11 ms·

Don't forget that the mods tried to remove the reference to a16z from the title on that one.

by UncleMeat 10mo ago

kotaKat 10mo ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 10mo ago
  This is false. Nothing was done to your account at that time, whereas rate-limiting was active on your account at least two weeks ago. Rate limiting is applied to accounts that do things like use HN for political/ideological battle, or post too many low-quality comments, both of which you've been doing. Here are some of the worst of the comments you've been posting in recent months. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46347561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46347561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46300618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46300618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46272934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46272934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46148458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46148458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821460 The A16Z title issue was no great scandal. It was bog standard moderation, with attention and responsiveness to community sentiment and feedback. That kind of thing happens all the time. Meanwhile, you post too many comments that break the guidelines and use HN against its intended purpose. HN is only a place people want participate because others make an effort to keep the standards up rather than dragging them down. Please do your part to make HN better not worse if you want to participate here.
  - immibis 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - tomhow 10mo ago
      We actively intervene to ensure posts that are negative towards YC companies are not affected by usual downweights, and give them extra prominence on the front page. That has happened multiple times this week, including yesterday. We've never considered that the policy should also apply to other investment firms.
    - ozozozd 10mo ago
      I was gonna comment a minute before I read your edit. Thanks for the heads up.
    - tomhow 10mo ago
      > all of my most recent comments received one downvote From what I can see, in the most recent handful of comments, there were some downvotes but not by moderators and not by the same community members (patterns of unfair downvotes get detected and dropped on HN). And I think at least one comment that was downvoted when you posted your edit has now received enough upvotes to be back in the positive. Of the first two pages of comments (60), covering most of the past 3 days, only 9 have any downvotes and they're from different users. The "most recent" comments are mostly unaffected by downvotes; prior to this one, only two of the past 23 comments had any downvotes. > including the one that just straightforwardly answers someone's question That one was odd, and it seemed like an unfair downvote so we've reversed it. But that just one of only two of the past 23 comments that was downvoted. But really, why do people keep coming up with these false/exaggerated claims to try to cast doubt on our integrity? (Also, in the case of this claim, users can tell if comments have been downvoted from the comment text's shade of grey.)
tomhow 10mo ago
I tried to make the title fit the guidelines and the character limit, then changed it when the community explained why it was important for A16Z to be in the title. Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? They've been criticized forever here and we've never had a problem with it. All we care about is whether a topic makes for an interesting discussion on HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=a16z&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=andreessen&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- QuadmasterXLII 10mo ago
  To answer your literal question of "why do people think..." For a while there was a widespread standing principle to not assume malice for actions that could be explained as a simple mistake. If only one person follows this policy, it's great. However, so many people were following this policy that it created massive incentives to disguise profit motivated malice as explainable accidents. We're in the midst of a massive backswing against this. So, there is very little taste for patience when agents of ycombinator make mistakes that benefit a16z such as accidentally removing them from the title of a negative article, due to the billions of dollars entangling ycombinator with the reputation of a16z. This is not because it wasn't an accident- it's because any culture of patience with this will lead (and has led) to an explosion of copycat whoopsies.
  - tomhow 10mo ago
    > make mistakes that benefit a16z Specifically, how does that title change make any difference to A16Z?
- Teever 10mo ago
  > Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? I think a more charitable interpretation of this kind of argument is that the money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial. In light of the ease in which a wealthy entity like A16Z can exert influence over an entity like HN and the track records of various A16Z adjacent/similar people doing similar things to other HN-like entities it's very natural that people are concerned about the possibility of similar things happening here. Like it or not as an editor at HN you're in a position of power and influence and others with far greater power would certainly leverage what you have here if suited their interests. Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is no easy task especially in this medium and I don't envy you in taking it on, but it's an essential part of something like HN. If the users in aggregate don't trust the moderation process or the administrators then this all sort of falls apart and the interesting discussion suffers.

Don't forget that the mods tried to remove the reference to a16z from the title on that one.

kotaKat 10mo ago

[flagged]

tomhow 10mo ago
This is false. Nothing was done to your account at that time, whereas rate-limiting was active on your account at least two weeks ago. Rate limiting is applied to accounts that do things like use HN for political/ideological battle, or post too many low-quality comments, both of which you've been doing. Here are some of the worst of the comments you've been posting in recent months. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46347561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46347561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46300618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46300618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46272934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46272934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46148458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46148458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821460 The A16Z title issue was no great scandal. It was bog standard moderation, with attention and responsiveness to community sentiment and feedback. That kind of thing happens all the time. Meanwhile, you post too many comments that break the guidelines and use HN against its intended purpose. HN is only a place people want participate because others make an effort to keep the standards up rather than dragging them down. Please do your part to make HN better not worse if you want to participate here.
- immibis 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tomhow 10mo ago
    We actively intervene to ensure posts that are negative towards YC companies are not affected by usual downweights, and give them extra prominence on the front page. That has happened multiple times this week, including yesterday. We've never considered that the policy should also apply to other investment firms.
  - ozozozd 10mo ago
    I was gonna comment a minute before I read your edit. Thanks for the heads up.
  - tomhow 10mo ago
    > all of my most recent comments received one downvote From what I can see, in the most recent handful of comments, there were some downvotes but not by moderators and not by the same community members (patterns of unfair downvotes get detected and dropped on HN). And I think at least one comment that was downvoted when you posted your edit has now received enough upvotes to be back in the positive. Of the first two pages of comments (60), covering most of the past 3 days, only 9 have any downvotes and they're from different users. The "most recent" comments are mostly unaffected by downvotes; prior to this one, only two of the past 23 comments had any downvotes. > including the one that just straightforwardly answers someone's question That one was odd, and it seemed like an unfair downvote so we've reversed it. But that just one of only two of the past 23 comments that was downvoted. But really, why do people keep coming up with these false/exaggerated claims to try to cast doubt on our integrity? (Also, in the case of this claim, users can tell if comments have been downvoted from the comment text's shade of grey.)

tomhow 10mo ago

I tried to make the title fit the guidelines and the character limit, then changed it when the community explained why it was important for A16Z to be in the title. Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? They've been criticized forever here and we've never had a problem with it. All we care about is whether a topic makes for an interesting discussion on HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=a16z&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=andreessen&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

QuadmasterXLII 10mo ago
To answer your literal question of "why do people think..." For a while there was a widespread standing principle to not assume malice for actions that could be explained as a simple mistake. If only one person follows this policy, it's great. However, so many people were following this policy that it created massive incentives to disguise profit motivated malice as explainable accidents. We're in the midst of a massive backswing against this. So, there is very little taste for patience when agents of ycombinator make mistakes that benefit a16z such as accidentally removing them from the title of a negative article, due to the billions of dollars entangling ycombinator with the reputation of a16z. This is not because it wasn't an accident- it's because any culture of patience with this will lead (and has led) to an explosion of copycat whoopsies.
- tomhow 10mo ago
  > make mistakes that benefit a16z Specifically, how does that title change make any difference to A16Z?
Teever 10mo ago
> Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? I think a more charitable interpretation of this kind of argument is that the money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial. In light of the ease in which a wealthy entity like A16Z can exert influence over an entity like HN and the track records of various A16Z adjacent/similar people doing similar things to other HN-like entities it's very natural that people are concerned about the possibility of similar things happening here. Like it or not as an editor at HN you're in a position of power and influence and others with far greater power would certainly leverage what you have here if suited their interests. Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is no easy task especially in this medium and I don't envy you in taking it on, but it's an essential part of something like HN. If the users in aggregate don't trust the moderation process or the administrators then this all sort of falls apart and the interesting discussion suffers.