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HN allows everyone with sufficient karma to vouch for dead comments (or flag comments), I suspect most of the comment-level moderation you see is crowdsourced t

HN allows everyone with sufficient karma to vouch for dead comments (or flag comments), I suspect most of the comment-level moderation you see is crowdsourced to fellow commenters; a still-dead comment means most of those who see choose to keep it dead. HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation (including bans); any unmoderated forum devolves into a cesspit; and it only takes a surprisingly few bad apples to ruin a community.

AlbertCory 2y ago
That's the gospel, for sure. However, look at the dead comments here and, for each, tell us why it would turn HN into a "cesspit."
- margalabargala 2y ago
  > However, look at the dead comments here and, for each, tell us why it would turn HN into a "cesspit." This is an impossible task and you know it. Asking your opponents to enumerate every dead comment on a thread with hundreds of comments is not approaching the issue in good faith. Looking at a selection of dead comments on this thread, I see flame-baiting on israel/palestine, flame-baiting on trans and racial issues, assorted comments whose content might have been acceptable if it wasn't 40% profanity by wordcount, a bunch of unnecessary personal attacks, and assorted people redefining words and then asserting that only their new definition is the correct one. I see basically nothing that would improve HN if it were not dead. I see a lot that would make HN actively worse if it were not dead.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    > This is an impossible task and you know it. Asking your opponents to enumerate every dead comment on a thread with hundreds of comments is not approaching the issue in good faith. No, it's not impossible. I count 15 dead now, not "hundreds" (when I said that originally, it was about 5). Let's make it easy: why does bigbacaloa's go, and all the others stay?
    - usefulcat 2y ago
      I was prepared to disagree, but actually I don't see what the problem is with that post. Here it is, so others don't have to dig around for it. It appears to have been a top level comment. "This pseudo-apology is the worst sort of political expediency. He did what the government asked while denying doing it, now apologizes for it to curry favor with the rightwing world he alienated. It's like the NY Times pushing the weapons of mass destruction narrative during the Iraq war and later running long articles about what bad journalism that was."
      - soneca 2y ago
        This post is dead not because this post was flagged. It is dead because the user was shadow-banned some time ago. Whatever they post now shows up as dead
        immibis 2y ago
        If the comment is not a comment that should be dead, then the shadow-ban is not helping HN.
      - gerry_shaw 2y ago
        Another point of evidence of why HN is great. Even reading this point in this argument had me thinking and wondering why it was banned and then the moderator comment right below (but can't be replied to?) explains the reasoning. One of the best uses of HN for me is watching my brain jump to conclusions only to have them slapped down by a well thought out counter argument. This forum isn't perfect but I haven't found a better public discussion board on the internet. Hat tip to the moderators and others making this happen. Your work is appreciated.
    - soneca 2y ago
      Because of this (and I agree it should be banned): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37421874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37421874
- Forgeties79 2y ago
  I'm sure we can pick and choose good/bad examples from every thread, but I for one definitely feel the bar for civility/respect here is way higher than virtually anywhere else, so I'm choosing to believe this current system contributes to that and that the pros outweigh the cons. After reddit's nonsense last summer I appreciate HN more than ever. If it means the moderation is a bit "too strict" then so be it. That was also the case on some of reddit's (and other sites') best communities. /r/AskHistorians immediately comes to mind.
- gosub100 2y ago
  Broken windows theory: actively moderating is precisely what keeps shit posters away. There's no gain from doing it when their posts are removed so they give up quickly.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  I didn't flag any of them; I do not owe you an explanation on behalf of the flaggers. Conversely - why didn't you vouch for each of the dead comments, if they are so great?
