6 ms·

This is only meaningful if enough people read it and agree

by gr8tyeah 7mo ago

bhhaskin 7mo ago
Nah they are pretty good a banning users that don't follow the guidelines.
- abtinf 7mo ago
  Yes, and it’s not like they just insta-ban every infraction. I’ve broken the guidelines on this site before. The mods reply and say “hey, stop doing that, here is the guideline”. I stopped doing it. Life continues.
  - altairprime 7mo ago
    (They do react differently if you show a pattern of disregard rather than a one-time event; ‘dang before’ might pull up some of those in a search.)
- jbaber 7mo ago
  One of the virtues of HN is polite prodding when the rules are broken.
abtinf 7mo ago
That’s true. Fortunately, by virtue of it being added to the guidelines, quite a few folks here are prepared to reply to obviously generated comments by simply citing and linking the rule. Just search for “shallow dismissal” to see many examples. It will take time, but eventually everyone will know about it.
- bigiain 7mo ago
  Sadly, I suspect the rate of generation of AI "everyones" vastly exceeds the community's capacity to teach culture.
- altairprime 7mo ago
  > quite a few folks here are prepared to reply to obviously generated comments by simply citing and linking the rule Note that the guidelines do explicitly say not to post about guidelines violations in comments, and to email them instead. I know this isn’t a well-loved guideline in this modern era, but duly noted: those well-intended comments are themselves breaking the guidelines.
  - lokar 7mo ago
    Are you referring to: > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. If so, that seems different. If not, can you clarify?
    - altairprime 7mo ago
      That one, yes. “Insinuations” is a less conditional form of “Accusations”, connected by the concept of “Claims”; they’re all synonymous from a general perspective: - I insinuate that you are a bot (often shortened to “Is this a bot?”) - I claim that you are a bot. (often shortened to “This is a bot.”) - I accuse you of being a bot l. (often shortened to “Are you a bot?”) The part where I’m interpreting to include accusations of bottery and slop is “and the like. It”; the first clause, ‘the like’ refers to the generic category of accusations against posted comments, which historically were the listed examples, but is also defined to include others not listed, such as today’s popular accusations of bot or AI; the second clause, ‘It’, refers to all insinuations-class content. Without the list of examples, this reads: ’Please don’t post insinuations. It degrades discussion Yep, this is true. Accusations, Insinuations, Claims, of bot or AI or astroturf; they all wreck discussions and I end up having to email the mods to deal with them. A lot of people use the rhetorical device of Discredit The Opposition by invoking this sort of thing, and while that’s less prevalent in ‘reads like AI’ insinuations, they still degrade the site. With AI-assisted writing is a violation of site guidelines, and even before it was, posting of AI-assisted writing was a clear ‘abuse’ of the community’s expectations of unassisted-human discussions. Aside from expectations, I can also classically understand in Internet history that ‘violating the guidelines’ is the phrase formerly known as ‘abuse of service’, by which I interpret the above reference to abuse to refer to breaking the guideline about posting accusations. The guidelines are not a legal contract as program code, and perhaps this one is clunky enough that it needs to be reworded slightly; thus my intent, once the flames die down here, to let the mods know about the confusion. As I’m not a mod, this is my interpretation alone; you might have to email the mods and ask them to reply here if you want a formal statement on the matter, given how many comments this thread got in a couple hours. ps. On ’and is usually mistaken’: I’m not a mod, so I can’t judge how often accusations of AI/bot are mistaken, but I’m also an old human who learned em-dashes in composition class, so I tend to view the modern pitchfork mobs out to get anyone who can compose English as being less accurate in their judgments than they believe they are.
