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Ask HN: Why are all the Eich posts being deleted?

14 points by pbreit 13y ago

Are they being flagged or have admins decided it's not what they want here? The subject certainly seems relevant to the audience.

wglb 13y ago
Duplicates.
yaur 13y ago
We know that they algorithmically detect flame wars and automatically demote threads that devolve into them. It would be shocking if the Eich threads weren't setting those off.
dang 13y ago
It's a combination of user flags and us burying/killing duplicates. We kill duplicates unless they have an active discussion, in which case we bury them (i.e. demote them in rank while leaving them open). There are also penalties for flamewars. Originally I turned up the penalty because the discussion was so horrible. Users pointed out that a story of this magnitude needs to be on the front page, which was a good point, so I lightened the penalty. By "horrible" I mean violating HN's values of intellectual substance and personal civility so badly as to be irremediable. There are some topics the community here has empirically proven itself to be incapable of discussing without that happening. I resisted this view for a long time—ask tptacek or davidw, my adversaries in this debate for years!—but my position either was wrong or at some point became so. I don't know yet what the long term solution is, but the status quo is untenable, especially because these things aren't static—they get better or worse, and the trend has been worse.
- computer 13y ago
  Instead of banning the discussion, consider banning the people making it bad. Or, if they are otherwise worthwhile contributors, warn them first. I'm not sure what options the moderators have right now, but perhaps you should consider adding a three-strikes policy for users making clearly awful comments, with a simple "warn"-UI button for mods.
  - WildUtah 13y ago
    Having read part of the threads (I know, I shouldn't have), the problem wasn't so much abuse or bad behavior. It was well intentioned people talking past each other. I don't think you should ban people for that. @dang is right to just demote it.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Yes. This is what I hate most about political stories on HN. They mostly just create opportunities for people to misunderstand each other, yell at each other, and then get angry at each other. For no good reason. In the worst of these threads, people don't even disagree; they just don't agree with each other the right way, or don't agree as fiercely as they'd like. No matter; they'll still yell and spit at each other.
      - vxNsr 13y ago
        Ah, a man after my own heart. The number of times I stopped myself from "yelling" at people that they weren't even disagreeing or that they had simply misunderstood each other in the last two days....
- brudgers 13y ago
  My observation is that low quality discussions correlate with high rates of commenting - more than about 50 an hour and there is likely to be a lack of self control regardless of topic. Shared tragedy is perhaps an exception, but only perhaps. Thinking about the threads as bandwidth and too many posts as congestion, then the solution would be some form of rate limiting. Maybe weighted maybe not.
- ig1 13y ago
  Driving content off the front page may well make the discussion worse. It takes time and effort to write a thought-out comment on contentious issues and if I invest that time only to find that the post has been flagged off the front-page then I'm much less likely to invest the effort next time. It'll essentially mean good comments are driven away from contentious posts resulting in a downward solution. Flagging should be focused on bad comments and not on the contentious stories themselves.
  - brudgers 13y ago
    When I find myself entering into discussions like those surrounding the Eich story, I often get to the end of a long and thoughtful post and realize that it was just catharsis and my view doesn't add anything but my reaction to the thread. I think part of being a good HN commenter is avoiding contentious discussions. That's not the same as avoiding contentious topics, but recognizing that the tone and tenor and volume of a comment thread is hopelessly bad. Stories are bigger than a particular submission. Objectively, the submissions for the Eich story are low quality by HN standards, and the submission for something like Eich isn't the story. The story is a hydra and over time the heads which grow back look more like this than a retweeted press release and the discussion is becomes more that the reactive tweets. What is unique about HN are headlines like "The Inside Story of Eich's Resignation [2014]" that will make the front page in 2018. To me, there's nothing wrong if people are forced to go elsewhere to passionately opine on breaking news as it breaks. Threads with 100 comments in the first hour are mostly noise and noise attracts mostly more noise. None of this is to say that the Eich story doesn't touch on deep important issues, or that I would not prefer that HN could handle such stories. But the problem with the comment threads were not caused by individual behavior but by group behavior. It's not a few bad actors but the collective result of group interaction.
    - dang 13y ago
      I often get to the end of a long and thoughtful post and realize that it was just catharsis "Just catharsis" is an excellent phrase for that. Precisely so.
  - dang 13y ago

