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Is it any different here? Is this not the standard setup for all forums and considered perfectly right and normal?

typewithrhythm 1y ago
It's the anonymity and odd changes in who is moderating that makes it feel different. Standard setup to me would be consistently opinionated person, or team with some central directive (and hopefully oversight).
jaggederest 1y ago
Dang and the other moderators here are incredibly scrupulous. If you browse with show dead on, and find an account that is posting regularly but banned, and go back through their history, you'll almost always find multiple warnings and a public statement about their banning. HN has problems but moderation being arbitrary isn't really one of them.
- masklinn 1y ago
  What you mention has nothing to do with their capabilities.
  - frm88 1y ago
    Yes, it does. Partly at least. It documents what rules/guidelines were violated, when and how often. In terms of transparency that's miles above reddit. I have also seen dang and Tomhow (?) repeatedly call out users for violating the guidelines - they do it openly and react to discussions. Again, miles above reddit. They edit headlines when the original titles are misleading and comment openly on it. Transparency. I haven't been here for long but the traceability of moderation on this site is laudable, so is their restraint when it comes to commenting on topics/users - and I should know: I have moderated a software forum for over 10 years and had my fair share of temptations.
UltraSane 1y ago
I was banned from /r/comics for saying a comic wasn't funny. Hacker news doesn't ban anyone for such stupid reasons.
- shoobiedoo 1y ago
  I was banned from /r/sourdough for asking a question about rye flour, because someone dug into my post history and saw that I had posted a few times on the Catholicism subreddit. Someone's first instinct when reading a completely benign, neutral question was to see if I was on this or that "team".
  - lurk2 1y ago
    There used to be bots that would do this automatically, but they seem to have fallen out of favor due to the high rate of false-positives (user from Subreddit A posts in Subreddit B and gets automatically banned by the automoderator on Subreddit A). They implemented a change recently where users can make their profiles private which seemed like a cool idea to prevent this sort of thing, but in practice it is used almost exclusively by bad actors. Some users suggested the change was made to facilitate government intelligence agencies running influence campaigns on the platform.
    - benjiro 1y ago
      Just delete your old comments... I learned a simply truth about social media. When you answer a person in a discussion, are you answering the person or the world? When you are answering the person, and the person has seen your response by time or counter answer, there really is no need to keep your post alive beyond a few weeks. By then the topic is already on page 10 and only of interest to google / bots / AI. Is this a problem for the future? Not really ... if the answer is important like i want the world to keep seeing it, you keep it undeleted. If you did a product review, keep it alive, but just answer people, or having discussions that have no relevants a year from now, just get rid of them. But lets be honest, most of our answers are often discussions and not some deep zen state thinking exercises that everybody needs to see years from now. The world has not gotten better and your faced with a dilemma. Reject social media totally and avoid all the mess of people using your past post history, bots and AI/LLMs eating your data non-stop, or potential profiling. Let alone if governments change... Or use this trick ... there really is no perfect answer and you do what you feel is good for you.

It's the anonymity and odd changes in who is moderating that makes it feel different. Standard setup to me would be consistently opinionated person, or team with some central directive (and hopefully oversight).

jaggederest 1y ago

Dang and the other moderators here are incredibly scrupulous. If you browse with show dead on, and find an account that is posting regularly but banned, and go back through their history, you'll almost always find multiple warnings and a public statement about their banning. HN has problems but moderation being arbitrary isn't really one of them.

masklinn 1y ago
What you mention has nothing to do with their capabilities.
- frm88 1y ago
  Yes, it does. Partly at least. It documents what rules/guidelines were violated, when and how often. In terms of transparency that's miles above reddit. I have also seen dang and Tomhow (?) repeatedly call out users for violating the guidelines - they do it openly and react to discussions. Again, miles above reddit. They edit headlines when the original titles are misleading and comment openly on it. Transparency. I haven't been here for long but the traceability of moderation on this site is laudable, so is their restraint when it comes to commenting on topics/users - and I should know: I have moderated a software forum for over 10 years and had my fair share of temptations.

UltraSane 1y ago

I was banned from /r/comics for saying a comic wasn't funny. Hacker news doesn't ban anyone for such stupid reasons.

shoobiedoo 1y ago
I was banned from /r/sourdough for asking a question about rye flour, because someone dug into my post history and saw that I had posted a few times on the Catholicism subreddit. Someone's first instinct when reading a completely benign, neutral question was to see if I was on this or that "team".
- lurk2 1y ago
  There used to be bots that would do this automatically, but they seem to have fallen out of favor due to the high rate of false-positives (user from Subreddit A posts in Subreddit B and gets automatically banned by the automoderator on Subreddit A). They implemented a change recently where users can make their profiles private which seemed like a cool idea to prevent this sort of thing, but in practice it is used almost exclusively by bad actors. Some users suggested the change was made to facilitate government intelligence agencies running influence campaigns on the platform.
  - benjiro 1y ago
    Just delete your old comments... I learned a simply truth about social media. When you answer a person in a discussion, are you answering the person or the world? When you are answering the person, and the person has seen your response by time or counter answer, there really is no need to keep your post alive beyond a few weeks. By then the topic is already on page 10 and only of interest to google / bots / AI. Is this a problem for the future? Not really ... if the answer is important like i want the world to keep seeing it, you keep it undeleted. If you did a product review, keep it alive, but just answer people, or having discussions that have no relevants a year from now, just get rid of them. But lets be honest, most of our answers are often discussions and not some deep zen state thinking exercises that everybody needs to see years from now. The world has not gotten better and your faced with a dilemma. Reject social media totally and avoid all the mess of people using your past post history, bots and AI/LLMs eating your data non-stop, or potential profiling. Let alone if governments change... Or use this trick ... there really is no perfect answer and you do what you feel is good for you.