[HN Gopher] The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019) ___________________________________________________________________ The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019) Author : capableweb Score : 84 points Date : 2023-07-28 19:22 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com) | gerdesj wrote: | "I wondered if their work might show that tech really does need | humanism--that better online communities can be built one | relationship at a time. Then my eyes moved down the thread, where | a third user had left a new comment. It read: "King Canute was | supposed to stop the tide, you couch alluder." | | Great article, very well researched. Ms Weiner has clearly put | some major effort in there ... or spends an inordinate amount of | time here anyway! Is HN on speed dial in her browser. | | The article is pre-pandemic and a lot of other recent events. I'd | love to diff the older article with one written nowadays, ideally | with minimal knowledge of the original. | dang wrote: | She did do a ton of research, worked through all the materials | we sent her (I sent a lot, including a thwack of Kids in the | Hall videos, several years-long email threads with specific | users, with their permission of course, and god knows what | else), and even changed her mind--a thing rare enough to always | deserve respect. We took a risk in trusting her; I felt like it | worked out, and I'm glad we chose to be open. The article came | out fairer than we probably had any right to expect. There were | bits I could complain about, but that's inevitable. I felt seen | and I think Scott did too. | | Re Canute, she missed that pvg was being playful, in the | context of a longstanding positive connection. I felt bad when | I saw that. But we did get an amusing, and properly italicized, | About box out of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pvg. | | Come back, pvg! | motohagiography wrote: | Forums, like music, love and friendship, die when the | participants become meta about them, I think. Criticism is what | we have when we aren't giving or participating, and while it | opens conversations to people who don't have a stake in them, it | also invites self centeredness and abuses for other agendas. | Everything is better when we stop being meta. | dang wrote: | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... | motohagiography wrote: | If we could get Ducksauce or the Kiffness to produce a song | with a sample of everything is better when we stop being | meta, we might just be able to save the world. :) | [deleted] | FrustratedMonky wrote: | Do you think that the recent problems at reddit could be a cause | of division on HN? | | Maybe part of the exodus of reddit users are coming to HN? | | It seems like HN has become more political in just last couple | months. | duckhelmet wrote: | [flagged] | tiffanyg wrote: | d. None of the above | duckhelmet wrote: | > d. None of the above | | e. Ok, what personal stuff would you want to talk about? | narag wrote: | _The site's now characteristic tone of performative erudition..._ | | On the other hand, this article is an example of down-to-earth | prose and empathy. | 29athrowaway wrote: | I suggest we pool our resources and produce a Mexican corrido | music video for dang. | belfalas wrote: | _> Still, as an occasional reader, I have noticed certain trends. | When stories that focus on structural barriers faced by women in | the workplace, or on diversity in tech, or on race or masculinity | --stories, admittedly, that are more intriguing to me, a person | interested in the humanities, than stories on technical topics-- | hit the front page, users often flag them, presumably for being | off topic, so fast that hardly any comments accrue._ | | I have noticed this trend for a long time also, and well before | this article was first written. It seems to go in waves though | I'll cautiously say that it seems to have gotten somewhat better | in recent years. I remember a time in the mid-2010s when these | kinds of stories would disappear almost instantaneously. Now some | of these articles and topics get a good number of upvotes and | occasionally even substantive dialogue. | | That said, the comments sections on these articles do tend to | devolve pretty quickly. | leononame wrote: | I agree that the comment sections on those articles devolves | really quickly. To me, those comment sections are the worst | part of HN. The normally very civil discourse found in here | tends to be more "reddity". | | Of course, I don't have a concrete example right now. But I do | tend to stay off those topics in here cuase it feels like a | shit show. Really makes me sad because the comment sections on | other non-tech topics like music or literature are always | interesting to read. | mxkopy wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34992588 | | A fun discussion where someone points out that women's rights | negatively affect birth rates, as if women's purpose is to | keep them high | Pannoniae wrote: | It's understandable that they get flagged because people can't | talk about these topics without emotions and it almost always | derails into a flamewar. | vector_spaces wrote: | The implications here are interesting -- that discussing with | emotion is something to avoid or that it's even possible to | avoid at all. We're human -- as much as doing so has been a | cultural aspiration for millenia in the West, it is simply | not possible to decouple ourselves from our physical and | emotional experiences. | | In my mind, it's far less important that we try to address | these topics "without emotion" (whatever that means) and | instead focus on cultivating respect and curiosity and | assuming good faith. This is a bit more congruous with the | spirit of the site. | | There's another Western cultural aspiration involving an | impossible decoupling, probably more common in American | culture than European, which is to depersonalize politics. | But politics is about people, and some people are much less | immediately affected by political and social issues than | others -- there's usually a great many layers of indirection | between the articulation of a regressive point of view or | support for a particular law or politician, and e.g. a | minority being squished out of tech or a parent who was a | victim of a hate crime or a queer person's suicide. There are | probably especially many layers of indirection when it comes | to a lot of tech workers, given the demographics. | | In any case, when discussing politics and issues of class and | race it's important to recognize that you're not talking | about something abstract, but people, and their loved ones | and families. Given that, it's hardly a level playing field | if we start with the expectation that folks will leave | emotion at the door | wheels wrote: | I think it's more of an admission that internet discussions | aren't analogous to in-person discussions, and have a way | of dehumanizing the person you're discussing with. Combined | with modern-day tribalism, it means that most online | "discussions" on a particular set of topics are more about | virtue signaling and displaying tribal membership than they | are about convincing others. As such, it's not unreasonable | shorthand for a forum to avoid such topics en masse, as | when allowed, they tend to drown out everything else. | whatshisface wrote: | "Discussing with emotion" is an euphemism for "saying | things that you would not normally say unless you were | thrown off kilter by your reaction to what you had just | read." | 1000bestlives wrote: | If you are emotionally invested in a topic then it's | probably not technical, or you're drinking someone's | koolaid. | | People who want to discuss these topics on HN are all on | PIPs or jobless. | interroboink wrote: | While I respect your opinion, I can tell you for a | certainty that you are wrong in your specific claim -- I | can cite myself as a counterexample (: | | For instance, recently there was an interesting article | about finishing projects[1], which emphasized the | emotional journey involved, and I rather liked the | discussion it generated. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36313671 | krapp wrote: | I take it you haven't seen how emotional people here get | talking about javascript or systemd or any number of | other pedantic fence-painting "technical" subjects. | worrycue wrote: | What is PIP? Seriously I don't know. I skimmed Wikipedia, | none of the definitions fit. | ryandrake wrote: | I find the topics that are most likely to generate "heated" | discussion tend to be emotional topics, but also they're | more broadly important to society and just more interesting | to discuss. That's why I tend to browse in /active[1]. Some | JSON parsing command line toolkit re-written in Rust [4 | comments]? Yawn.. | | 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/active | mdp2021 wrote: | > _people can 't_ | | If some people are prone to lack of control, that implies | little for individuals. | | Yes some of us can reason. | lackinnermind wrote: | Opinions and views likely follow statical patterns like | everything else. | | Systemic reasons are why it's common to see the collective | responsible for the systemic patterns in society be so fervent | to deny systemic issues exist. | | I myself like the idea of my success being attributed to my | hard work. I would like to think that I bootstrapped my way to | success. It's not an easy feeling to accept that in many ways | by virtue of just being part of the main majority collective I | by default have an advantage in my community over those that | aren't a member in that majority collective group. | | i.e. if the majority % of users in a forum are belonging to a | certain category then it's reasonable to believe that most of | that majority would be against anything perceived as a | criticism of their group (and by extension themselves). | dmix wrote: | There's not a lack of these sorts of discussions on the | internet by males or tech people or white people or whatever. | Just go on Reddit or Twitter it's everywhere. | | American's love talking about those issues. It's probably the | biggest thing they love talking about compared to most other | countries. | carabiner wrote: | Yep this happened with my last 3 flagged submissions. All on | social issues. Really sad because especially first one listed | below I thought would elicit good discussions, somewhat tied | other issues like affirmative action. