8 ms·

I had an account here. I still do. Like some other people point out: Invitation-only means trolls are less likely to show up. But the higher end of quality is

I had an account here. I still do. Like some other people point out: Invitation-only means trolls are less likely to show up. But the higher end of quality is not significantly better than HN. If anything, it might be worse. My experience with the moderation there is that some people post clear self-promotion articles, but when I attempted to post my things, I get told that this content is not welcome on the site. Why my content is not welcome and other people's self-promotional articles are I don't quite understand, but it is obvious they don't need me on the website.

mooreds 3y ago
> when I attempted to post my things, I get told that this content is not welcome on the site. Why my content is not welcome and other people's self-promotional articles are I don't quite understand, but it is obvious they don't need me on the website. I feel the same. I spent a fair bit of time on the site, including posting ~600 articles and commenting. Some of my posts got a fair bit of upvotes. I got a couple of warnings when I posted my own content, even though it was 5-10% of my posts. Super frustrating, so I told the moderator I wasn't going to participate any more. And I haven't. Their site, their rules, but I don't have to spend my time there. https://lobste.rs/~mooreds https://lobste.rs/~mooreds is my profile.
- andy99 3y ago
  Weird because primarily submitting one's own stuff seems to be pretty common there. Random example from a user currently on the front page: https://lobste.rs/~rednafi/stories https://lobste.rs/~rednafi/stories And that is not the only one on the front page right now that's submitting mostly their own stuff.
  - everybodyknows 3y ago
    That user's submissions are all within the past week. You may have found someone gaming the site.
  - buildbot 3y ago
    That's not a particularly good example, their latest self-promo post has a warning from the mod on it...
    - hwayne 3y ago
      To nitpick: that's not a comment from a mod. Posts speaking from a position of mod will have [sysop] next to the title. It's part of a "hats system", which more generally allows people to speak as representative of something. IE if /u/johncheng was a Rust core dev, they can post whatever they want as John Cheng, but also write posts as [core dev] to say they're speaking as part of the core team. It's a neat system but doesn't see much use in practice, aside from the occasional [sysop] warning.
      - buildbot 3y ago
        Oh I didn’t know that! Thanks for the explanation.
  - mooreds 3y ago
    I stopped posting three years ago, maybe the culture has changed?
    - andy99 3y ago
      Personally I don't see a problem with someone posting their own content, especially with voting based ranking. As long as it's not spam and is on-topic for the site, the origin shouldn't really matter. Compared with someone who posts only New York Times articles, I'd rather see someone post their blog entries.
jart 3y ago
[flagged]
- threatofrain 3y ago
  May we get a link to your Lisp GC article?
  - atdt 3y ago
    https://justine.lol/sectorlisp2/ https://justine.lol/sectorlisp2/
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- trollian 3y ago
  Other people posting your stuff gets a lot of love though.
- stephenr 3y ago
  It says you invited spammers. Did you try discussing the matter with the mods?
  - jart 3y ago
    Lobsters doesn't have any contact information (I later learned they have an IRC channel) so I didn't get to hear an explanation from the Lobsters moderator until the topic came up here and ended up getting mediated in a Hacker News thread. The moderator was very clear that I was not only spamming myself, but I was encouraging my friends to spam too. For example, one thing I got specifically called out for was I invited my friend from the University of Tokyo to Lobsters so he could share his https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Lisp_in_Life https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Lisp_in_Life project. This turned out to be very bad per Lobsters cultural norms. The Lobsters moderator wants new people to earn their place in the community before doing anything that serves their personal interests. It matters not if your self-interests are aligned with giving the Lobsters community what they want. The moderator said they're a smaller platform where it's not difficult to influence the algorithm, and as a result he's very protective of that. You can't just play the upvote game. You have to make sure the mod knows you and likes you before doing that. Another thing I did was I used a loophole to help my friend share his project. In my culture, figuring out how to work around the rules without breaking them is considered a highly prized skill. When the Lobsters algorithm said his account was too new to post a link, I thought I was vouching for and reviewing his project link by posting it myself. But the Lobsters moderator took it as a personal insult and challenge to his authority.
pixl97 3y ago
This is a common failure mode that's seen in some reddit subs. In reddit, the moderators of that sub get a particular idea of how their sub should look, which oddly enough includes the idea that what they do is always right. Any sub that can have physical products backing it, such as makeup, will commonly fall in this trap. Mods: "You cannot promote products here... (unless you're one of my friends or giving me kickbacks". Now with Reddit, you have a very large usebase to keep the sub alive. But small sites will commonly strangle themselves by doing this.
- lormayna 3y ago
  This resembles exactly the description of moderation in /r/italy. There are more people banned from there than people subscribing this subreddit.
  - undersuit 3y ago
    WTH happened in November 2021 to kill that sub?
    - eszed 3y ago
      Just Googling and guessing: Maybe, "Italy Announces New Restrictions For the Unvaccinated"? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/world/europe/italy-vaccine-restrictions-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/world/europe/italy-vaccin... Or, right-wing stuff about immigration? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/25/matteo-salvini-interview-far-right-migration https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/25/matteo-salvini... Those are hot-buttons that have ruined other communities, so whatever the specifics for that sub, my guess is Political Controversy. Anyone on here know anything for sure?
      - lormayna 3y ago
