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I agree that moderation is necessary, but it needs to happen at the comment level, not the post level.

by Bahamut 12y ago

tptacek 12y ago
HN has always been moderated at the post level, from the beginnings of the site. If it wasn't, the site would be flooded with fluffy recaps of whatever current event story was making people angriest right now, and there would be no place for stories about Linux on solderless breadboards and Latex-like math programming languages; instead, we'd get HuffPo, Buzzfeed, Pando, and ValleyWag's take on whatever the controversy-du-jour was, day after day.
- Bahamut 12y ago
  So there's no place for reasoned discussion on topics that are clearly of interest to many here? That sounds like a poor excuse for improper moderation. Some level of post level moderation I can understand, but to the degree practiced here, you might as well have sanctioned curators instead of moderators for that - at the least, it'd be far more accurate, and far more transparent. Instead we get a heavyhanded version that allows a few to destroy possible reasoned discussion by squelching it as a side-effect of this rationale, and instead we get lots of topics that don't really foster discussion, are often not interesting or important (even to those intellectually minded) - there are plenty of banal articles on startups that get upvoted and end up on the front page, but no similar policy gets instituted simply because they are "not controversial", and yet they take up the same space, and certainly are less fulfilling. The process is opaque, and I know I'm not the only one here who has questioned this. There are sometimes situations where flags are deemed inappropriate, and yet the effects don't get raised when moderators even acknowledge when the flags were incorrect.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I guess my point was, a cri de coeur at the end of 2014 probably isn't going to change a policy that has been in place since early 2007. You are effectively arguing with the premise of the site.
- rodgerd 12y ago
  It's a valid point, but there are plenty of fluffy stories about HN's favourite companies (which have included Uber in the past); how many stories about Tesla (the company), Uber, and the like are about their technology, and how many are breathless enthusiasm? It does look a little rank when there's been heaps of "rah-rah Uber, disrupt, disrupt, disrupt" type articles in the past to have negative ones pruned.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    If it looks that way, you should question your assumptions, because that's not what's happening. What's instead happening is that a controversy-du-jour is spawning lots of little stories, and the mods are working to make sure they don't co-opt the front page, which (because it is a linear list of individual links) is especially vulnerable to controversies-du-jour.

I agree that moderation is necessary, but it needs to happen at the comment level, not the post level.

by Bahamut 12y ago

I agree that moderation is necessary, but it needs to happen at the comment level, not the post level.

HN has always been moderated at the post level, from the beginnings of the site. If it wasn't, the site would be flooded with fluffy recaps of whatever current event story was making people angriest right now, and there would be no place for stories about Linux on solderless breadboards and Latex-like math programming languages; instead, we'd get HuffPo, Buzzfeed, Pando, and ValleyWag's take on whatever the controversy-du-jour was, day after day.

Bahamut 12y ago
So there's no place for reasoned discussion on topics that are clearly of interest to many here? That sounds like a poor excuse for improper moderation. Some level of post level moderation I can understand, but to the degree practiced here, you might as well have sanctioned curators instead of moderators for that - at the least, it'd be far more accurate, and far more transparent. Instead we get a heavyhanded version that allows a few to destroy possible reasoned discussion by squelching it as a side-effect of this rationale, and instead we get lots of topics that don't really foster discussion, are often not interesting or important (even to those intellectually minded) - there are plenty of banal articles on startups that get upvoted and end up on the front page, but no similar policy gets instituted simply because they are "not controversial", and yet they take up the same space, and certainly are less fulfilling. The process is opaque, and I know I'm not the only one here who has questioned this. There are sometimes situations where flags are deemed inappropriate, and yet the effects don't get raised when moderators even acknowledge when the flags were incorrect.
- tptacek 12y ago
  I guess my point was, a cri de coeur at the end of 2014 probably isn't going to change a policy that has been in place since early 2007. You are effectively arguing with the premise of the site.
rodgerd 12y ago
It's a valid point, but there are plenty of fluffy stories about HN's favourite companies (which have included Uber in the past); how many stories about Tesla (the company), Uber, and the like are about their technology, and how many are breathless enthusiasm? It does look a little rank when there's been heaps of "rah-rah Uber, disrupt, disrupt, disrupt" type articles in the past to have negative ones pruned.
- tptacek 12y ago
  If it looks that way, you should question your assumptions, because that's not what's happening. What's instead happening is that a controversy-du-jour is spawning lots of little stories, and the mods are working to make sure they don't co-opt the front page, which (because it is a linear list of individual links) is especially vulnerable to controversies-du-jour.