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There's moderation to manage disruption to a service. There's editorial control to manage the actual content on a service. HN engages in the former but not th

There's moderation to manage disruption to a service. There's editorial control to manage the actual content on a service. HN engages in the former but not the latter. The big three engage in the latter.

closeparen 2y ago
HN engages in the latter. For example, user votes are weighted based on their alignment with the moderation team's view of good content.
- akira2501 2y ago
  I don't understand your explanation. Do you mean just voting itself? That's not controlled or managed by HN. That's just more "user generated content." That posts get hidden or flagged due to thresholding is non-discriminatory and not _individually_ controlled by the staff here. Or.. are you suggesting there's more to how this works? Is dang watching votes and then making decisions based on those votes? "Editorial control" is more of a term of art and has a narrower definition then you're allowing for.
  - empressplay 2y ago
    There's things like 'second chance' where the editorial team can re-up posts they feel didn't get a fair shake the first time around, sometimes if a post gets too 'hot' they will cool it down -- all of this is understandable but unfortunately does mean they are actively moderating content and thus are responsible for all of it.
  - krapp 2y ago
    Dang has been open about voting being only one part of the way HN works, and that manual moderator intervention does occur. They will downweigh the votes of "problem" accounts, manually adjust the order of the frontpage, and do whatever they feel necessary to maintain a high signal to noise ratio.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    The HN moderation team makes a lot of editorial choices, which is what gives HN its specific character. For example, highly politically charged posts are manually moderated and kept off the main page regardless of votes, with limited exceptions entirely up to the judgement of the editors. For example, content about the wars in Ukraine and Israel is not allowed on the mainpage except on rare occasions. dang has talked a lot about the reasoning behind this. The same applies to comments on HN. Comments are not moderated based purely on legal or certain general "good manners" grounds, they are moderated to keep a certain kind of discourse level. For example, shallow jokes or meme comments are not generally allowed on HN. Comments that start discussing controversial topics, even if civil, are also discouraged when they are not on-topic. Overall, HN is very much curated in the direction of a newspaper "letter to the editor" section, then more algorithmic and hands-off like the Facebook wall or TikTok feed. So there is no doubt whatsoever, I believe, that HN would be considered responsible for user content (and is, in fact, already pretty good at policing that in my experience, at least on the front page).
    - zahlman 2y ago
      > The HN moderation team makes a lot of editorial choices, which is what gives HN its specific character. For example, highly politically charged posts are manually moderated and kept off the main page regardless of votes, with limited exceptions entirely up to the judgement of the editors. For example, content about the wars in Ukraine and Israel is not allowed on the mainpage except on rare occasions. dang has talked a lot about the reasoning behind this. This is meaningfully different in kind from only excluding posts that reflect certain perspectives on such a conflict. Maintaining topicality is not imposing a bias.
      - mr_toad 2y ago
        > This is meaningfully different in kind from only excluding posts that reflect certain perspectives on such a conflict. Maintaining topicality is not imposing a bias. Maintaining topicality is literally a bias. Excluding posts that reflect certain perspectives is censorship.
immibis 2y ago
Every time you see a comment marked as [dead] that means a moderator deleted it. There is no auto-deletion resulting from downvotes. Even mentioning certain topics, such as Israel's invasion of Palestine, even when the mention is on-topic and not disruptive, as in this comment you are reading, is practically a death sentence for a comment. Not because of votes, but because of the moderators. Downvotes may prioritize which comments go in front of moderators (we don't know) but moderators make the final decision; comments that are downvoted but not removed merely stick around in a light grey colour. By enabling showdead in your user preferences and using the site for a while, especially reading controversial threads, you can get a feel for what kinds of comments are deleted by moderators exercising. It is clear that most moderation is about editorial control and not simply the removal of disruption. This comment may be dead by the time you read it, due to the previous mention of Palestine - hi to users with showdead enabled. Its parent will probably merely be down voted because it's wrong but doesn't contain anything that would irk the mods.
- philipkglass 2y ago
  Comments that are marked [dead] without the [flagged] indicator are like that because the user that posted the comment has been banned. For green (new) accounts this can be due to automatic filters that threw up false positives for new accounts. For old accounts this shows that the account (not the individual comment) has been banned by moderators. Users who have been banned can email hn@ycombinator.com pledging to follow the rules in the future and they'll be granted another chance. Even if a user remains banned, you can unhide a good [dead] comment by clicking on its timestamp and clicking "vouch." Comments are marked [flagged] [dead] when ordinary users have clicked on the timestamp and selected "flag." So user downvotes cannot kill a comment, but flagging by ordinary non-moderator users can kill it.