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      > .. and this is the sort of hostility one attracts whenever one asks for transparency: the mask drops and the fangs come out. Let me get this straight: you asking me to rationalize other people's actions is "transparency", but my asking you to explain your (in)action is hostility? It doesn't sound like you are contributing in good faith. Have a great day.
      - bloopernova 2y ago
        It's been my experience that people complaining about community moderation are never arguing in good faith. The bad actors have gotten incredibly adept at dragging a forum down into hell. Either they turn a group into one that serves their ideology, or they make the group unusable for its original members.
      - AlbertCory 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - dredmorbius 2y ago
        Not the first time: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41260854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41260854>
    - mistermann 2y ago
      Isn't it great that you can interact with other agents in this system, present them with prompts and observe how they respond, etc? I am becoming increasingly skeptical about how real all these accounts on the internet are.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  Look at the posting history of the comment posters, not just the comment. In many cases it's not the particular comment, it's the particular poster who is shadow-banned, and all of their comments are dead on arrival (to everyone but themselves, the definition of shadow banned). But people with showdead=true and enough karma can vouch for them to resurrect them if they're worthwhile.
- icehawk 2y ago
  Sure I'll do it, as long as you agree to pay me $1000/hr, 2 hour minimum-- up front, to do your work for you. No refunds.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    > to do your work for you It's not my work, since I'm not the one defending putting some comments to death while leaving lots of other, equally stupid comments up.
    - icehawk 2y ago
      If you have a point you want to make, just make it. Comments like your previous one are asking people to do work for you.
      - AlbertCory 2y ago
        I think my "points" as you put them are all over this thread. I don't plan to ask you to do anything for me.
- jasonlotito 2y ago
  Either it's from someone who happily continues to break rules and is effectively shadow banned because they continue to cause problems and break rules, or the comment doesn't contribute well enough to the topic. This could mean it's just being insulting, or off-topic. In short: Nothing of value was lost. Especially since you can toggle it on.
- ekidd 2y ago
  Sometimes, the actual mods in charge of the site have heavily penalized certain accounts, either manually or via an algorithm (I don't know the details). The comments posted by these accounts appear to start off "dead", though they may be vouched for by high-karma users. This will make those comments appear normally. I've moderated a number of forums in my time. And the hardest users to deal with are the ones that insist on breaking the rules 10% of the time, and who refuse to stop. Even if they contribute positively much of the rest of the time, they create far too much work. (Also, I have zero interest in participating in unmoderated forums. Unmoderated forums are either overrun by spam, or by users who somehow manage to spend 50 hours a week flaming people. Look at any small-town online newspaper where the same 5 people bicker endlessly after every single news story. And if I don't like how a forum is moderated, I find another one.)
  - breck 2y ago
    > And the hardest users to deal with are the ones that insist on breaking the rules 10% of the time, and who refuse to stop. Even if they contribute positively much of the rest of the time, they create far too much work. There is _always_ a technical solution here. If you can't figure it out, keep thinking. There's never a reason to ban/moderate your core users for 10% rule violations. Instead, that shows a weakness of the software. More transparency helps.
hnpolicestate 2y ago
[flagged]
- sangnoir 2y ago
  > HN is not at all "awesome" at moderating content objectively I made no such claim.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    actually, you did, although you may have deleted it by now: "HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41369717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41369717
