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First off, thanks for providing all of the moderation energy and you clearly maintain a level of civility on hacker news across a wide range of controversial to

First off, thanks for providing all of the moderation energy and you clearly maintain a level of civility on hacker news across a wide range of controversial topics. However, I think placing this long list of stories all under the same MOT demonstrates that conversation is "happening", but at the same time it isn't really happening. One of the key strategies used by Trump and Putin is to flood the zone (“Flood the zone with shit”: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/impeachment-trial-trump-bannon-misinformation https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/i...) As an example, the parent story of this comment is no longer on the front page and instead of anything related to Musk at the fed there is now another distraction about him trying to buy OpenAI. I haven't read all of the above articles, but from just a cursory glance it looks like many different important events are happening. If they happened one at a time over the course of a year no one would consider it MOT, but because its all happening in the same week it gets mashed together. Individual stories quickly fall off the front page.

dang 2y ago
From my perspective, all that is true, but it's not HN's job to be the zone that is flooded by it. HN's job is to be a place for intellectually curious stories and conversations. We have to hold fast to that mandate because if we don't, the site will quickly cease to exist for its intended purpose. What this means in practice is that there's some space for discussing these topics, but only some, and not nearly enough to fully cover everything that's going on right now. I understand that a lot of users want this to be otherwise. Quite rightly, they feel like current events are important and deserve a great deal more airtime. But our first responsibility is to preserve HN for its intended purpose, and HN is not an instrument that can accommodate much more of this. The threads that I listed above are, from HN's point of view, already a lot. It's a pity, because to the extent that discussion here is marginally* more substantive than what's available elsewhere, it's natural to wish that it could be applied to much more important issues. Why care about the origins of Proto-Indo-European when the government is being burned down? and so on. We should turn our attention to the things that matter! But this argument just doesn't work in practice. The only thing that would happen if we "flooded the zone" on HN too is that the place would burn out. * emphasis on "marginally". I'm not claiming it's particularly good—there is a great deal not to like.
- leanstartupnoob 2y ago
  From my perspective it seems like HN abandoned the mandate of intellectually curious stories and conversations and is instead a place where only non-controversial stories and conversations are encouraged. If people can only talk about things where no one can vociferously disagree then we aren't really being inquisitive and curious, merely eccentric. Your comment of "discussion here is marginally* more substantive" footnoted that it's not particularly good also seems a bit condescending. Its dismissive to those attempting to engage with these stories in good faith even if a vocal minority are behaving in bad faith. When a dozen stories are popping up and disappearing in a few hours it feels a lot harder to participate in a thoughtful and substantial ways. I can understand HN is in a rough spot. But on the other hand, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
  - dang 2y ago
    > a place where only non-controversial stories and conversations are encouraged I've made a list of 23 threads (see the reply below), all from the last month. There are over 13k comments in those threads alone, and it's not a complete list. It's interesting how claims like "only non-controversial stories" or "no discussion of this sort shall be allowed" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976817) arise during periods when there's a sharp increase in such threads (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572). At first that seems counterintuitive (like Jevons' paradox, or Yogi Berra's "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"). But it's not so paradoxical. These aren't factual propositions, they're expressions of a feeling—what people are really saying is not that there is no coverage of these topics, but that they would like more coverage. They often use words like "no", "zero", "never", and "nothing" to express how they feel, but what they mean by these words is "not enough". Which is fair enough. The community always splits between users who want more and users who feel like it's too much. Also, it's easy to miss any particular thread or sequence of threads. Even among regular HN readers, there will be many who haven't seen even one of the 23 threads listed below, or who only saw 1 or 2, and therefore might naturally feel like none of this is being discussed. Among those, there will be some who feel strongly about it, and some of these will naturally express their feeling in the way I described above. Nonetheless, in reality there is a large amount of this discussion happening—it is by far the most-discussed topic of recent weeks, and will likely continue to be. > also seems a bit condescending Sorry for giving that impression! I often add a disclaimer like that because I don't want to sound like I'm making excessive claims about HN's discussion quality. The most I can say is that median discussion quality here is modestly better than elsewhere on the internet, but at its worst it's still pretty bad. I don't mean to put down HN commenters who are using the site thoughtfully. You have to remember that as moderators we see a lot of stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018472, to pick the most recent example. In fact we must see more of that than any other reader, simply because it's our job to.

