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> There are a lot of comments in this thread thanking “the mods” and I didn’t realize there was a mod team cultivating the front page. Can anyone attest to this
by hk__2 3y ago
> There are a lot of comments in this thread thanking “the mods” and I didn’t realize there was a mod team cultivating the front page. Can anyone attest to this?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...
- next_xibalba 3y agoI don’t get the impression from that article that Daniel and Scott are curating the front page in the way the thanks in this thread suggest. I am still of the impression that the front page composition is decided by upvotes, downvotes, and flags. Contrary to the implication in this repos’ text.
- wolverine876 3y agoWhat is that impression based on?
- next_xibalba 3y agoThe article, the HN's guidelines and FAQ, Dang's accumulated comments, etc.
- tptacek 3y agoScott hasn't been a mod for years.
- dang 3y agoBesides upvotes, downvotes, and flags, there are software penalties like the flamewar detector and various anti-abuse measures, and moderation downweights. We do a lot of the latter—I don't want to underemphasize this. The HN system is a combination of these three subsystems. You're right that user flags do more than mods do, just because the numbers work that way: there are many orders of magnitude more users flagging things than there are mods. Edit: 5 orders of magnitude more, in fact!