fb6fc8f2e3bf0197e9b38...) and I would be very frustrated if that went away. Maybe even to the point of having a worker process figure out if my articles are posted to hacker news and making them go dark if they are on the front page. I know you value the articles I post (as our email threads have contained), but really it's an abuse vector that I need to keep metrics of. Website administrators should be allowed to block Hacker News referers. Yes this is a thing that is not desirable for you as an administrator, but at some level something's got to give. The enshittening of Hacker News is something that is very undesirable for me too. I've gone over this in our emails. This was going to be another one of those emails, but I really would prefer this one to be out in the open.
  - biorach 3y ago
    Hi, I like your blog. There are some really great articles. As far as i can tell the problem you have with HN is that if one of your blog posts makes the front page you get idiots making shitty comments about you in the HN comments, right? Do your posts get discussed anywhere else (reddit?), and if so how how does it compare?
- 1attice 3y ago
  It's against the guidelines to point out moderation decisions. But it's relevant to the point I'm making. This is a thoughtful, carefully-worded argument that has been repeatedly upvoted and downvoted (the downvotes seem to come in pairs -- admin action?) The moderation of this comment allows anonymous people, lurking in the shadows, to make decisions about what other people read, with no accountability or consequence. It is forbidden to talk about the moderation decisions, yet the moderation game mechanic is, in 2023, no longer fit-for-purpose, given the new realities of the political climate. The moderation mechanic is the story, and is no longer able to provide fair, reasonable, accountable crowdsourced moderation. A relic of less polarized times. Prophecy: Hacker News will either change, or perish. The usual deal, presented to organisms and organizations alike. Preserving its heirloom-varietal forum interface into the coming decade will be popular (in a decade increasingly stricken with nostalgia,) but also lethal. Thus, I predict the demise of Hacker News. The website will of course persist for as long as it remains useful to Y Combinator, but as the natural center-of-gravity for all of tech culture? Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei.

throwawayadvsec 3y ago

unless you're debating some small irrelevant controversial piece of tech it's usually pretty civil yes

mathrawka 3y ago
WAIT, are you insulting my emacs? /s of course I would like to know the backstory, since this made the front page though.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

It's the standard "Every time I hear something I disagree with it means they're harassing/fake news/going down the toilet" nonsense. The funny thing is this person's post is way more unhinged than hardly any comment that I see bubble to the top of HN. I made a similar point related to all the comments I see about "Well, it's well known that HN hates crypto..." No, I don't "hate crypto", I've done a rational assessment of it, and I'm not willing to buy whatever snake oil is being sold this week. You can reasonably disagree with my assessment, but I see this all the time where people try to say "HN hates crypto..." because we're all just emotional, or my other favorite, that we just missed out on the early boom and are bitter we didn't get rich.

wlesieutre 3y ago

Post here mentions harassment in HN comment sections: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110503331622393719 https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110503331622393719 Which is surprising to me too, because the comments I've seen on every Asahi Linux post have been pretty overwhelmingly positive and impressed by their progress. Was there some drama that I missed? Or maybe they're complaining about some non-Asahi related comment threads, but I have no idea what.

CuriousCosmic 3y ago
Whenever there is news regarding one of the members of the Asahi Linux team or their contributions, people write a bunch of really shitty comments trying to dig up the identity of that participant who very clearly does not want their real name associated with that identity or the project. That and in the beginning there were a lot of very negative "they didn't really write that. someone else must have done the hard work for them" type comments as well. So as a response the team wanted to just stop their stuff from showing up on HN but then the noreferrer thing happened and now we are here.
- pseudosavant 3y ago
  [flagged]
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  Oh, about the main developer being a vtuber? I can imagine people being shitty about that, but I always read through the Asahi posts when I see them and I've yet to see it come up here.
  - ladberg 3y ago
    Not just being a vtuber, but outing them as an alter ego of marcan. Not exactly the nicest thing to do on HN's part (and I'm probably complicit by posting this comment), but also the information is already "out there" and blocking HN to keep it under wraps isn't a great strategy.
    - uberman 3y ago
      Wait, so this is about a virtual avatar identity project leader possibly being the alter ego of one of the other project leads? I just naturally assumed that to be the case after doing a search on "Asahi Linux" as I knew nothing about that project.
    - mfalcao 3y ago
      If that is actually him and he doesn't want to be associated with that persona then making this video [0] was a weird choice... But in any case it seems natural that people are curious about this, after all it's a popular project and listing virtual avatars as members is strange. At this point he should probably just own it if it is indeed him. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=effHrj0qmwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=effHrj0qmwk

nickdothutton 3y ago

I found this [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35251905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35251905

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dang 3y ago
That comment is quoting its parent comment in order to object to it. The parent comment was flagged and we banned the account that posted it. I'm not sure what else we should have done there.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  Personally I would hold up HN's moderation up as an example of how to preserve civility without suppressing ideas. I don't think you can "do better" for one group without doing worse for another.
- nickdothutton 3y ago
  [flagged]
- detaro 3y ago
  > and we banned the account that posted it I'm not sure what else we should have done there. Take a moderator action at the time and not a month later?
  - Anthony-G 3y ago
    Good moderation requires time for deliberation and careful judgement. Hasty decisions will lead to bad decisions and given the huge volume of comments that Hacker News gets, Dan does a sterling job.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

wmf 3y ago

I've seen some... unproductive comments about Asahi Lina and of course they never go away because every HN thread is a 101 thread. And the Alyssa thread was probably a disaster but I didn't read it for that reason.

