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I figured enough people just flag the submission, because they don't want to put up with the Xlibre guy's specific category of shit, or that of his inevitable h

by tom_ 1y ago

I figured enough people just flag the submission, because they don't want to put up with the Xlibre guy's specific category of shit, or that of his inevitable hangers-on. Are they right? Are they wrong? Well, it's their decision. I've seen enough stuff I've flagged myself disappear quickly, and then reappear later (with more surprisingly reasonable discussion than I at least had predicted), to suggest that the admins will retrieve any popular discussion that was unreasonably assigned to the naughty step. (Of course, admin intervention in the other direction is always a possibility, and that's fair enough too. If you want unmoderated discussion, you'll need to go somewhere else.)

bmacho 1y ago
> I've seen enough stuff I've flagged disappear quickly, and then reappear later (with surprisingly reasonable discussion), to suggest that the admins will retrieve any popular discussion that was unreasonably assigned to the naughty step. That's the whole point. The default for everything that has at least a small hater base is to disappear, until for manual reenabling by moderators. This is not community moderation, it is de-facto pre-moderation. Which, in this case has a strong bias against xlibre despite it having literally nothing wrong with it (like the other stuff reappearing). It's gross censure (for the sake of a gross, user hostile corporate), and the moderators should be called out for it.
- vidarh 1y ago
  While I find the moderation on HN a bit heavyhanded at times: When the originator of the XLibre fork decided to push a heavily partisan political stance right there in the README, he made a choice that ensured that the project will be controversial. He can fix that very easily if he wants to. As someone who detest Wayland, I would very much like to see Xlibre be sucessful, but I'm not surprised a lot of people will reflexively downvote or flag stuff about it given the circumstances. (EDIT: Having seen some of the other stuff he's said, I'm now not convinced he can do anything to salvage this as long as he's the figure-head for this new project)
  - bmacho 1y ago
    I don't think it is a good reason or even an acceptable reason to actively censor the news about the project, and prevent people to communicate about it. While XLibre is unfortunately political at the moment, this is not an excuse for what the HN staff is doing.
    - vidarh 1y ago
      You keep assuming that it's HN staff, but HN articles very often get flagged by regular users when they get political, and having seen some of the comments on one of the other articles, including some of yours, I'm not the slightest bit surprised they got flagged. If people want Xlibre to have a shot at HN at all, those are things to fix. Making unsubstantiated claims about HN staff is not going to change anything - if anything that too is likely to attract flagging.
      - bmacho 1y ago
        No, a project or a project leader having haters (just this thread there are 3 distinct people jumping in with various insults or fake news on normal questions) should not be enough for something to get censored. What kind of 'Why are you hitting yourself?' logic is that? > You keep assuming that it's HN staff, It's HN staff, and I've already explained it. Read back.
        tom_ 1y ago
        It's quite possible that there are just people flagging things without commenting. I do this all the time if the discussion looks particularly stupid, unproductive, bad-tempered, pointless, and so on - or some combination thereof. (I haven't done it in this case, but only because I was silly enough to comment. This thread has been quite reasonably flagged, I'd say.) This is part of the how this particular site works. If you don't like it, that's fine, but you will have to go elsewhere to avoid it. And even if it is indeed the admins working away behind the scenes, a committee of shadowy puppetmasters directing their every move, suppression of X11 forks just one probing toothed tendril of this multi-armed octopus - well, this place was never a democracy anyway.

by tom_ 1y ago

bmacho 1y ago

> I've seen enough stuff I've flagged disappear quickly, and then reappear later (with surprisingly reasonable discussion), to suggest that the admins will retrieve any popular discussion that was unreasonably assigned to the naughty step. That's the whole point. The default for everything that has at least a small hater base is to disappear, until for manual reenabling by moderators. This is not community moderation, it is de-facto pre-moderation. Which, in this case has a strong bias against xlibre despite it having literally nothing wrong with it (like the other stuff reappearing). It's gross censure (for the sake of a gross, user hostile corporate), and the moderators should be called out for it.

vidarh 1y ago
While I find the moderation on HN a bit heavyhanded at times: When the originator of the XLibre fork decided to push a heavily partisan political stance right there in the README, he made a choice that ensured that the project will be controversial. He can fix that very easily if he wants to. As someone who detest Wayland, I would very much like to see Xlibre be sucessful, but I'm not surprised a lot of people will reflexively downvote or flag stuff about it given the circumstances. (EDIT: Having seen some of the other stuff he's said, I'm now not convinced he can do anything to salvage this as long as he's the figure-head for this new project)
- bmacho 1y ago
  I don't think it is a good reason or even an acceptable reason to actively censor the news about the project, and prevent people to communicate about it. While XLibre is unfortunately political at the moment, this is not an excuse for what the HN staff is doing.
  - vidarh 1y ago
    You keep assuming that it's HN staff, but HN articles very often get flagged by regular users when they get political, and having seen some of the comments on one of the other articles, including some of yours, I'm not the slightest bit surprised they got flagged. If people want Xlibre to have a shot at HN at all, those are things to fix. Making unsubstantiated claims about HN staff is not going to change anything - if anything that too is likely to attract flagging.
    - bmacho 1y ago
      No, a project or a project leader having haters (just this thread there are 3 distinct people jumping in with various insults or fake news on normal questions) should not be enough for something to get censored. What kind of 'Why are you hitting yourself?' logic is that? > You keep assuming that it's HN staff, It's HN staff, and I've already explained it. Read back.
      - tom_ 1y ago
        It's quite possible that there are just people flagging things without commenting. I do this all the time if the discussion looks particularly stupid, unproductive, bad-tempered, pointless, and so on - or some combination thereof. (I haven't done it in this case, but only because I was silly enough to comment. This thread has been quite reasonably flagged, I'd say.) This is part of the how this particular site works. If you don't like it, that's fine, but you will have to go elsewhere to avoid it. And even if it is indeed the admins working away behind the scenes, a committee of shadowy puppetmasters directing their every move, suppression of X11 forks just one probing toothed tendril of this multi-armed octopus - well, this place was never a democracy anyway.