        I don't think those are the specific topics that ruined this subreddit. The moderators killed this subreddit: if you express a slightly different opinion than liberal left wing, you will be banned for being "not welcoming and create a bad mood". And you will be banned also to express any polite kind of criticism to all the minorities, except one: the catholics. For them, every insults is accepted.
evantbyrne 3y ago
I've been lurking on Lobsters for a while, and have definitely noticed that the self-promotion rule is selectively enforced. Just pivot into exclusively writing content about an impractical docker alternative, and you should be golden. Snark aside, they could codify exactly what frequency of self-posting is allowed, and let the existing voting system dictate what rises to the top. I'm not sure Lobsters sees any issues with how they self-moderate though. Personally, I have always felt that invite-only communities have weird vibes to them. Still find it worth lurking for more esoteric content though.
- giancarlostoro 3y ago
  I think the sweet spot is opening up x number of registrations every few months.
- narag 3y ago
  I have always felt that invite-only communities have weird vibes to them. So have I. The most weird thing is nobody ever invites me :) Still find it worth lurking for more esoteric content though. More esoteric content than HN? I find a lot of alien topics here. My biggest complain about HN is not on that particular.
  - gumby 3y ago
    What are your complaints about HN?
    - narag 3y ago
      The tone of the comments have evolved over time. When I first found this site, it had a high percentage of entrepreneurs trying to build startups. Refreshing compared to Slashdot that was getting a little more cultish by the day. Later the founders got diluted, I guess by the influx of employees of said startups, big tech or consultancies, like myself, then anyone from the outskirts. The vibes changed dramatically, until it was unhospitable for the original population. Many of them vanished. Even pg doesn't write here anymore and when some of his essays are posted the reception is outright hostile. I'm not talking about politics, not only. A lot of comments are on the opposite extreme from the original curiousity and build mindset. People saying that any idea presented won't work, is useless, is nothing new. People talking about what should be, but in denial about what is and of course never doing anything. There are many perfectly reasonable things you can't say here. So we have like... the Internet, more civil than average and with a lot of interesting links. Also there are some fellow commenters that I love to read.
rebeccaskinner 3y ago
I had a similar experience. I simply deleted my account and left the site. If my contributions weren't welcome then that's the choice of the moderators, but I had no desire to try to participate in a forum where simply linking to relevant non-promotional content that happens to be posted on your own website will get you accused of being a spammer.
- xtracto 3y ago
  I remember once I mentioned something about lobste.rs in Twitter (trying to actually be positive for the community) and the creator went all crazy against me . shrug Thanks but no thanks
tempodox 3y ago
That's probably why it's a ghost town. As far as I'm concerned, they can kiss my backside.
Kye 3y ago
There's a little button on the submit form that adds a tag to say you're the author. If you forget it and it comes out, people tend to assume it's on purpose.
notatoad 3y ago
yeah, the problem with invite only is that it removes the best and the worst users. it self-selects for the sort of terminally-online people willing to put up with an invite process. people like me. the best content on sites like this is the random comment that appears from somebody who's the absolute undisputed expect on some subject, and doesn't normally leave comments, but sees an opportunity to share their knowledge and does so because it's low enough friction.
schmudde 3y ago
The moderation is quite arbitrary. Here are three specific examples I've noted: 1. "Don't hate Jira, hate your manager." https://lobste.rs/s/n4v6a8/you_don_t_hate_jira_you_hate_your_manager https://lobste.rs/s/n4v6a8/you_don_t_hate_jira_you_hate_your... is okay but "Making time for planning" https://lobste.rs/messages/h9z5ee https://lobste.rs/messages/h9z5ee is not (Management is off-topic.) 2. "A normal week (in tech)" https://blog.ignaciobrasca.com/work/2023/05/01/a-normal-week.html https://blog.ignaciobrasca.com/work/2023/05/01/a-normal-week... is not okay (Article does not relate to computing.) but "What are you working on this week?" is okay. 3. "What Punch Cards Teach Us About AI Risk" https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2023/11/26/what-punch-cards-teach-us-about-ai-risk/ https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2023/11/26/what-punch-cards-tea... is not okay (Business history is off-topic) even though specific implementations of punch card machines are discussed There will always be sharp edges to moderation but I've generally found more permissive policies to be more fair.
- Vulume 3y ago
  "What are you working on this week?" is a weekly thread since forever where people often talk about computing anyways. I don't see why moderating posts should be fair. Better to remove a few good stories by accident than to leave up trash. You'll never have enough time to read all good ones anyways. They're very careful with banning though.
- bcantrill 3y ago
  I wrote "What Punch Cards Teach Us About AI Risk", and I was really surprised -- and frankly, disappointed -- that they pulled it. It was the #1 story on Lobsters when they pulled it, with plenty of comments (and some good discussion!). It was also shocking to me that their moderation involves scrubbing it from the site entirely; at least on HN, the story can get modded down, but if people still wish to discuss the topic, they can. (And in fact, I have seen some discussions that were too hot cool down and become reasonable when the stories themselves have been modded down.) The whole thing left me with a very sour taste (and not for the first time!) about Lobsters. I will continue to check in there from time to time, but I will hesitate to submit stories or participate in discussion: the moderators are simply too capricious for my tastes -- and we clearly disagree about what is on topic and what is off topic for technologists. Conversely: Lobsters has reminded me how much I appreciate HN; thank you dang and other HN mods for everything you do!
cpurdy 3y ago
The self-promotion on lobsters is rampant, and not surprisingly, most of the self-promotion is very low quality crap. However, I have seen a few self-promotion links that were brilliant, so I have some mixed feelings on the topic. I don't have any answers, but I definitely can spot the problems.