    - magicalist 2y ago
      Those are different claims, though.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      Awesome =/= objective moderation. I claimed the former, not the latter. IMO, there is no such thing as objective moderation. All editorial decisions are subjective, but this is besides the point.
    - jmb99 2y ago
      That’s a different statement. HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation =/= HN has awesome rules and moderation.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  A long while ago I read an article predicting the downfall of all unpaid internet moderation because it would attract the type of person who both has copious free time and enjoys having power over others. Reddit during covid showed us just how true that was. Moderation was so ridiculous you'd get banned from subreddits for posts which were the same as the CDC's advice at the time they were made. HN has largely avoided that because it has at least partly paid moderators. The worst parts are the mass flaggings which I think are still a mistake. Not least because they now hilariously happen to every one of PG's posts.
zooq_ai 2y ago
The HN crowd like reddit leans massively progressive/democratic. As such any thinking outside normal or contrarian views are massively suppressed. Classic contrarian (to HN) around WFH, Capitalism, Elon Musk, Tesla, Regulation is downvoted and even flagged
- hnpolicestate 2y ago
  The HN crowd is far right but they would never admit it. Most people are unaware of how political parties shift in composition and ideology over the decades. The contemporary American software engineer resembles the professional class Reagan Republicans who dominated the suburbs in the 80's and 90's.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >The HN crowd is far right ??? Is anyone who isn't a card carrying DSA member "far right"?
    - hnpolicestate 2y ago
      Most of that stuff is a LARP.
  - alsetmusic 2y ago
    Center-right, I'd argue, but that's true of the Democratic party. HN is very far from far-right in that bigotry and racism isn't tolerated here (nor should they be). But HN is USA in origin and USA politics are further right than most of Europe.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      > HN is very far from far-right in that bigotry and racism isn't tolerated here (nor should they be). As in no outright slurs, right? I've seen plenty of race realist comments, as well as "James Damore is right about women in tech".
    - hnpolicestate 2y ago
stefantalpalaru 2y ago
[dead]
llm_trw 2y ago
>HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation (including bans); It was awesome. Then it jumped the shark when people realized they could flag posts they don't like with no repercussions.
- immibis 2y ago
  There was some post about Israel the other day (might have been Google's relationship to Israel or something) where every comment about the war starting last year was highly visible, while every comment about what happened prior to last year was dead.
  - dmix 2y ago
    Those contentious threads never last long here for that reason. Reddit is 90% those sorts of heavily moderated comment threads where everyone agrees with each other and those who don't align get removed or downvoted. People can always just go there.
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      Comparison to Reddit: bogus. Yes, HN is better than a toxic cesspit full of ignorant teenagers. That's a low hurdle.
  - dang 2y ago
    I'd be careful about generalizing from one case, or even from all the cases you've seen, because people (all of us) tend to notice and put much greater weight on the posts we dislike. (Basically the same mechanism by which painful memories tend to be deeper than pleasurable ones.) 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...
- crystalmeph 2y ago
  I wonder if something like Slashdot's metamoderation system could be used to tamp down such abuse. One problem with metamoderation is that once a particular forum becomes an echo chamber, even metamoderation will unconsciously but repeatably ignore "valid" information from the other side and amplify misinformation from their own side. But if the site owners specifically searched for good-faith users from multiple viewpoints to serve as the jury pool for metamoderation, this could be workable.
wtcactus 2y ago
I think this is a very complex subject and no one, in good faith, can claim that heavy moderation is either awesome or terrible.

