3 ms·

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

by 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...)
  - vacri 14y ago
    I'm not part of the 4chan nor suicidegirls communities, and the meta in wikipedia is not forum-style moderation. The places I've been that have moderation issues don't have people wondering why they've been hit. I'm not saying that other forums don't have issues, but that there is a constant sussurus about the problems of moderation here that I don't have in other places. No insight and no accountability = bad moderation practices. Case in point: my parent comment is currently downmodded. Thanks to that downmodder for marking against my personal experience. But I have no way to find out why I've been affected, only that some random person somewhere in the world doesn't like what I said for some unknown reason, and my words are literally diminished in the eyes of others because I have (at least) one single dissenter. Since I started here, I've noticed that people on HN have been complaining about the moderation more consistently than on any other web community I've been involved with, with the exception of Wikipedia (as you point out, but it's not the same flavour of moderation I mean)
willvarfar 14y ago
An approach I think would work is self-organising rather than moderated: http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15581427232/self-organizing-reddit http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15581427232/self-...

by mcav 14y ago

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...)
- vacri 14y ago
  I'm not part of the 4chan nor suicidegirls communities, and the meta in wikipedia is not forum-style moderation. The places I've been that have moderation issues don't have people wondering why they've been hit. I'm not saying that other forums don't have issues, but that there is a constant sussurus about the problems of moderation here that I don't have in other places. No insight and no accountability = bad moderation practices. Case in point: my parent comment is currently downmodded. Thanks to that downmodder for marking against my personal experience. But I have no way to find out why I've been affected, only that some random person somewhere in the world doesn't like what I said for some unknown reason, and my words are literally diminished in the eyes of others because I have (at least) one single dissenter. Since I started here, I've noticed that people on HN have been complaining about the moderation more consistently than on any other web community I've been involved with, with the exception of Wikipedia (as you point out, but it's not the same flavour of moderation I mean)

willvarfar 14y ago

An approach I think would work is self-organising rather than moderated: http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15581427232/self-organizing-reddit http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15581427232/self-...