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The current moderation system isn't scaling. This post is a good example to illustrate the problem. At first glance it appears to be a flamebait title, and he

The current moderation system isn't scaling. This post is a good example to illustrate the problem. At first glance it appears to be a flamebait title, and hence a mod who sees it may feel it's a no-brainer - correct it and move on. However, there's a nuance to it - that is exactly how Linus Torvalds expresses himself, and the original title ("Linus to Nvidia: Fuck You!", or something close to that) captured his sentiment accurately, so maybe it's not flamebait after all. Or maybe it is flamebait even despite that, since Linus's SOP is to sometimes start flamewars to make a point, break through the red tape, or otherwise just make a command decision and move on. Clearly plenty of room for moderation error, a nd that's just one submission. What's a mod to do? So on the one hand, there has been a spate of godawfully-titled submissions in recent months: 1. "X things you should ... whatever" type titles (clearly banned in the HN posting guidelines) 2. Too short and uninformative (like a word or three). 3. Sensationalism, flamebait, miscategorized comparison results, etc. 4. more I'm sure... But on the other hand, the mod system has problems as well: 1. Nobody even knows what the mod system is 2. Nobody knows who the mods are. 3. There's no way to give feedback on moderations, for the ones that were incorrectly modded. 4. Too many false positives (posts that shouldn't be modded but are, resulting comments like saurik's above, and entire threads complaining this problem). 5. Too many false negatives that slip through anyway. And of course, not part of the mod system, but too many submitters just don't know how to descriptively, accurately, concretely title submissions anyway, increasing the volume a seemingly too-small group of mods has to deal with. HN isn't the first social media site to have problems like this, but most others have a full-time dev team working on solving them, and they evolve certain solutions like Slashdot's meta-moderation or Reddit's user-run/modded subreddits. So I don't think the mod system in its current form can scale with those problems, but on a more meta level I'm not sure that PG can scale as the developer of the mod system, given that YC takes 110% of his time. Just trying to identify the problem before attempting to solve it, any thoughts?

mcav 14y ago
It's been like this for a long time. It's by far the least transparent moderation in a community I've ever seen. For a long time I thought of HN as a generally smart, reasonable community (less so these days with the masses here) but the completely opaque moderation has always seemed extraordinarily, unnecessarily restrictive and elitist. It's unlikely to change at this point. The minority who care don't matter enough. Personally I'd love to see another smaller, more refocused community spin off where better, more open and reasoned tech/startup discussions can take place. Keep it invite-only perhaps.
- SkyMarshal 14y ago
  > It's unlikely to change at this point. I wonder about that. Is it b/c PG is the only the HN source committer, but without enough time to evolve the site fast enough to keep up? Or is it something else?
- unimpressive 14y ago
  > Keep it invite-only perhaps. Well I probably count as the masses. But one model might be a sort of web of trust. You start off with a few people who are ultimately trusted. And then as your web grows you can track who let who into the site. People who consistently let in poor members get their invite privileges revoked or are kicked. Have a reputation threshold before you can invite people.
  - batista 14y ago
    For one, they don't even seem bothered enough to correct the "cache expired" continuation crap on the site, much less to build a new moderation system. Second, if "poor members" get invited in large numbers, then the system you propose will fail, because they get to dictate what is good or not (by upvoting it), which will in term make them appear good (because they like/submit the 'good stuff').
- vacri 14y ago
  It's certainly the only web community I've been a part of where the moderation system is constantly being complained about over the long term.
  - Devilboy 14y ago
    Not sure if serious...
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Wait, what? Really? Moderation has been a feature of complaint across every web forum (and many non-web forums) I've ever been a part of. See, for example, the comments here (and even there) about StackExchange; 4chan; suicidegirls (NSFW) "spring cleaning"; the HUGE amount of meta / drama on Wikipedia (ANI alone is gigabytes of guff stretching over years about moderating that community. The holy books of millennia old religions are smaller than ANI. International trade argrements are smaller than ANI.) But this meta bike-shedding has also been a feature of older systems. It's frequently created flame wars on Usenet - leading to various trolling groups sporging Usenet feeds. It's a feature of mailing lists. I don't know what the average[1] age of HN is, but here's a result from a Usenet search for results before 1990 - before a lot of HN would have been born. (https://groups.google.com/groups/search?safe=off&q=moderation&btnG=Search&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=1990&as_drrb=b&sitesearch= https://groups.google.com/groups/search?safe=off&q=moder...) (Also, Google, please give me a shorter URL option to cut n paste. Don't make me have to learn what your URLs are doing; don't expect me to use a nasty URL shortener (which are blocked on many boards)). Here's a mildly interesting message discussing some of the problems of moderating Usenet: (https://groups.google.com/group/mod.comp-soc/msg/ee189feb22561a51?dmode=source https://groups.google.com/group/mod.comp-soc/msg/ee189feb225...)
DanBC 14y ago
> But on the other hand, the mod system has problems as well: > 1. Nobody even knows what the mod system is That is not a problem. This is excellent feature of a moderation system. Meta is death - really. I'm never going to make another meta post after this one. (Unless it's t help a new user.) > 2. Nobody knows who the mods are. Again, that's not a problem. It avoids turning moderating into character battles. A mod who makes a mistake anonymously has no investment of face-saving; they can easily undo the error. > 3. There's no way to give feedback on moderations, for the ones that were incorrectly modded. There is an email address clearly listed in the guidelines. I really don't think the problems are as big as people are making out. Sure, some things are frustrating. Taking this video and post as an example: Don't link to the small part of the video where Linus tells nvidia to go fuck themselves, link to the entire video (and to the start of that video) and then give it a better title. Trying to attach blame to mods because someone made a weird sub-optimal choice when submitting a link is un-good.
- kristiandupont 14y ago
  It's an hour-long video. The fuck you-bit is a story in itself, and a different one than the entire talk. I think it's perfectly reasonable to submit that and because of the original title, I clicked the link. With the current title, I wouldn't have.
- sciurus 14y ago
  "Meta is death - really." Metafilter solves this with http://metatalk.metafilter.com http://metatalk.metafilter.com. Perhaps HN needs a dedicated place for meta discussion as well.
  - Maxious 14y ago
    "We'll handle technology over `here, we'll do social issues there. We'll have separate mailing lists with separate discussion groups, or we'll have one track here and one track there. This doesn't work. It's never been stated more clearly than in the pair of documents called 'LambdaMOO Takes a New Direction.' I can do no better than to point you to those documents." www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
andyjohnson0 14y ago
Two suggestions: 1. If a post is renamed then the original title(s) should be available to view somehow. Maybe via a moderation summary link. 2. The downvoting mechanism should require the downvoter to post their reasons.