- rendleflag 7mo ago
  What constitutes “at edited”. If I throw a block of text in to an ai see if it makes sense — say a response to a post — and fold the suggestions in, is that “ai edited”?
  - ASalazarMX 7mo ago
    Um, why would you do that instead of waiting for someone more knowledgable to reply, and learn from? Replies are not mandatory, and experts/insiders participating is one of the best parts of the human Internet. Let them shine.
    - rendleflag 7mo ago
      It can catch things that I might miss or might be misinterpreted. I sometime miss simple things, like like repeated words, that an AI point out. Is a spell checker considered "AI"? Is Grammerly? Okay, maybe Grammerly from 5 years ago as opposed to today? If I'm typing on my phone and it pops up the next suggested word, is that AI edited? And no, I don't have to reply to a post, but when I think it's a bad policy, should I just accept it without discussion? And who determines the "experts/insiders" and which voices should be allowed?
      - I_dream_of_Geni 7mo ago
        Yes, these are MY questions and feelings too. In the past, if I just HINTED at asking these kinds of questions, I was downvoted into oblivion (in other accounts. I have to say THAT specifically because some people here dive in to my account and get super anal about my age, my previous comments, my moniker, ad nauseum)
    - nobody9999 7mo ago
      >Um, why would you do that instead of waiting for someone more knowledgable to reply, and learn from? Replies are not mandatory, and experts/insiders participating is one of the best parts of the human Internet. Let them shine. As Isaac Asimov pointed out[0]: “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” This thread runs through many cultures and isn't just a problem on the Internet, although the Internet certainly has accelerated/worsened the problem. And it has created a distrust of experts which (as has been obvious for a long time) has made us, as a whole, dumber and less informed. I recommend The Death of Expertise[1] by Tom Nichols for a sane and reasonable treatment of this issue. If books aren't your thing, Nichols did a book talk[2] which lays out the main points he makes in the book. During that talk, he also gives the best definition of disinformation I've heard yet. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84250-anti-intellectualism-has-been-a-constant-thread-winding-its-way-through https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84250-anti-intellectualism-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise [2] https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/the-death-of-expertise/474987 https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/the-death-of-expertis...
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
VoodooJuJu 7mo ago
[dead]
Apofis 7mo ago
When creating an account, there should be a short screen with the salient points from the guidelines to follow.
- gus_massa 7mo ago
  This https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
- wombatpm 7mo ago
  That will just prompt someone to create a HN account creation agent and post it to Moltbook.
Cthulhu_ 7mo ago
That's assuming community input / democracy, but especially online there's a good argument to be made for authoritarianism.