mooreds 3y ago

> when I attempted to post my things, I get told that this content is not welcome on the site. Why my content is not welcome and other people's self-promotional articles are I don't quite understand, but it is obvious they don't need me on the website. I feel the same. I spent a fair bit of time on the site, including posting ~600 articles and commenting. Some of my posts got a fair bit of upvotes. I got a couple of warnings when I posted my own content, even though it was 5-10% of my posts. Super frustrating, so I told the moderator I wasn't going to participate any more. And I haven't. Their site, their rules, but I don't have to spend my time there. https://lobste.rs/~mooreds https://lobste.rs/~mooreds is my profile.

andy99 3y ago
Weird because primarily submitting one's own stuff seems to be pretty common there. Random example from a user currently on the front page: https://lobste.rs/~rednafi/stories https://lobste.rs/~rednafi/stories And that is not the only one on the front page right now that's submitting mostly their own stuff.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  That user's submissions are all within the past week. You may have found someone gaming the site.
- buildbot 3y ago
  That's not a particularly good example, their latest self-promo post has a warning from the mod on it...
  - hwayne 3y ago
    To nitpick: that's not a comment from a mod. Posts speaking from a position of mod will have [sysop] next to the title. It's part of a "hats system", which more generally allows people to speak as representative of something. IE if /u/johncheng was a Rust core dev, they can post whatever they want as John Cheng, but also write posts as [core dev] to say they're speaking as part of the core team. It's a neat system but doesn't see much use in practice, aside from the occasional [sysop] warning.
    - buildbot 3y ago
      Oh I didn’t know that! Thanks for the explanation.
- mooreds 3y ago
  I stopped posting three years ago, maybe the culture has changed?
  - andy99 3y ago
    Personally I don't see a problem with someone posting their own content, especially with voting based ranking. As long as it's not spam and is on-topic for the site, the origin shouldn't really matter. Compared with someone who posts only New York Times articles, I'd rather see someone post their blog entries.