mcav 14y ago

It's been like this for a long time. It's by far the least transparent moderation in a community I've ever seen. For a long time I thought of HN as a generally smart, reasonable community (less so these days with the masses here) but the completely opaque moderation has always seemed extraordinarily, unnecessarily restrictive and elitist. It's unlikely to change at this point. The minority who care don't matter enough. Personally I'd love to see another smaller, more refocused community spin off where better, more open and reasoned tech/startup discussions can take place. Keep it invite-only perhaps.

SkyMarshal 14y ago
> It's unlikely to change at this point. I wonder about that. Is it b/c PG is the only the HN source committer, but without enough time to evolve the site fast enough to keep up? Or is it something else?
unimpressive 14y ago
> Keep it invite-only perhaps. Well I probably count as the masses. But one model might be a sort of web of trust. You start off with a few people who are ultimately trusted. And then as your web grows you can track who let who into the site. People who consistently let in poor members get their invite privileges revoked or are kicked. Have a reputation threshold before you can invite people.
- batista 14y ago
  For one, they don't even seem bothered enough to correct the "cache expired" continuation crap on the site, much less to build a new moderation system. Second, if "poor members" get invited in large numbers, then the system you propose will fail, because they get to dictate what is good or not (by upvoting it), which will in term make them appear good (because they like/submit the 'good stuff').
vacri 14y ago
It's certainly the only web community I've been a part of where the moderation system is constantly being complained about over the long term.
- Devilboy 14y ago
  Not sure if serious...
- DanBC 14y ago
  Wait, what? Really? Moderation has been a feature of complaint across every web forum (and many non-web forums) I've ever been a part of. See, for example, the comments here (and even there) about StackExchange; 4chan; suicidegirls (NSFW) "spring cleaning"; the HUGE amount of meta / drama on Wikipedia (ANI alone is gigabytes of guff stretching over years about moderating that community. The holy books of millennia old religions are smaller than ANI. International trade argrements are smaller than ANI.) But this meta bike-shedding has also been a feature of older systems. It's frequently created flame wars on Usenet - leading to various trolling groups sporging Usenet feeds. It's a feature of mailing lists. I don't know what the average[1] age of HN is, but here's a result from a Usenet search for results before 1990 - before a lot of HN would have been born. (https://groups.google.com/groups/search?safe=off&q=moderation&btnG=Search&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=1990&as_drrb=b&sitesearch= https://groups.google.com/groups/search?safe=off&q=moder...) (Also, Google, please give me a shorter URL option to cut n paste. Don't make me have to learn what your URLs are doing; don't expect me to use a nasty URL shortener (which are blocked on many boards)). Here's a mildly interesting message discussing some of the problems of moderating Usenet: (https://groups.google.com/group/mod.comp-soc/msg/ee189feb22561a51?dmode=source https://groups.google.com/group/mod.comp-soc/msg/ee189feb225...)

DanBC 14y ago

> But on the other hand, the mod system has problems as well: > 1. Nobody even knows what the mod system is That is not a problem. This is excellent feature of a moderation system. Meta is death - really. I'm never going to make another meta post after this one. (Unless it's t help a new user.) > 2. Nobody knows who the mods are. Again, that's not a problem. It avoids turning moderating into character battles. A mod who makes a mistake anonymously has no investment of face-saving; they can easily undo the error. > 3. There's no way to give feedback on moderations, for the ones that were incorrectly modded. There is an email address clearly listed in the guidelines. I really don't think the problems are as big as people are making out. Sure, some things are frustrating. Taking this video and post as an example: Don't link to the small part of the video where Linus tells nvidia to go fuck themselves, link to the entire video (and to the start of that video) and then give it a better title. Trying to attach blame to mods because someone made a weird sub-optimal choice when submitting a link is un-good.

kristiandupont 14y ago
It's an hour-long video. The fuck you-bit is a story in itself, and a different one than the entire talk. I think it's perfectly reasonable to submit that and because of the original title, I clicked the link. With the current title, I wouldn't have.
sciurus 14y ago
"Meta is death - really." Metafilter solves this with http://metatalk.metafilter.com http://metatalk.metafilter.com. Perhaps HN needs a dedicated place for meta discussion as well.
- Maxious 14y ago
  "We'll handle technology over `here, we'll do social issues there. We'll have separate mailing lists with separate discussion groups, or we'll have one track here and one track there. This doesn't work. It's never been stated more clearly than in the pair of documents called 'LambdaMOO Takes a New Direction.' I can do no better than to point you to those documents." www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

andyjohnson0 14y ago

Two suggestions: 1. If a post is renamed then the original title(s) should be available to view somehow. Maybe via a moderation summary link. 2. The downvoting mechanism should require the downvoter to post their reasons.