This is only meaningful if enough people read it and agree

bhhaskin 7mo ago

Nah they are pretty good a banning users that don't follow the guidelines.

abtinf 7mo ago
Yes, and it’s not like they just insta-ban every infraction. I’ve broken the guidelines on this site before. The mods reply and say “hey, stop doing that, here is the guideline”. I stopped doing it. Life continues.
- altairprime 7mo ago
  (They do react differently if you show a pattern of disregard rather than a one-time event; ‘dang before’ might pull up some of those in a search.)
jbaber 7mo ago
One of the virtues of HN is polite prodding when the rules are broken.

abtinf 7mo ago

That’s true. Fortunately, by virtue of it being added to the guidelines, quite a few folks here are prepared to reply to obviously generated comments by simply citing and linking the rule. Just search for “shallow dismissal” to see many examples. It will take time, but eventually everyone will know about it.

bigiain 7mo ago
Sadly, I suspect the rate of generation of AI "everyones" vastly exceeds the community's capacity to teach culture.
altairprime 7mo ago
> quite a few folks here are prepared to reply to obviously generated comments by simply citing and linking the rule Note that the guidelines do explicitly say not to post about guidelines violations in comments, and to email them instead. I know this isn’t a well-loved guideline in this modern era, but duly noted: those well-intended comments are themselves breaking the guidelines.
- lokar 7mo ago
  Are you referring to: > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. If so, that seems different. If not, can you clarify?
  - altairprime 7mo ago
    That one, yes. “Insinuations” is a less conditional form of “Accusations”, connected by the concept of “Claims”; they’re all synonymous from a general perspective: - I insinuate that you are a bot (often shortened to “Is this a bot?”) - I claim that you are a bot. (often shortened to “This is a bot.”) - I accuse you of being a bot l. (often shortened to “Are you a bot?”) The part where I’m interpreting to include accusations of bottery and slop is “and the like. It”; the first clause, ‘the like’ refers to the generic category of accusations against posted comments, which historically were the listed examples, but is also defined to include others not listed, such as today’s popular accusations of bot or AI; the second clause, ‘It’, refers to all insinuations-class content. Without the list of examples, this reads: ’Please don’t post insinuations. It degrades discussion Yep, this is true. Accusations, Insinuations, Claims, of bot or AI or astroturf; they all wreck discussions and I end up having to email the mods to deal with them. A lot of people use the rhetorical device of Discredit The Opposition by invoking this sort of thing, and while that’s less prevalent in ‘reads like AI’ insinuations, they still degrade the site. With AI-assisted writing is a violation of site guidelines, and even before it was, posting of AI-assisted writing was a clear ‘abuse’ of the community’s expectations of unassisted-human discussions. Aside from expectations, I can also classically understand in Internet history that ‘violating the guidelines’ is the phrase formerly known as ‘abuse of service’, by which I interpret the above reference to abuse to refer to breaking the guideline about posting accusations. The guidelines are not a legal contract as program code, and perhaps this one is clunky enough that it needs to be reworded slightly; thus my intent, once the flames die down here, to let the mods know about the confusion. As I’m not a mod, this is my interpretation alone; you might have to email the mods and ask them to reply here if you want a formal statement on the matter, given how many comments this thread got in a couple hours. ps. On ’and is usually mistaken’: I’m not a mod, so I can’t judge how often accusations of AI/bot are mistaken, but I’m also an old human who learned em-dashes in composition class, so I tend to view the modern pitchfork mobs out to get anyone who can compose English as being less accurate in their judgments than they believe they are.
rendleflag 7mo ago
What constitutes “at edited”. If I throw a block of text in to an ai see if it makes sense — say a response to a post — and fold the suggestions in, is that “ai edited”?
- ASalazarMX 7mo ago
  Um, why would you do that instead of waiting for someone more knowledgable to reply, and learn from? Replies are not mandatory, and experts/insiders participating is one of the best parts of the human Internet. Let them shine.
  - rendleflag 7mo ago
    It can catch things that I might miss or might be misinterpreted. I sometime miss simple things, like like repeated words, that an AI point out. Is a spell checker considered "AI"? Is Grammerly? Okay, maybe Grammerly from 5 years ago as opposed to today? If I'm typing on my phone and it pops up the next suggested word, is that AI edited? And no, I don't have to reply to a post, but when I think it's a bad policy, should I just accept it without discussion? And who determines the "experts/insiders" and which voices should be allowed?
    - I_dream_of_Geni 7mo ago
      Yes, these are MY questions and feelings too. In the past, if I just HINTED at asking these kinds of questions, I was downvoted into oblivion (in other accounts. I have to say THAT specifically because some people here dive in to my account and get super anal about my age, my previous comments, my moniker, ad nauseum)
  - nobody9999 7mo ago
    >Um, why would you do that instead of waiting for someone more knowledgable to reply, and learn from? Replies are not mandatory, and experts/insiders participating is one of the best parts of the human Internet. Let them shine. As Isaac Asimov pointed out[0]: “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” This thread runs through many cultures and isn't just a problem on the Internet, although the Internet certainly has accelerated/worsened the problem. And it has created a distrust of experts which (as has been obvious for a long time) has made us, as a whole, dumber and less informed. I recommend The Death of Expertise[1] by Tom Nichols for a sane and reasonable treatment of this issue. If books aren't your thing, Nichols did a book talk[2] which lays out the main points he makes in the book. During that talk, he also gives the best definition of disinformation I've heard yet. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84250-anti-intellectualism-has-been-a-constant-thread-winding-its-way-through https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84250-anti-intellectualism-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise [2] https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/the-death-of-expertise/474987 https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/the-death-of-expertis...

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

VoodooJuJu 7mo ago

[dead]

Apofis 7mo ago

When creating an account, there should be a short screen with the salient points from the guidelines to follow.

gus_massa 7mo ago
This https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
wombatpm 7mo ago
That will just prompt someone to create a HN account creation agent and post it to Moltbook.

Cthulhu_ 7mo ago

That's assuming community input / democracy, but especially online there's a good argument to be made for authoritarianism.