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35867458 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36065735 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36627969 | dang wrote: | I'd say https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35867458 was an | interesting submission that probably shouldn't have been | flagged, although it's doubtful whether a thoughtful, curious | discussion is possible. Usually we end up with people | charging in and wielding their priors as a stick, and from | that point of view I can understand the flags. | | The other two were too sensational and, in the case of | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36627969, already a | heavily discussed theme, so I'd say they were flagged | correctly. | eduction wrote: | [flagged] | 1000bestlives wrote: | Have you tried discussing your non-technical pet topics on a | non-technical forum? | dang wrote: | Hey, that's not fair! HN is for everyone's pet topics and | non-technical stories are welcome. The only criterion is | that they be interesting and gratify curiosity. | | I mean, there's a high-ranking thread about a huge oak | table on the front page right now: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36912861. As there | should be. | | (You probably already know this but for anyone who doesn't: | HN is explicitly not just a technical forum - see | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.) | rvba wrote: | Somehow you dont see anyone from HN go to some "diversity | news" forum to post hacker related stuff there. It's | always the diversity types that come to other places. | (arguably to ruin them) | | Is there even any real "diversity forum"? I guess not. | | There is a type of people who can only corrupt, it cannot | build. | | 500 years ago they would be in inquisition, 50 years ago | they would be in a hownowners association and tell you | that you cannot paint your doors the color you want, now | they are in those diversity groups... | vhlhvjcov wrote: | I'm confused, what exactly links the Inquisition, | homeowners associations and "diversity groups"? | | Also what is a diversity group? | neilv wrote: | > _That said, the comments sections on these articles do tend | to devolve pretty quickly._ | | I might be getting desensitized, but (being pretty socially | progressive, myself) the comment threads painful to me seem | much less frequent today than a few years ago. | | (Up until a couple years ago, when a comment thread seemed to | bring out comment threads that were very concerning, sometimes | I'd go read a little n-gate.com, as an antidote. I'd let that | person rant about HN, much more over-the-top than I would. | Unfortunately, during their last installment or two, before | disappearing, the writer sounded more genuinely upset about | something. I hope they're OK, and that they didn't absorb too | much stress, while saving me from blowing a gasket.) | version_five wrote: | That kind of stuff has infected so much of modern discourse, if | people want to talk about it there are plenty of forums for it. | Why should we all stop what we're doing and prioritize | discussing a niche political cause who's proponents have been | blackmailing people everywhere into paying attention to them | and have now come to dominate all sorts of forums and secure | power, ironically with no benefit to the people they feign | support for. | | And when people say they want it discussed, they don't mean | they want to read diverse opinions, they just mean they want to | see orthodoxy regurgitated. | dang wrote: | There's no doubt that political topics and threads often work | that way, and I understand the frustration. We don't want | regurgitation--that follows from what we're trying to | optimize for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&pr | efix=true&sor.... | | But the question of how to handle politics on HN is not | simple. By the same principle of trying to optimize for | curiosity, some content with political overlap is interesting | and belongs here. The questions are which forms of it, how | much, which particular links, etc.. I feel like after 10 | years we arrived at a pretty coherent and stable general | answer to that. Not that we get every specific call right--we | don't. But the general principle has held up. | | For anyone wondering what I'm talking about, here are some | past explanations: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490 (April 2020) | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 (Nov 2019) | | and some related points: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 (July 2020) | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 (May 2018) | | and there are lots more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange= | all&page=0&prefix=false&so... covering this. | [deleted] | lackinnermind wrote: | [flagged] | Mistletoe wrote: | Hacker News would be immeasurably improved by removing the flag | button entirely. That's what the downvote button is for. Flag | should be a message to a mod if there is something heinous like | gore on the front page. It's used as a censorship button here | and that isn't cool, especially in a place that is supposed to | support well rounded discussion. | mdp2021 wrote: | The snipers that hit you prove you wrong: you may have looked | for discussion, you received passing sneers: flagging is | probably not the critical issue. | nitwit005 wrote: | A lot of articles do match the very first thing in the | guideline's list of what's off topic: | | > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, | or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new | phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal | pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- | topic. | | Specifically, there is this tendency to