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The intent of moderation is "don't be horrible to each other and/or the space". Unfortunately, people who are horrible to other people and/or spaces generally
by tsukikage 3y ago
The intent of moderation is "don't be horrible to each other and/or the space".
Unfortunately, people who are horrible to other people and/or spaces generally refuse to accept this, and therefore either need more specific examples of what being horrible entails to compare their behaviours against - leading to proliferation of edges, epicycles and rule-gaming - or you have a codicil along the lines of "the decision of what is horrible is up to the moderator and is final", leading to, at best, everyone whining about how unfair, arbitrary and partial the policy is now they can't be horrible to each other any more, all at once.
- krisoft 3y ago> leading to, at best, everyone whining about how unfair, arbitrary and partial the policy is now they can't be horrible to each other any more, all at once. I don’t think that is the only possible outcome. Where moderation is done well lot of people, in fact most people, simply don’t notice it. They just have a pleasant time with other pleasant people. So no, “everyone whining“ is not the best possible outcome. “Most people having a good time, a minority whining” is the best possible outcome. And of course it takes hard work, and maybe even a little bit of luck with the initial conditions.
- tsukikage 3y agoThese communities are lovely when they occur, but they tend to be small and ephemeral; it takes one single persistent troll who is good at gaming community mores and calmly wrapping complaints about any pushback in reasonable-sounding phrases to completely destroy such a space. I've seen this happen entirely too often :(
- XorNot 3y agoOnly if the moderators are idiots. Which most moderators are not: if one person is the bulk of complaints, then that person is the problem not everybody else.
- tsukikage 3y agoTrusting in the moderators to not "be idiots" - not make decisions you wouldn't - is a bit like trusting in benevolent dictatorship as a form of government: it works great, right up until it doesn't.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoYour point doesn't negate the parent's point. It still stands.
- joshuamorton 3y agoIs that always true? If this person is a minority and people are harassing them, for example? Do you remove them for the same if community cohesion or force the community to be more accepting?
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoAre you assuming that the moderator can’t actually see the harassment?
- tsukikage 3y agoI mean, this is “no vehicles in the park” territory. One person’s harassment is another’s telling the truth and calling things by their names, and while people will happily call moderator decisions obviously idiotic, they will vehemently disagree which decisions are the idiotic ones. Bullies are excellent at playing those strings. This stuff divides communities.
- reaperducer 3y agothey tend to be small and ephemeral I'm part of two such communities that each have tens of thousands of active members, and have both been online for at least 15 years. Generalizations are rarely accurate.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoHN is a good example of where the moderation works to a large extent, but it has trade offs that can be extremely problematic. For example, politically charged discourse is suppressed. That's going to result in a higher level of civility, but now you have a large community of people with an impaired ability to affect the political process.
- ghaff 3y agoPolitically-charged or at least on the wrong side of the line. HN does tend to discourage a lot of low effort flamebait which is generally for the good. But even politely-made minority arguments can easily be downvoted as well.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago"If I can't be politically charged on HN, I won't be politically charged anywhere"
- Ihateyouall1234 3y ago[dead]