dang 2y ago

From my perspective, all that is true, but it's not HN's job to be the zone that is flooded by it. HN's job is to be a place for intellectually curious stories and conversations. We have to hold fast to that mandate because if we don't, the site will quickly cease to exist for its intended purpose. What this means in practice is that there's some space for discussing these topics, but only some, and not nearly enough to fully cover everything that's going on right now. I understand that a lot of users want this to be otherwise. Quite rightly, they feel like current events are important and deserve a great deal more airtime. But our first responsibility is to preserve HN for its intended purpose, and HN is not an instrument that can accommodate much more of this. The threads that I listed above are, from HN's point of view, already a lot. It's a pity, because to the extent that discussion here is marginally* more substantive than what's available elsewhere, it's natural to wish that it could be applied to much more important issues. Why care about the origins of Proto-Indo-European when the government is being burned down? and so on. We should turn our attention to the things that matter! But this argument just doesn't work in practice. The only thing that would happen if we "flooded the zone" on HN too is that the place would burn out. * emphasis on "marginally". I'm not claiming it's particularly good—there is a great deal not to like.

leanstartupnoob 2y ago
From my perspective it seems like HN abandoned the mandate of intellectually curious stories and conversations and is instead a place where only non-controversial stories and conversations are encouraged. If people can only talk about things where no one can vociferously disagree then we aren't really being inquisitive and curious, merely eccentric. Your comment of "discussion here is marginally* more substantive" footnoted that it's not particularly good also seems a bit condescending. Its dismissive to those attempting to engage with these stories in good faith even if a vocal minority are behaving in bad faith. When a dozen stories are popping up and disappearing in a few hours it feels a lot harder to participate in a thoughtful and substantial ways. I can understand HN is in a rough spot. But on the other hand, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
- dang 2y ago
  > a place where only non-controversial stories and conversations are encouraged I've made a list of 23 threads (see the reply below), all from the last month. There are over 13k comments in those threads alone, and it's not a complete list. It's interesting how claims like "only non-controversial stories" or "no discussion of this sort shall be allowed" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42976817) arise during periods when there's a sharp increase in such threads (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978572). At first that seems counterintuitive (like Jevons' paradox, or Yogi Berra's "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded"). But it's not so paradoxical. These aren't factual propositions, they're expressions of a feeling—what people are really saying is not that there is no coverage of these topics, but that they would like more coverage. They often use words like "no", "zero", "never", and "nothing" to express how they feel, but what they mean by these words is "not enough". Which is fair enough. The community always splits between users who want more and users who feel like it's too much. Also, it's easy to miss any particular thread or sequence of threads. Even among regular HN readers, there will be many who haven't seen even one of the 23 threads listed below, or who only saw 1 or 2, and therefore might naturally feel like none of this is being discussed. Among those, there will be some who feel strongly about it, and some of these will naturally express their feeling in the way I described above. Nonetheless, in reality there is a large amount of this discussion happening—it is by far the most-discussed topic of recent weeks, and will likely continue to be. > also seems a bit condescending Sorry for giving that impression! I often add a disclaimer like that because I don't want to sound like I'm making excessive claims about HN's discussion quality. The most I can say is that median discussion quality here is modestly better than elsewhere on the internet, but at its worst it's still pretty bad. I don't mean to put down HN commenters who are using the site thoughtfully. You have to remember that as moderators we see a lot of stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018472, to pick the most recent example. In fact we must see more of that than any other reader, simply because it's our job to.