jart 3y ago

[flagged]

threatofrain 3y ago
May we get a link to your Lisp GC article?
- atdt 3y ago
  https://justine.lol/sectorlisp2/ https://justine.lol/sectorlisp2/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
trollian 3y ago
Other people posting your stuff gets a lot of love though.
stephenr 3y ago
It says you invited spammers. Did you try discussing the matter with the mods?
- jart 3y ago
  Lobsters doesn't have any contact information (I later learned they have an IRC channel) so I didn't get to hear an explanation from the Lobsters moderator until the topic came up here and ended up getting mediated in a Hacker News thread. The moderator was very clear that I was not only spamming myself, but I was encouraging my friends to spam too. For example, one thing I got specifically called out for was I invited my friend from the University of Tokyo to Lobsters so he could share his https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Lisp_in_Life https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Lisp_in_Life project. This turned out to be very bad per Lobsters cultural norms. The Lobsters moderator wants new people to earn their place in the community before doing anything that serves their personal interests. It matters not if your self-interests are aligned with giving the Lobsters community what they want. The moderator said they're a smaller platform where it's not difficult to influence the algorithm, and as a result he's very protective of that. You can't just play the upvote game. You have to make sure the mod knows you and likes you before doing that. Another thing I did was I used a loophole to help my friend share his project. In my culture, figuring out how to work around the rules without breaking them is considered a highly prized skill. When the Lobsters algorithm said his account was too new to post a link, I thought I was vouching for and reviewing his project link by posting it myself. But the Lobsters moderator took it as a personal insult and challenge to his authority.

pixl97 3y ago

This is a common failure mode that's seen in some reddit subs. In reddit, the moderators of that sub get a particular idea of how their sub should look, which oddly enough includes the idea that what they do is always right. Any sub that can have physical products backing it, such as makeup, will commonly fall in this trap. Mods: "You cannot promote products here... (unless you're one of my friends or giving me kickbacks". Now with Reddit, you have a very large usebase to keep the sub alive. But small sites will commonly strangle themselves by doing this.

lormayna 3y ago
This resembles exactly the description of moderation in /r/italy. There are more people banned from there than people subscribing this subreddit.
- undersuit 3y ago
  WTH happened in November 2021 to kill that sub?
  - eszed 3y ago
    Just Googling and guessing: Maybe, "Italy Announces New Restrictions For the Unvaccinated"? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/world/europe/italy-vaccine-restrictions-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/world/europe/italy-vaccin... Or, right-wing stuff about immigration? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/25/matteo-salvini-interview-far-right-migration https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/25/matteo-salvini... Those are hot-buttons that have ruined other communities, so whatever the specifics for that sub, my guess is Political Controversy. Anyone on here know anything for sure?
    - lormayna 3y ago
      I don't think those are the specific topics that ruined this subreddit. The moderators killed this subreddit: if you express a slightly different opinion than liberal left wing, you will be banned for being "not welcoming and create a bad mood". And you will be banned also to express any polite kind of criticism to all the minorities, except one: the catholics. For them, every insults is accepted.

evantbyrne 3y ago

I've been lurking on Lobsters for a while, and have definitely noticed that the self-promotion rule is selectively enforced. Just pivot into exclusively writing content about an impractical docker alternative, and you should be golden. Snark aside, they could codify exactly what frequency of self-posting is allowed, and let the existing voting system dictate what rises to the top. I'm not sure Lobsters sees any issues with how they self-moderate though. Personally, I have always felt that invite-only communities have weird vibes to them. Still find it worth lurking for more esoteric content though.

