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It's hard to believe that you say this with a straight face. Dropbox is an absurdly relevant company to the HN community. It is a tech company, and HN alum, h

by gress 13y ago

It's hard to believe that you say this with a straight face. Dropbox is an absurdly relevant company to the HN community. It is a tech company, and HN alum, highly competitive, and indeed a key example that people here look up to. How Dropbox deals with ethics and political issues as it grows is clearly relevant to HN.

brudgers 13y ago
So that we are on the same page, I want to distinguish between three different components of HN that tend to run together. First there is the news event [1]. This is just the fact that Rice has been named to DropBox's board [or more abstractly that it has been reported as fact]. We both agree that this is relevant to the HN community. Second there is a particular article [1] submission to HN [or several particular article submissions] related to the news event. Again we both probably agree that most or all of the various articles are appropriate for submission to HN because the news event is relevant and furthermore the news event is not likely to receive attention in other media proportional to its interest to the HN community. The third component is the comments that are made on a particular article submission and it is by this third component that many in the HN community judge an article submission as a contributory or detrimental. When those members see an article submission as contributory, they may upvote it [yes, people upvote article submissions because the comments are good]. When they see one as detrimental, then they are likely to flag the article submission. And although there are members of the HN community whose experience leads them to flag article submissions the fear will lead to detrimental comments, they do not appear to be the majority. [1] Using the word "story" tends to conflate both of these.
- gress 13y ago
  I don't really know why you chose to make these distinction as a response to what I wrote. You said HN is not an appropriate place for this kind of discussion. That's all I was disagreeing with. I would agree that an arbitrary discussion of US politics would be out of place, but on this occasion it is directly relevant to this community.
  - brudgers 13y ago
    That some sorts of discussions are not consistent with HN's implicit standards is a statement about facts on the ground - right now, today...erh, for better or worse. Why? Well I suspect it's because people will preface their comments with something like "It's hard to believe that you say this with a straight face" in response to a person who pretty much shares their opinion about the relevance of a story and the appropriateness of a particular submission - i.e. I suspect its because people come in with guns blazing and the belief that god will know his own.[1] I described how I believe decisions are made in response to an honest question. I don't make the decisions and I accept that they are made with good intent even when I might not agree with them. Sure you can disagree that I believe that. It's your right as a user of the internet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers#.22Kill_them_all.2C_God_will_know_His_own.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers#.22Ki...
    - gress 13y ago
      I think the point is that you aren't an objective reporter of 'the implicit standards'. You are a participant in creating them. Each time someone asserts an opinion about what the standards are in a particular case, they are working to make their view into part of the standard.
      - brudgers 13y ago
        Hacker News is run by Y-Combinator to further YC's interests and it's not much of a conceptual stretch to think of HN as a Paul Graham side project. Now it would be a mistake to attribute all the day to day moderation to PG because there were YC alums who involved and of course now YC has charged dang as chief moderator as PG pursues things he'd rather be doing. But it's certainly a larger mistake to think that these standards stem from me - not only because IANPG or a YC alum but because the standards existed in roughly their current form when I arrived nearly four years ago. Now, I'm still here because I can generally abide by the standards. Indeed, I'm still here almost certainly because the experience HN provides as a consequence of those standards is so much better for me than the UseNet or the various fora I've actively shaped or from which I've been banned. I don't actively flag political stories off the front page, but I tend to avoid discussion threads that proceed at 100+ comments per hour because I can nearly always find something about which I can express outrage and always find something that I can call wrong. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm above expressing outrage or don't enjoy telling someone they're wrong or as much as the next fellow. It's that I've got a better places to do that than HN and their better both because it's part of their culture and better because my effort is likely to have more impact on the world than a disagreement about the role Rice in OIF.

by gress 13y ago

brudgers 13y ago

So that we are on the same page, I want to distinguish between three different components of HN that tend to run together. First there is the news event [1]. This is just the fact that Rice has been named to DropBox's board [or more abstractly that it has been reported as fact]. We both agree that this is relevant to the HN community. Second there is a particular article [1] submission to HN [or several particular article submissions] related to the news event. Again we both probably agree that most or all of the various articles are appropriate for submission to HN because the news event is relevant and furthermore the news event is not likely to receive attention in other media proportional to its interest to the HN community. The third component is the comments that are made on a particular article submission and it is by this third component that many in the HN community judge an article submission as a contributory or detrimental. When those members see an article submission as contributory, they may upvote it [yes, people upvote article submissions because the comments are good]. When they see one as detrimental, then they are likely to flag the article submission. And although there are members of the HN community whose experience leads them to flag article submissions the fear will lead to detrimental comments, they do not appear to be the majority. [1] Using the word "story" tends to conflate both of these.

gress 13y ago
I don't really know why you chose to make these distinction as a response to what I wrote. You said HN is not an appropriate place for this kind of discussion. That's all I was disagreeing with. I would agree that an arbitrary discussion of US politics would be out of place, but on this occasion it is directly relevant to this community.
- brudgers 13y ago
  That some sorts of discussions are not consistent with HN's implicit standards is a statement about facts on the ground - right now, today...erh, for better or worse. Why? Well I suspect it's because people will preface their comments with something like "It's hard to believe that you say this with a straight face" in response to a person who pretty much shares their opinion about the relevance of a story and the appropriateness of a particular submission - i.e. I suspect its because people come in with guns blazing and the belief that god will know his own.[1] I described how I believe decisions are made in response to an honest question. I don't make the decisions and I accept that they are made with good intent even when I might not agree with them. Sure you can disagree that I believe that. It's your right as a user of the internet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers#.22Kill_them_all.2C_God_will_know_His_own.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers#.22Ki...
  - gress 13y ago
    I think the point is that you aren't an objective reporter of 'the implicit standards'. You are a participant in creating them. Each time someone asserts an opinion about what the standards are in a particular case, they are working to make their view into part of the standard.
    - brudgers 13y ago
      Hacker News is run by Y-Combinator to further YC's interests and it's not much of a conceptual stretch to think of HN as a Paul Graham side project. Now it would be a mistake to attribute all the day to day moderation to PG because there were YC alums who involved and of course now YC has charged dang as chief moderator as PG pursues things he'd rather be doing. But it's certainly a larger mistake to think that these standards stem from me - not only because IANPG or a YC alum but because the standards existed in roughly their current form when I arrived nearly four years ago. Now, I'm still here because I can generally abide by the standards. Indeed, I'm still here almost certainly because the experience HN provides as a consequence of those standards is so much better for me than the UseNet or the various fora I've actively shaped or from which I've been banned. I don't actively flag political stories off the front page, but I tend to avoid discussion threads that proceed at 100+ comments per hour because I can nearly always find something about which I can express outrage and always find something that I can call wrong. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm above expressing outrage or don't enjoy telling someone they're wrong or as much as the next fellow. It's that I've got a better places to do that than HN and their better both because it's part of their culture and better because my effort is likely to have more impact on the world than a disagreement about the role Rice in OIF.