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Dang, very sincerely, I don't want an argument either. The through line is the following: There appears to be a cohort of posters who are heavily into the DEI

Dang, very sincerely, I don't want an argument either. The through line is the following: There appears to be a cohort of posters who are heavily into the DEI philosophies for a plurality of reasons. This mirrors the goings on in various orgs and the rest of society. It is in full display on the recent Google/Gemini threads for example. Off the charts gaslighting, name calling, and brigadiering. It appears as if you turn a blind eye to it or they learned to walk a very fine line and stay within your guidelines (following the letters, not the spirit of). Imagine a certain type of bully in class who hits you and gets you into trouble with the teacher, plays innocent, and then mimes at you with a shit eating grin behind the teachers back as you are getting lectured. Are you stretched so thin that you perhaps missed the intensity of this growing phenomenon? I can understand that. If you can acknowledge that this is a real problem what is your attitude towards moderating it long term? Many feel unfairly reprimanded by you for calling it out. You need to be aware of this situation and we all need to be able to discuss it in the open without the threads getting disappeared. Otherwise tensions run high and you play whackamole with flustered posters and miss the forest for the trees.

dang 3y ago
HN is divided on divisive topics like that one, just as society at large is divided. The most passionate users on either side of the divide always feel like the community is dominated by the other side. That's an illusion, since the mechanism underlying this perception is the same in both cases. I think the reason for this illusion is that we're all more likely to notice (and assign more weight to) the posts we dislike than the ones we agree with. Lots of past explanation about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- verticalscaler 3y ago
  That is great. Intelligent reasonable adults can agree to disagree politely about some hot button issue and the resulting discussion could still be good. Respectfully dang, I think this particular group is really different for two reasons: - Their philosophies stretch without limits to virtually all subjects and hence every discussion on the site. - The bundle of rhetorical tactics and behaviors they've adopted to win at all costs (gaslighting, name calling, piling on, upvote rings, downvote rings, strategic flagging abuse) Recent thread about "Girl Ramen" in Japan: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39574330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39574330 (flagged) Poster auntywundrkind eagerly runs with it: "..every year before, where ramen eating was highly inaccessible & sexist. The article covers how difficult it's been & why this thing that started in 2015 is important, which you seem to scoff at. You know it's 2024 when someone will show up & grumble about wokeness." ^ Note, nobody else mentioned wokeness. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jauntywundrkind https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jauntywundrkind created: 8 months ago karma: 1583 about: "This site is a monster. "The crazy-shit capitalist-prick nega-voices are rabidly in control and will rabidly rate limit the shit out of anyone saying good progressive hopeful things. The mods savage any pushback or hopeful voices. Tech should be a place for positivity & health & growth. It should a place for what if. The endless reign of the negative voices is hell. Clipping the good people without any regard endlessly is hell. This site is hell.. There is no accountability for what is silenced here, and what is silenced here is the push for the good, the push for the hopeful." How do we resist this hell? How do we start honest good? Fuck negativity, fuck this hell, fuck these people. Do good anyways, even if these trashweasel crapheels keep rate limiting you for daring to speak for good & hope." ^ I know better than to engage with such a user. The ramen thread is flagged and gone now because of people like that. That wasn't an interesting one so no great loss but many threads and discussions are ruined with very little effort by a small number of such users. They don't need to outright dominate anything to trash the website. And your moderation hasn't caught him out in the 8 months this individual has been going wild. That's all. On HackerNews now if people don't buy into the premise that Ramen is sexist the thread is removed. That's the reality now. So how on earth could we discuss the controversial goings on in Google? We can't. You got boxed in as a mod, reconsider.

dang 3y ago

HN is divided on divisive topics like that one, just as society at large is divided. The most passionate users on either side of the divide always feel like the community is dominated by the other side. That's an illusion, since the mechanism underlying this perception is the same in both cases. I think the reason for this illusion is that we're all more likely to notice (and assign more weight to) the posts we dislike than the ones we agree with. Lots of past explanation about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

verticalscaler 3y ago
That is great. Intelligent reasonable adults can agree to disagree politely about some hot button issue and the resulting discussion could still be good. Respectfully dang, I think this particular group is really different for two reasons: - Their philosophies stretch without limits to virtually all subjects and hence every discussion on the site. - The bundle of rhetorical tactics and behaviors they've adopted to win at all costs (gaslighting, name calling, piling on, upvote rings, downvote rings, strategic flagging abuse) Recent thread about "Girl Ramen" in Japan: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39574330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39574330 (flagged) Poster auntywundrkind eagerly runs with it: "..every year before, where ramen eating was highly inaccessible & sexist. The article covers how difficult it's been & why this thing that started in 2015 is important, which you seem to scoff at. You know it's 2024 when someone will show up & grumble about wokeness." ^ Note, nobody else mentioned wokeness. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jauntywundrkind https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jauntywundrkind created: 8 months ago karma: 1583 about: "This site is a monster. "The crazy-shit capitalist-prick nega-voices are rabidly in control and will rabidly rate limit the shit out of anyone saying good progressive hopeful things. The mods savage any pushback or hopeful voices. Tech should be a place for positivity & health & growth. It should a place for what if. The endless reign of the negative voices is hell. Clipping the good people without any regard endlessly is hell. This site is hell.. There is no accountability for what is silenced here, and what is silenced here is the push for the good, the push for the hopeful." How do we resist this hell? How do we start honest good? Fuck negativity, fuck this hell, fuck these people. Do good anyways, even if these trashweasel crapheels keep rate limiting you for daring to speak for good & hope." ^ I know better than to engage with such a user. The ramen thread is flagged and gone now because of people like that. That wasn't an interesting one so no great loss but many threads and discussions are ruined with very little effort by a small number of such users. They don't need to outright dominate anything to trash the website. And your moderation hasn't caught him out in the 8 months this individual has been going wild. That's all. On HackerNews now if people don't buy into the premise that Ramen is sexist the thread is removed. That's the reality now. So how on earth could we discuss the controversial goings on in Google? We can't. You got boxed in as a mod, reconsider.