closeparen 2y ago

HN engages in the latter. For example, user votes are weighted based on their alignment with the moderation team's view of good content.

akira2501 2y ago
I don't understand your explanation. Do you mean just voting itself? That's not controlled or managed by HN. That's just more "user generated content." That posts get hidden or flagged due to thresholding is non-discriminatory and not _individually_ controlled by the staff here. Or.. are you suggesting there's more to how this works? Is dang watching votes and then making decisions based on those votes? "Editorial control" is more of a term of art and has a narrower definition then you're allowing for.
- empressplay 2y ago
  There's things like 'second chance' where the editorial team can re-up posts they feel didn't get a fair shake the first time around, sometimes if a post gets too 'hot' they will cool it down -- all of this is understandable but unfortunately does mean they are actively moderating content and thus are responsible for all of it.
- krapp 2y ago
  Dang has been open about voting being only one part of the way HN works, and that manual moderator intervention does occur. They will downweigh the votes of "problem" accounts, manually adjust the order of the frontpage, and do whatever they feel necessary to maintain a high signal to noise ratio.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  The HN moderation team makes a lot of editorial choices, which is what gives HN its specific character. For example, highly politically charged posts are manually moderated and kept off the main page regardless of votes, with limited exceptions entirely up to the judgement of the editors. For example, content about the wars in Ukraine and Israel is not allowed on the mainpage except on rare occasions. dang has talked a lot about the reasoning behind this. The same applies to comments on HN. Comments are not moderated based purely on legal or certain general "good manners" grounds, they are moderated to keep a certain kind of discourse level. For example, shallow jokes or meme comments are not generally allowed on HN. Comments that start discussing controversial topics, even if civil, are also discouraged when they are not on-topic. Overall, HN is very much curated in the direction of a newspaper "letter to the editor" section, then more algorithmic and hands-off like the Facebook wall or TikTok feed. So there is no doubt whatsoever, I believe, that HN would be considered responsible for user content (and is, in fact, already pretty good at policing that in my experience, at least on the front page).
  - zahlman 2y ago
    > The HN moderation team makes a lot of editorial choices, which is what gives HN its specific character. For example, highly politically charged posts are manually moderated and kept off the main page regardless of votes, with limited exceptions entirely up to the judgement of the editors. For example, content about the wars in Ukraine and Israel is not allowed on the mainpage except on rare occasions. dang has talked a lot about the reasoning behind this. This is meaningfully different in kind from only excluding posts that reflect certain perspectives on such a conflict. Maintaining topicality is not imposing a bias.
    - mr_toad 2y ago
      > This is meaningfully different in kind from only excluding posts that reflect certain perspectives on such a conflict. Maintaining topicality is not imposing a bias. Maintaining topicality is literally a bias. Excluding posts that reflect certain perspectives is censorship.

immibis 2y ago

Every time you see a comment marked as [dead] that means a moderator deleted it. There is no auto-deletion resulting from downvotes. Even mentioning certain topics, such as Israel's invasion of Palestine, even when the mention is on-topic and not disruptive, as in this comment you are reading, is practically a death sentence for a comment. Not because of votes, but because of the moderators. Downvotes may prioritize which comments go in front of moderators (we don't know) but moderators make the final decision; comments that are downvoted but not removed merely stick around in a light grey colour. By enabling showdead in your user preferences and using the site for a while, especially reading controversial threads, you can get a feel for what kinds of comments are deleted by moderators exercising. It is clear that most moderation is about editorial control and not simply the removal of disruption. This comment may be dead by the time you read it, due to the previous mention of Palestine - hi to users with showdead enabled. Its parent will probably merely be down voted because it's wrong but doesn't contain anything that would irk the mods.

philipkglass 2y ago
Comments that are marked [dead] without the [flagged] indicator are like that because the user that posted the comment has been banned. For green (new) accounts this can be due to automatic filters that threw up false positives for new accounts. For old accounts this shows that the account (not the individual comment) has been banned by moderators. Users who have been banned can email hn@ycombinator.com pledging to follow the rules in the future and they'll be granted another chance. Even if a user remains banned, you can unhide a good [dead] comment by clicking on its timestamp and clicking "vouch." Comments are marked [flagged] [dead] when ordinary users have clicked on the timestamp and selected "flag." So user downvotes cannot kill a comment, but flagging by ordinary non-moderator users can kill it.