AlbertCory 2y ago

That's the gospel, for sure. However, look at the dead comments here and, for each, tell us why it would turn HN into a "cesspit."

margalabargala 2y ago
> However, look at the dead comments here and, for each, tell us why it would turn HN into a "cesspit." This is an impossible task and you know it. Asking your opponents to enumerate every dead comment on a thread with hundreds of comments is not approaching the issue in good faith. Looking at a selection of dead comments on this thread, I see flame-baiting on israel/palestine, flame-baiting on trans and racial issues, assorted comments whose content might have been acceptable if it wasn't 40% profanity by wordcount, a bunch of unnecessary personal attacks, and assorted people redefining words and then asserting that only their new definition is the correct one. I see basically nothing that would improve HN if it were not dead. I see a lot that would make HN actively worse if it were not dead.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  > This is an impossible task and you know it. Asking your opponents to enumerate every dead comment on a thread with hundreds of comments is not approaching the issue in good faith. No, it's not impossible. I count 15 dead now, not "hundreds" (when I said that originally, it was about 5). Let's make it easy: why does bigbacaloa's go, and all the others stay?
  - usefulcat 2y ago
    I was prepared to disagree, but actually I don't see what the problem is with that post. Here it is, so others don't have to dig around for it. It appears to have been a top level comment. "This pseudo-apology is the worst sort of political expediency. He did what the government asked while denying doing it, now apologizes for it to curry favor with the rightwing world he alienated. It's like the NY Times pushing the weapons of mass destruction narrative during the Iraq war and later running long articles about what bad journalism that was."
    - soneca 2y ago
      This post is dead not because this post was flagged. It is dead because the user was shadow-banned some time ago. Whatever they post now shows up as dead
      - immibis 2y ago
        If the comment is not a comment that should be dead, then the shadow-ban is not helping HN.
    - gerry_shaw 2y ago
      Another point of evidence of why HN is great. Even reading this point in this argument had me thinking and wondering why it was banned and then the moderator comment right below (but can't be replied to?) explains the reasoning. One of the best uses of HN for me is watching my brain jump to conclusions only to have them slapped down by a well thought out counter argument. This forum isn't perfect but I haven't found a better public discussion board on the internet. Hat tip to the moderators and others making this happen. Your work is appreciated.
  - soneca 2y ago
    Because of this (and I agree it should be banned): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37421874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37421874
Forgeties79 2y ago
I'm sure we can pick and choose good/bad examples from every thread, but I for one definitely feel the bar for civility/respect here is way higher than virtually anywhere else, so I'm choosing to believe this current system contributes to that and that the pros outweigh the cons. After reddit's nonsense last summer I appreciate HN more than ever. If it means the moderation is a bit "too strict" then so be it. That was also the case on some of reddit's (and other sites') best communities. /r/AskHistorians immediately comes to mind.
gosub100 2y ago
Broken windows theory: actively moderating is precisely what keeps shit posters away. There's no gain from doing it when their posts are removed so they give up quickly.
sangnoir 2y ago
I didn't flag any of them; I do not owe you an explanation on behalf of the flaggers. Conversely - why didn't you vouch for each of the dead comments, if they are so great?
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > .. and this is the sort of hostility one attracts whenever one asks for transparency: the mask drops and the fangs come out. Let me get this straight: you asking me to rationalize other people's actions is "transparency", but my asking you to explain your (in)action is hostility? It doesn't sound like you are contributing in good faith. Have a great day.
    - bloopernova 2y ago
      It's been my experience that people complaining about community moderation are never arguing in good faith. The bad actors have gotten incredibly adept at dragging a forum down into hell. Either they turn a group into one that serves their ideology, or they make the group unusable for its original members.
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      Not the first time: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41260854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41260854>
  - mistermann 2y ago
    Isn't it great that you can interact with other agents in this system, present them with prompts and observe how they respond, etc? I am becoming increasingly skeptical about how real all these accounts on the internet are.
DonHopkins 2y ago
Look at the posting history of the comment posters, not just the comment. In many cases it's not the particular comment, it's the particular poster who is shadow-banned, and all of their comments are dead on arrival (to everyone but themselves, the definition of shadow banned). But people with showdead=true and enough karma can vouch for them to resurrect them if they're worthwhile.
icehawk 2y ago
Sure I'll do it, as long as you agree to pay me $1000/hr, 2 hour minimum-- up front, to do your work for you. No refunds.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  > to do your work for you It's not my work, since I'm not the one defending putting some comments to death while leaving lots of other, equally stupid comments up.
  - icehawk 2y ago
    If you have a point you want to make, just make it. Comments like your previous one are asking people to do work for you.
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      I think my "points" as you put them are all over this thread. I don't plan to ask you to do anything for me.
jasonlotito 2y ago
Either it's from someone who happily continues to break rules and is effectively shadow banned because they continue to cause problems and break rules, or the comment doesn't contribute well enough to the topic. This could mean it's just being insulting, or off-topic. In short: Nothing of value was lost. Especially since you can toggle it on.
ekidd 2y ago
Sometimes, the actual mods in charge of the site have heavily penalized certain accounts, either manually or via an algorithm (I don't know the details). The comments posted by these accounts appear to start off "dead", though they may be vouched for by high-karma users. This will make those comments appear normally. I've moderated a number of forums in my time. And the hardest users to deal with are the ones that insist on breaking the rules 10% of the time, and who refuse to stop. Even if they contribute positively much of the rest of the time, they create far too much work. (Also, I have zero interest in participating in unmoderated forums. Unmoderated forums are either overrun by spam, or by users who somehow manage to spend 50 hours a week flaming people. Look at any small-town online newspaper where the same 5 people bicker endlessly after every single news story. And if I don't like how a forum is moderated, I find another one.)
- breck 2y ago
  > And the hardest users to deal with are the ones that insist on breaking the rules 10% of the time, and who refuse to stop. Even if they contribute positively much of the rest of the time, they create far too much work. There is _always_ a technical solution here. If you can't figure it out, keep thinking. There's never a reason to ban/moderate your core users for 10% rule violations. Instead, that shows a weakness of the software. More transparency helps.

