5 ms·

I think generally the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war. The issue, of course, is that literally anything

by tombert 9mo ago

I think generally the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war. The issue, of course, is that literally anything can be "political", and moreover by trying to actively avoid political discussions you sort of tacitly endorse the status quo. It's a tough line to draw, and I'd be lying if I said where I knew where to draw it; HN is a fun forum specifically because the moderation is generally very good. They're not perfect but they do try and shut things down before they devolve into flame wars and personal insults. If there weren't aggressive modding, HN would devolve into 4chan or 8chan, and it wouldn't be appealing to me after the age of ~17.

messe 9mo ago
The limit should be outright fascism. It's not a tough line to draw if you've any inkling of 20th century history. The USA isn't sleepwalking, it's goose-stepping into a fucking nightmare.
- tombert 9mo ago
  Yeah that's fair. I mean, you can look at my comment history, I'm not above commenting on the bullshit from the Trump administration.
tavavex 9mo ago
It is a difficult issue. For the longest time, the status quo-favoring position of not complaining about anything divisive too much worked well because the status quo had been relatively unchanging - most people grew up with it so everyone took it for granted, and even most types of pushback was far more reserved than what we see today. But now that the status quo of Western countries had begun rapidly shifting into something completely different, the other side of that initial ruling is starting to bear fruit. I really think that at this point they should revisit this policy - not to abandon moderation, but make amends that try to distance this place from the current political establishment. What was yesterday's implicit favoring of the boring consensus is now a defined position that's supportive of whatever the current powers do. But, being more cynical, given how close HN is to Y Combinator, I'm not sure if that option is on the table.
deeg 9mo ago
I've been frustrated by the flagging (because fascism is so real right now) but I've been a moderator in the past and I know it's impossible to keep a large majority happy. It's hard for me to criticize the mods much.
- tombert 9mo ago
  Yeah, I’ve been a mod on a relatively small Discord server (~60 users) and even in that scope it can be difficult to keep people happy with stuff I’ve done.
  - tartoran 9mo ago
    Best way to mod is to strive to keep discourse civil (by setting up a policy) but at the same time let people talk about what hey want to talk. Not letting them talk because they may fight or disagree is a patronizing behavior.
    - tombert 9mo ago
      Makes enough sense. I'm not a mod of that server anymore because I got an in argument with the server's owner, and decided to leave, so I haven't gotten to practice my mod stuff in awhile.
dang 9mo ago
> the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war. You're correct that we like to avoid flamewars, but not correct to say "anything involving politics". We don't try to (or want to) avoid politics altogether—a certain number of threads with political overlap have always been part of the mix here*. For (reams of) past explanations see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... What we want to avoid is HN being taken over by politics altogether, and thereby turning into an entirely different site. We want HN to adhere to its mandate, which is to optimize for intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). That certainly includes some political discussion, but (a) not beyond a certain threshold, and (b) not every kind of political story or article. (For example, opinion pieces are usually less of a fit than stories which contain significant new information, and so on.) Unfortunately, this way of doing things inevitably generates conflict. For politically passionate users, that "not beyond a certain threshold" bit is far too little—especially in turbulent times, as now. Apart from that, there's no agreement on which particular stories deserve to be on the frontpage, and even if there were such agreement, there's still no way of making sure that the most deserving stories get the spots (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306). Everyone has the experience of being frustrated when a story that they care about gets flagged or otherwise falls in rank. When feelings are running hot, people jump to the conclusion that we're secretly on the opposite political side, or trying to suppress discussion on a particular topic. That's not the case at all—it's all explicable by the principles that we've been repeating for years—but that none of that changes how it feels. Then there are the users who feel like HN has gotten too political and is a shadow of its former self—this also has always been with us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869. Double unfortunately, I don't know of a fix for any of these binds, because all of them derive from the fundamentals of what HN is - e.g. a single frontpage with only so many slots (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20front%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). (* Or to put it differently, note the words most and probably in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, as pg once said: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426.)
johnnyanmac 9mo ago
We would have curtailed the AI discussion years ago of preventing flame wars was the primary issue. I do think that they simply cling to outdated sentiments that politics is "dirty laundry" to take out instead of properly cleaning hoise.
jacquesm 9mo ago
The main reason to avoid flamewars is to protect the atmosphere on HN but you can't make the case that if the world is on fire we can just sit here and pretend it isn't happening and discuss the latest tweak to react as though it is the most important thing in the world. I've long argued for a 'other' category as one overflow method or a homepage that is generic and subject specific pages for those that only want LLM news or Apple. I'm sure we could agree on a 10 level 'top' set with 'All' the default. That's one step closer to Reddit of course, but with the growth that HN has seen over the years you can't continue to pretend that the 'small town' measures still apply to this big city. A lot of this really is just about scale and you need to adapt to scale.
- zahlman 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - TimorousBestie 9mo ago
    If I were in your shoes, I would consider dang’s response in this thread and contemplate whether this is the correct forum for your style of political analysis. I did observe some of this activity over the past couple days and note that many of your interlocutors were also flagged, downvoted, etc., and not always for clearly legitimate reasons. I turned on showdead for a while just to follow the plot. So it goes. I think it’s a good policy (in general, not specific to HN) to match your interlocutor’s effort. There’s no return on investment in any case.
    - zahlman 9mo ago
      I always have showdead on. I turned it on as soon as I learned that there was such a feature. Even the crypto scam posts amuse me. I don't feel that I have a particular "style" of political analysis. In the case of ICE I'm not even doing political analysis; it's legal analysis. I don't like seeing my communities swell with outrage that appears, to me, to be based on propaganda and ignorance. I would not be talking about these topics otherwise. And my defenses are not based in ideology, unless "the terms people are using here describe really serious terrible things, and shouldn't be abused" is an ideology. I don't like being dissuaded from responding to it, because without any reassurance that it will be cleaned up as off-topic, that comes across to me as suppressing an opposed point of view. That especially galls on platforms that otherwise appear committed to open discussion of contentious topics.