giancarlostoro 3y ago
I think the sweet spot is opening up x number of registrations every few months.
narag 3y ago
I have always felt that invite-only communities have weird vibes to them. So have I. The most weird thing is nobody ever invites me :) Still find it worth lurking for more esoteric content though. More esoteric content than HN? I find a lot of alien topics here. My biggest complain about HN is not on that particular.
- gumby 3y ago
  What are your complaints about HN?
  - narag 3y ago
    The tone of the comments have evolved over time. When I first found this site, it had a high percentage of entrepreneurs trying to build startups. Refreshing compared to Slashdot that was getting a little more cultish by the day. Later the founders got diluted, I guess by the influx of employees of said startups, big tech or consultancies, like myself, then anyone from the outskirts. The vibes changed dramatically, until it was unhospitable for the original population. Many of them vanished. Even pg doesn't write here anymore and when some of his essays are posted the reception is outright hostile. I'm not talking about politics, not only. A lot of comments are on the opposite extreme from the original curiousity and build mindset. People saying that any idea presented won't work, is useless, is nothing new. People talking about what should be, but in denial about what is and of course never doing anything. There are many perfectly reasonable things you can't say here. So we have like... the Internet, more civil than average and with a lot of interesting links. Also there are some fellow commenters that I love to read.

rebeccaskinner 3y ago

I had a similar experience. I simply deleted my account and left the site. If my contributions weren't welcome then that's the choice of the moderators, but I had no desire to try to participate in a forum where simply linking to relevant non-promotional content that happens to be posted on your own website will get you accused of being a spammer.

xtracto 3y ago
I remember once I mentioned something about lobste.rs in Twitter (trying to actually be positive for the community) and the creator went all crazy against me . shrug Thanks but no thanks

tempodox 3y ago

That's probably why it's a ghost town. As far as I'm concerned, they can kiss my backside.

Kye 3y ago

There's a little button on the submit form that adds a tag to say you're the author. If you forget it and it comes out, people tend to assume it's on purpose.

notatoad 3y ago

yeah, the problem with invite only is that it removes the best and the worst users. it self-selects for the sort of terminally-online people willing to put up with an invite process. people like me. the best content on sites like this is the random comment that appears from somebody who's the absolute undisputed expect on some subject, and doesn't normally leave comments, but sees an opportunity to share their knowledge and does so because it's low enough friction.

schmudde 3y ago

The moderation is quite arbitrary. Here are three specific examples I've noted: 1. "Don't hate Jira, hate your manager." https://lobste.rs/s/n4v6a8/you_don_t_hate_jira_you_hate_your_manager https://lobste.rs/s/n4v6a8/you_don_t_hate_jira_you_hate_your... is okay but "Making time for planning" https://lobste.rs/messages/h9z5ee https://lobste.rs/messages/h9z5ee is not (Management is off-topic.) 2. "A normal week (in tech)" https://blog.ignaciobrasca.com/work/2023/05/01/a-normal-week.html https://blog.ignaciobrasca.com/work/2023/05/01/a-normal-week... is not okay (Article does not relate to computing.) but "What are you working on this week?" is okay. 3. "What Punch Cards Teach Us About AI Risk" https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2023/11/26/what-punch-cards-teach-us-about-ai-risk/ https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2023/11/26/what-punch-cards-tea... is not okay (Business history is off-topic) even though specific implementations of punch card machines are discussed There will always be sharp edges to moderation but I've generally found more permissive policies to be more fair.

Vulume 3y ago
"What are you working on this week?" is a weekly thread since forever where people often talk about computing anyways. I don't see why moderating posts should be fair. Better to remove a few good stories by accident than to leave up trash. You'll never have enough time to read all good ones anyways. They're very careful with banning though.
bcantrill 3y ago
I wrote "What Punch Cards Teach Us About AI Risk", and I was really surprised -- and frankly, disappointed -- that they pulled it. It was the #1 story on Lobsters when they pulled it, with plenty of comments (and some good discussion!). It was also shocking to me that their moderation involves scrubbing it from the site entirely; at least on HN, the story can get modded down, but if people still wish to discuss the topic, they can. (And in fact, I have seen some discussions that were too hot cool down and become reasonable when the stories themselves have been modded down.) The whole thing left me with a very sour taste (and not for the first time!) about Lobsters. I will continue to check in there from time to time, but I will hesitate to submit stories or participate in discussion: the moderators are simply too capricious for my tastes -- and we clearly disagree about what is on topic and what is off topic for technologists. Conversely: Lobsters has reminded me how much I appreciate HN; thank you dang and other HN mods for everything you do!

cpurdy 3y ago

The self-promotion on lobsters is rampant, and not surprisingly, most of the self-promotion is very low quality crap. However, I have seen a few self-promotion links that were brilliant, so I have some mixed feelings on the topic. I don't have any answers, but I definitely can spot the problems.