briefly discuss some | new social issue, but then filling the rest of the article with | discussion of the current political situation. | leononame wrote: | Just cause they are related to humanities or discuss | masculinity, minorities or race in tech doesn't make them | political by default. | | A topic being discussed a lot in politics doesn't necessarily | mean that that topic is political imo | woooooo wrote: | Sturgeon's Law, though. The average article on all of those | topics is a pile of political flamebait. | nitwit005 wrote: | You don't appear to have read what I wrote very carefully. | The problem is that they fill most of the article with a | general discussion of politics, making the article mostly | about general politics. | | People are naturally going to flag such an article. | leononame wrote: | Right, I'm sorry. I misread that | thimkerbell wrote: | Thank you Dan. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | Annual submission? Forever props to Dang and the mods of course. | | Some previous discussions: | | _A year ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040 | | _3 years ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25048415 | | _4 years ago_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643052 | 1000bestlives wrote: | "Hey guys! Ready to discuss touchy-feely stuff all day, | everyday yet? No? Well, see ya next year!" | hoofhearted wrote: | Daniel is the man! I can't express how grateful I am for his | openness and honesty when you interact with him. | | I'm working on a fun side project now that was inspired after | emailing him. | | When YC asks me to come out for a demo, I'd be most excited to | finally meet him in person lol | antigonemerlin wrote: | Trust only answers from domain experts. | | I think it is unreasonable to expect that hackers are expert | assyriologists, material scientists, or sociologists, despite | what we may think about ourselves. Some of us are fortunate | enough to know many things and master a few more disciplines. Few | of us have mastered everything. | | I know that I'm a glorified glue monkey. On all other subjects, I | am ignorant, and rely on the opinions of others. | | After leaving reddit, I'm trying not to relapse into karma | farming and speculating about topics which I have no expertise | in, which just about leaves my own personal anecdotes about | growing up Canadian. That, and asking the beginner's question. | That's probably for the best for the health of the forum at | large. | throwanem wrote: | Welcome to Hacker News, where you curate your experience mostly | the old-fashioned way - in your brain. | | It doesn't always work out great, but no one ever promised it | would. About three days in five, I look at the front page and | shake my head. But the other two, it's worth more to me than | any of the newspapers I actually pay for. | yowlingcat wrote: | HN is one of the few communities where I've had scenarios where | I've gotten into a spirited discussion, been gently told to cool | off (or gotten a temporary rate limit), taken a step back and | realized, you know what? I was not interacting in the spirit of | the community. | | Of course, the community is no more immune than any other | regarding group think or rough edges. But on the whole, I've | found the level of discourse to impressively high quality over | time, and I've been posting and reading here on one account or | another for over a decade. It's not just the level of discourse | that is impressive, but its prolonged longevity. I think it can | only have occurred from a very thoughtful approach to moderation; | something I immediately miss when I step into other less curated | forums such as Reddit and Twitter, where I can find the | interesting content in the discourse, but laden with | significantly more noise and significantly less thoughtfulness. | | Thanks dang! | [deleted] | noir_lord wrote: | That the moderators are so unnoticeable is a testament to their | skill. | | We have to do heavy content moderation at work and the people | requiring that moderation would test the patience of a literal | saint. | Given_47 wrote: | I especially love Dan aggregating previous discussions on | <topic>. Equally appreciate the other users that do the same. | It's nice to go and check out how perceptions have changed (if | it's a thing with longer time horizon) or just additional | discourse | chasd00 wrote: | I agree, the fact that I haven't noticed significant moderation | on HN is a sign of really good work by that team. Also, it's a | sign of a community, while not perfect, is at least trying to | be a community. | | I would like to read the moderators take on getting through the | pandemic on HN. The toxicity here hit new highs for me during | that period. God help you if even dared to muse that you may | consider thinking about lockdowns as maybe not the perfect | answer. Further, even whispering "lab-leak" is still a crime | although not as punished as it once was. | | Even through that period though i will say HN is the best | large-scale forum i've ever found. | DANmode wrote: | As if to prove this, the other day I saw some clown with a | multi-year account chastising dang, as if he was a self- | appointed moderator! | | Great work, mods. | kaycebasques wrote: | "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done | anything at all." https://youtu.be/edCqF_NtpOQ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-28 23:01 UTC)