14 points by pbreit 13y ago

Are they being flagged or have admins decided it's not what they want here? The subject certainly seems relevant to the audience.

wglb 13y ago

Duplicates.

yaur 13y ago

We know that they algorithmically detect flame wars and automatically demote threads that devolve into them. It would be shocking if the Eich threads weren't setting those off.

dang 13y ago

It's a combination of user flags and us burying/killing duplicates. We kill duplicates unless they have an active discussion, in which case we bury them (i.e. demote them in rank while leaving them open). There are also penalties for flamewars. Originally I turned up the penalty because the discussion was so horrible. Users pointed out that a story of this magnitude needs to be on the front page, which was a good point, so I lightened the penalty. By "horrible" I mean violating HN's values of intellectual substance and personal civility so badly as to be irremediable. There are some topics the community here has empirically proven itself to be incapable of discussing without that happening. I resisted this view for a long time—ask tptacek or davidw, my adversaries in this debate for years!—but my position either was wrong or at some point became so. I don't know yet what the long term solution is, but the status quo is untenable, especially because these things aren't static—they get better or worse, and the trend has been worse.

computer 13y ago
Instead of banning the discussion, consider banning the people making it bad. Or, if they are otherwise worthwhile contributors, warn them first. I'm not sure what options the moderators have right now, but perhaps you should consider adding a three-strikes policy for users making clearly awful comments, with a simple "warn"-UI button for mods.
- WildUtah 13y ago
  Having read part of the threads (I know, I shouldn't have), the problem wasn't so much abuse or bad behavior. It was well intentioned people talking past each other. I don't think you should ban people for that. @dang is right to just demote it.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Yes. This is what I hate most about political stories on HN. They mostly just create opportunities for people to misunderstand each other, yell at each other, and then get angry at each other. For no good reason. In the worst of these threads, people don't even disagree; they just don't agree with each other the right way, or don't agree as fiercely as they'd like. No matter; they'll still yell and spit at each other.
    - vxNsr 13y ago
      Ah, a man after my own heart. The number of times I stopped myself from "yelling" at people that they weren't even disagreeing or that they had simply misunderstood each other in the last two days....
brudgers 13y ago
My observation is that low quality discussions correlate with high rates of commenting - more than about 50 an hour and there is likely to be a lack of self control regardless of topic. Shared tragedy is perhaps an exception, but only perhaps. Thinking about the threads as bandwidth and too many posts as congestion, then the solution would be some form of rate limiting. Maybe weighted maybe not.
ig1 13y ago
Driving content off the front page may well make the discussion worse. It takes time and effort to write a thought-out comment on contentious issues and if I invest that time only to find that the post has been flagged off the front-page then I'm much less likely to invest the effort next time. It'll essentially mean good comments are driven away from contentious posts resulting in a downward solution. Flagging should be focused on bad comments and not on the contentious stories themselves.
- brudgers 13y ago
  When I find myself entering into discussions like those surrounding the Eich story, I often get to the end of a long and thoughtful post and realize that it was just catharsis and my view doesn't add anything but my reaction to the thread. I think part of being a good HN commenter is avoiding contentious discussions. That's not the same as avoiding contentious topics, but recognizing that the tone and tenor and volume of a comment thread is hopelessly bad. Stories are bigger than a particular submission. Objectively, the submissions for the Eich story are low quality by HN standards, and the submission for something like Eich isn't the story. The story is a hydra and over time the heads which grow back look more like this than a retweeted press release and the discussion is becomes more that the reactive tweets. What is unique about HN are headlines like "The Inside Story of Eich's Resignation [2014]" that will make the front page in 2018. To me, there's nothing wrong if people are forced to go elsewhere to passionately opine on breaking news as it breaks. Threads with 100 comments in the first hour are mostly noise and noise attracts mostly more noise. None of this is to say that the Eich story doesn't touch on deep important issues, or that I would not prefer that HN could handle such stories. But the problem with the comment threads were not caused by individual behavior but by group behavior. It's not a few bad actors but the collective result of group interaction.
  - dang 13y ago
    I often get to the end of a long and thoughtful post and realize that it was just catharsis "Just catharsis" is an excellent phrase for that. Precisely so.
- dang 13y ago