0_____0 3y ago

My opinion: HN has a particular culture and attitude to discussion that can be grating for non-users. One example: HNers tend to approach topics as if they have a solid grasp on the context of a matter, and are often negative, hence dang's plea against 'middlebrow dismissal.' Another example: the common practice of leading rebuttals to a comment with "No. \n" While that's OK here, there are a lot of people who would qualify that as "really fucking annoying." HN culture leaks onto sites that get linked to by it, and fairly enough, not everybody is down with that.

_cenw 3y ago
Oh, I feel it's pretty grating too, as a user. There's also a pretty hard bias in what is considered political and what is not. When I happen to disclose my identity (which is considered very political, apparently), even if it is topical, I roll dice on having that comment be purged to hell no matter the value of the contribution. Depends a bit on the time of day, even.
linster 3y ago
The other HN tell I’ve started seeing in work chats is excessive italics. I’m not five, I know the gravity of what you’re writing. For example, often HN users need to scold their readers into a hair-splitting debate around semantics. The other one I’ve seen is pretend-gaslighting-as-begging-the-question: “Can we all stop pretending that object-oriented programming is an efficient way to build software?”
- jackvalentine 3y ago
  Yeah you’ve sold me. I’m out of here.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
000ooo000 3y ago
I use that leading "No" as a marker for comments I can safely ignore. I think there's a fair chance the author lacks enough humility for an honest reflection on their position if they think it's appropriate to start their contribution to a discussion with a single paragraph of "No." It's somehow a more grating version of "well ackshually".

1attice 3y ago

[flagged]

xena 3y ago
As someone who is regularly falling victim to the rightward lurch (for having committed the dastardly crime of the wrong hormone activating in-utero), the only reason I don't actively block Hacker News readers is that I make ad money off of them. That is the only reason it's worth the abuse vector to me. dang, if you are reading this, please take a moment to seriously consider the actions you have taken today. I understand your desire for the community that Hacker News could be, but that is so far away from what it is today that it's almost laughable. Yes, this is a no-win situation but that's bascially how it is globally when trying to be centerist about any issue. I use Hacker News referers to change the page slightly (mostly to add a deserved "hey, can you please not be an asshole, thanks" via this code: https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/686cc58fb6fc8f2e3bf0197e9b385c94aff77c9f/src/tmpl/nag.rs#L39-L49 https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/686cc58fb6fc8f2e3bf0197e9b38...) and I would be very frustrated if that went away. Maybe even to the point of having a worker process figure out if my articles are posted to hacker news and making them go dark if they are on the front page. I know you value the articles I post (as our email threads have contained), but really it's an abuse vector that I need to keep metrics of. Website administrators should be allowed to block Hacker News referers. Yes this is a thing that is not desirable for you as an administrator, but at some level something's got to give. The enshittening of Hacker News is something that is very undesirable for me too. I've gone over this in our emails. This was going to be another one of those emails, but I really would prefer this one to be out in the open.
- biorach 3y ago
  Hi, I like your blog. There are some really great articles. As far as i can tell the problem you have with HN is that if one of your blog posts makes the front page you get idiots making shitty comments about you in the HN comments, right? Do your posts get discussed anywhere else (reddit?), and if so how how does it compare?
1attice 3y ago
It's against the guidelines to point out moderation decisions. But it's relevant to the point I'm making. This is a thoughtful, carefully-worded argument that has been repeatedly upvoted and downvoted (the downvotes seem to come in pairs -- admin action?) The moderation of this comment allows anonymous people, lurking in the shadows, to make decisions about what other people read, with no accountability or consequence. It is forbidden to talk about the moderation decisions, yet the moderation game mechanic is, in 2023, no longer fit-for-purpose, given the new realities of the political climate. The moderation mechanic is the story, and is no longer able to provide fair, reasonable, accountable crowdsourced moderation. A relic of less polarized times. Prophecy: Hacker News will either change, or perish. The usual deal, presented to organisms and organizations alike. Preserving its heirloom-varietal forum interface into the coming decade will be popular (in a decade increasingly stricken with nostalgia,) but also lethal. Thus, I predict the demise of Hacker News. The website will of course persist for as long as it remains useful to Y Combinator, but as the natural center-of-gravity for all of tech culture? Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei.