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As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends t

As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends to be more "toxic" to my user experience than the dead or grayed-out comments are. I wish this site had a setting like "showdead", but that disabled all moderation-related impacts on the display of the discussion. There wouldn't be any grayed-out comments, for example, and the ordering would depend only on when a comment was posted.

Ensorceled 3y ago
> As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends to be more "toxic" to my user experience than the dead or grayed-out comments are. Be careful what you wish for. The problem is that you are in a minority. People are leaving X in droves because of this approach of letting terrible people be terrible. I've left X because almost all the people I follow have departed. HN would be the same.
CamperBob2 3y ago
Agreed, and I'd even be willing to opt out of the karma system entirely to get this. The self-defeating nature of "graying" comments out is just utterly mind-blowing. It calls more attention to the undesirable content rather than less... yet nobody in power seems to understand that. (For starters: if I turn on showdead, it means I don't want my view censored. So stop doing it.) Anyway, it's OT for this story.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  The idea is that it's harder to read and much easier to skim over. It does elicit curiosity, but if everytime you take that effort and you end up reading nonsense, you're gonna assossiate that fade with nonsense. I'd say it's the most interesting interpretation of "ignore the troll" that I've seen, if nothing else.
- natch 3y ago
  I’m not inside your head so I don’t know if you would agree, but I would love to see this say content that is deemed undesirable as opposed to just straight “undesirable.” My problem with gray text is a bit different: Since the dumbness of crowds can happen even on HN, I’d like to be able read comments myself and decide for myself what to think about them. With some topics the hater community is very strong, and comments get so light so fast they cannot even be read without some disruptive workflow, and they aren’t always useless comments.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    Yeah, we're basically in agreement there. In most cases, I'd say those comment threads that end up almost entirely grayed out were never good candidates for HN stories in the first place.
    - natch 3y ago
      True, and maybe I went a little far. The ones that quickly get unreadable are invariably pretty dismal. Sometimes it’s just morbid curiosity about what they said.

Ensorceled 3y ago

> As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends to be more "toxic" to my user experience than the dead or grayed-out comments are. Be careful what you wish for. The problem is that you are in a minority. People are leaving X in droves because of this approach of letting terrible people be terrible. I've left X because almost all the people I follow have departed. HN would be the same.

CamperBob2 3y ago

Agreed, and I'd even be willing to opt out of the karma system entirely to get this. The self-defeating nature of "graying" comments out is just utterly mind-blowing. It calls more attention to the undesirable content rather than less... yet nobody in power seems to understand that. (For starters: if I turn on showdead, it means I don't want my view censored. So stop doing it.) Anyway, it's OT for this story.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
The idea is that it's harder to read and much easier to skim over. It does elicit curiosity, but if everytime you take that effort and you end up reading nonsense, you're gonna assossiate that fade with nonsense. I'd say it's the most interesting interpretation of "ignore the troll" that I've seen, if nothing else.
natch 3y ago
I’m not inside your head so I don’t know if you would agree, but I would love to see this say content that is deemed undesirable as opposed to just straight “undesirable.” My problem with gray text is a bit different: Since the dumbness of crowds can happen even on HN, I’d like to be able read comments myself and decide for myself what to think about them. With some topics the hater community is very strong, and comments get so light so fast they cannot even be read without some disruptive workflow, and they aren’t always useless comments.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Yeah, we're basically in agreement there. In most cases, I'd say those comment threads that end up almost entirely grayed out were never good candidates for HN stories in the first place.
  - natch 3y ago
    True, and maybe I went a little far. The ones that quickly get unreadable are invariably pretty dismal. Sometimes it’s just morbid curiosity about what they said.