hnpolicestate 2y ago

[flagged]

sangnoir 2y ago
> HN is not at all "awesome" at moderating content objectively I made no such claim.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  actually, you did, although you may have deleted it by now: "HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41369717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41369717
  - magicalist 2y ago
    Those are different claims, though.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    Awesome =/= objective moderation. I claimed the former, not the latter. IMO, there is no such thing as objective moderation. All editorial decisions are subjective, but this is besides the point.
  - jmb99 2y ago
    That’s a different statement. HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation =/= HN has awesome rules and moderation.
llm_trw 2y ago
A long while ago I read an article predicting the downfall of all unpaid internet moderation because it would attract the type of person who both has copious free time and enjoys having power over others. Reddit during covid showed us just how true that was. Moderation was so ridiculous you'd get banned from subreddits for posts which were the same as the CDC's advice at the time they were made. HN has largely avoided that because it has at least partly paid moderators. The worst parts are the mass flaggings which I think are still a mistake. Not least because they now hilariously happen to every one of PG's posts.

zooq_ai 2y ago

The HN crowd like reddit leans massively progressive/democratic. As such any thinking outside normal or contrarian views are massively suppressed. Classic contrarian (to HN) around WFH, Capitalism, Elon Musk, Tesla, Regulation is downvoted and even flagged

hnpolicestate 2y ago
The HN crowd is far right but they would never admit it. Most people are unaware of how political parties shift in composition and ideology over the decades. The contemporary American software engineer resembles the professional class Reagan Republicans who dominated the suburbs in the 80's and 90's.
- gruez 2y ago
  >The HN crowd is far right ??? Is anyone who isn't a card carrying DSA member "far right"?
  - hnpolicestate 2y ago
    Most of that stuff is a LARP.
- alsetmusic 2y ago
  Center-right, I'd argue, but that's true of the Democratic party. HN is very far from far-right in that bigotry and racism isn't tolerated here (nor should they be). But HN is USA in origin and USA politics are further right than most of Europe.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > HN is very far from far-right in that bigotry and racism isn't tolerated here (nor should they be). As in no outright slurs, right? I've seen plenty of race realist comments, as well as "James Damore is right about women in tech".
  - hnpolicestate 2y ago

stefantalpalaru 2y ago

[dead]

llm_trw 2y ago

>HN is awesome because of the rules and moderation (including bans); It was awesome. Then it jumped the shark when people realized they could flag posts they don't like with no repercussions.

immibis 2y ago
There was some post about Israel the other day (might have been Google's relationship to Israel or something) where every comment about the war starting last year was highly visible, while every comment about what happened prior to last year was dead.
- dmix 2y ago
  Those contentious threads never last long here for that reason. Reddit is 90% those sorts of heavily moderated comment threads where everyone agrees with each other and those who don't align get removed or downvoted. People can always just go there.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    Comparison to Reddit: bogus. Yes, HN is better than a toxic cesspit full of ignorant teenagers. That's a low hurdle.
- dang 2y ago
  I'd be careful about generalizing from one case, or even from all the cases you've seen, because people (all of us) tend to notice and put much greater weight on the posts we dislike. (Basically the same mechanism by which painful memories tend to be deeper than pleasurable ones.) 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...
crystalmeph 2y ago
I wonder if something like Slashdot's metamoderation system could be used to tamp down such abuse. One problem with metamoderation is that once a particular forum becomes an echo chamber, even metamoderation will unconsciously but repeatably ignore "valid" information from the other side and amplify misinformation from their own side. But if the site owners specifically searched for good-faith users from multiple viewpoints to serve as the jury pool for metamoderation, this could be workable.

wtcactus 2y ago

I think this is a very complex subject and no one, in good faith, can claim that heavy moderation is either awesome or terrible.