by tombert 9mo ago

messe 9mo ago

The limit should be outright fascism. It's not a tough line to draw if you've any inkling of 20th century history. The USA isn't sleepwalking, it's goose-stepping into a fucking nightmare.

tombert 9mo ago
Yeah that's fair. I mean, you can look at my comment history, I'm not above commenting on the bullshit from the Trump administration.

tavavex 9mo ago

It is a difficult issue. For the longest time, the status quo-favoring position of not complaining about anything divisive too much worked well because the status quo had been relatively unchanging - most people grew up with it so everyone took it for granted, and even most types of pushback was far more reserved than what we see today. But now that the status quo of Western countries had begun rapidly shifting into something completely different, the other side of that initial ruling is starting to bear fruit. I really think that at this point they should revisit this policy - not to abandon moderation, but make amends that try to distance this place from the current political establishment. What was yesterday's implicit favoring of the boring consensus is now a defined position that's supportive of whatever the current powers do. But, being more cynical, given how close HN is to Y Combinator, I'm not sure if that option is on the table.

deeg 9mo ago

I've been frustrated by the flagging (because fascism is so real right now) but I've been a moderator in the past and I know it's impossible to keep a large majority happy. It's hard for me to criticize the mods much.

tombert 9mo ago
Yeah, I’ve been a mod on a relatively small Discord server (~60 users) and even in that scope it can be difficult to keep people happy with stuff I’ve done.
- tartoran 9mo ago
  Best way to mod is to strive to keep discourse civil (by setting up a policy) but at the same time let people talk about what hey want to talk. Not letting them talk because they may fight or disagree is a patronizing behavior.
  - tombert 9mo ago
    Makes enough sense. I'm not a mod of that server anymore because I got an in argument with the server's owner, and decided to leave, so I haven't gotten to practice my mod stuff in awhile.

dang 9mo ago

> the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war. You're correct that we like to avoid flamewars, but not correct to say "anything involving politics". We don't try to (or want to) avoid politics altogether—a certain number of threads with political overlap have always been part of the mix here*. For (reams of) past explanations see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... What we want to avoid is HN being taken over by politics altogether, and thereby turning into an entirely different site. We want HN to adhere to its mandate, which is to optimize for intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). That certainly includes some political discussion, but (a) not beyond a certain threshold, and (b) not every kind of political story or article. (For example, opinion pieces are usually less of a fit than stories which contain significant new information, and so on.) Unfortunately, this way of doing things inevitably generates conflict. For politically passionate users, that "not beyond a certain threshold" bit is far too little—especially in turbulent times, as now. Apart from that, there's no agreement on which particular stories deserve to be on the frontpage, and even if there were such agreement, there's still no way of making sure that the most deserving stories get the spots (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306). Everyone has the experience of being frustrated when a story that they care about gets flagged or otherwise falls in rank. When feelings are running hot, people jump to the conclusion that we're secretly on the opposite political side, or trying to suppress discussion on a particular topic. That's not the case at all—it's all explicable by the principles that we've been repeating for years—but that none of that changes how it feels. Then there are the users who feel like HN has gotten too political and is a shadow of its former self—this also has always been with us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869. Double unfortunately, I don't know of a fix for any of these binds, because all of them derive from the fundamentals of what HN is - e.g. a single frontpage with only so many slots (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20front%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). (* Or to put it differently, note the words most and probably in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, as pg once said: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426.)

johnnyanmac 9mo ago

We would have curtailed the AI discussion years ago of preventing flame wars was the primary issue. I do think that they simply cling to outdated sentiments that politics is "dirty laundry" to take out instead of properly cleaning hoise.

jacquesm 9mo ago

The main reason to avoid flamewars is to protect the atmosphere on HN but you can't make the case that if the world is on fire we can just sit here and pretend it isn't happening and discuss the latest tweak to react as though it is the most important thing in the world. I've long argued for a 'other' category as one overflow method or a homepage that is generic and subject specific pages for those that only want LLM news or Apple. I'm sure we could agree on a 10 level 'top' set with 'All' the default. That's one step closer to Reddit of course, but with the growth that HN has seen over the years you can't continue to pretend that the 'small town' measures still apply to this big city. A lot of this really is just about scale and you need to adapt to scale.

zahlman 9mo ago
[flagged]
- TimorousBestie 9mo ago
  If I were in your shoes, I would consider dang’s response in this thread and contemplate whether this is the correct forum for your style of political analysis. I did observe some of this activity over the past couple days and note that many of your interlocutors were also flagged, downvoted, etc., and not always for clearly legitimate reasons. I turned on showdead for a while just to follow the plot. So it goes. I think it’s a good policy (in general, not specific to HN) to match your interlocutor’s effort. There’s no return on investment in any case.
  - zahlman 9mo ago
    I always have showdead on. I turned it on as soon as I learned that there was such a feature. Even the crypto scam posts amuse me. I don't feel that I have a particular "style" of political analysis. In the case of ICE I'm not even doing political analysis; it's legal analysis. I don't like seeing my communities swell with outrage that appears, to me, to be based on propaganda and ignorance. I would not be talking about these topics otherwise. And my defenses are not based in ideology, unless "the terms people are using here describe really serious terrible things, and shouldn't be abused" is an ideology. I don't like being dissuaded from responding to it, because without any reassurance that it will be cleaned up as off-topic, that comes across to me as suppressing an opposed point of view. That especially galls on platforms that otherwise appear committed to open discussion of contentious topics.