
An Update on Hacker News - nicklovescode
http://blog.ycombinator.com/an-update-on-hacker-news
======
vectorpush
How does HN's moderation staff feel about users who are dead, completely
oblivious to it, but who continue to post, sometimes for _years_ after the
fact without any kind of warning that they are wasting their time.

Sometimes I check the comment history of these dead posters; 80% of the time
it appears like they are a genuine troll who was correctly moderated out of
the community, however, a significant portion of the time, there doesn't
appear to be anything particularly inappropriate in the comment history, but
the user is still doomed to waste a considerable amount of time attempting to
contribute to this board.

In the context of internet discussion boards, it seems a little harsh.

Off the top of my head, I feel like something akin to an automatic
probationary resurrection period would be an interesting idea. Perhaps it
occurs one year after hellbanishment, giving the community a chance to
organically reevaluate the user's quality of contributions, and giving a
second chance to those who have matured in a years time (or who was simply
hellbanned in error).

~~~
throwit99
I had this happen to me when I critiqued a YC backed company. Had a few
thousand in 'meaningless internet karma points'. You pretty soon realise after
a few further comments anyway, so I doubt it's actually effective.

It's pretty mean spirited though - generally a "douchebag" move. It'd be like
having a bad employee, but instead of firing him, or discussing his work, just
don't bother paying him any more.

After being hellbanned I actually realised that commenting on internet forums
is toxic, generally a waste of time, and not productive. So I quit. At the
start, you sort of care about "karma". But you end up realising it's a measure
of two things. 1. How much time you waste commenting on the internet, and 2.
How much you can agree with the groupthink echo-chamber.

But for those that like spending time commenting, I would have thought
following a subreddit model would work better here, with the growth. Spread
the power out. If I get hellbanned from the "rust is the future!!!"
subhackernews, big whoop.

It'd also help with filtering out all the non-interesting (self driving cars)
stories.

But then perhaps it'd basically be reddit at that stage which would defeat the
point...

~~~
dang
Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide
links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always
false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of
perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate.
So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be
unanswerable.

We don't ban people because they "critiqued a YC backed company".

Edit: Some of the replies have made good points, and I realize that I
overreacted. Sorry about that. Please shoot us an email at hn@ycombinator.com
if you feel your account was banned unfairly. We're always happy to look into
this—there's no question that we make mistakes; the most I can claim is that
we're eager to, and do, correct them when they're brought to our attention.

~~~
glimcat
* Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. *

When that kind of response comes from the site's moderator, I really don't see
the level of toxicity improving any time soon.

It's likely statistically factual, but in context it's just another of the
"mean, stupid things" that Paul Graham called you out as being here to
address. And you appear to have done nothing to investigate whether the
previous user's post was factually correct before slinging personal
accusations.

If this gets me hellbanned too, so be it. Conversation and community on this
site is a toxic mess that leaves people afraid to post _anything_. The main
good thing is following users like patio11 and tptacek.

[http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-
hack...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hacker-news)

~~~
dang
You may be right. I'll look at the comment later and see if I should have
written it differently. There's no time to reflect just now.

I try hard not to let personal irritation leak through in my HN comments, but
I do fail at it. The most I can claim is a willingness to correct mistakes.

~~~
gohjo
It's wildly inappropriate to lob a blanket accusation of fraud against every
single person who has ever complained about your moderation.

People have wildly divergent views as to what's appropriate, what's a little
rude, and what's over the line. This means that even if you really truly
believe that there was NEVER a mistake made during moderation, that some
people will truly believe what they said.

Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

~~~
dang
It's probably a lesson to me that the one time I didn't hedge by saying
"almost" or something like that, someone objects to my "blanket accusation".
Actually, I originally wrote "almost never" (or something similar). But then I
realized I couldn't actually remember a case where someone provided a specific
link to back up his or her grand claim of why they were banned. So in a fit of
impetuousness I lopped off the "almost". I did leave in "nearly always",
though.

> Good moderation requires a ton of empathy and kindness.

I try, but don't always succeed. Thanks for the reminder. I appreciate it.

~~~
hueving
Keep in mind that people might not want to link the example to associate their
current account with a banned account to avoid getting banned again.

~~~
dang
I appreciate your willingness to see both sides and think of a good-faith
interpretation here. That's the Principle of Charity which HN can use a lot
more of. However, the users in question are typically quite accomplished at
making throwaway accounts for specific purposes. Several have done so in this
very thread.

There's no way, barring some freak outlier, that we banned anyone for
criticizing YC or a YC-funded startup. If someone really did feel that way,
nothing would be easier to clear up. The real issue, in the overwhelming
majority of cases, is repeatedly flouting the HN guidelines.

------
rspeer
> To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke
> flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately.

This seems like one of the cases where HN's moderation is both draconian and
completely opaque. I can't flag comments, and I have no idea why. I certainly
don't think of myself as an abusive user.

Maybe I accidentally clicked the "flag" link once. If that gets flagging
privileges removed, HN should at least consider creating a way to undo an
action!

~~~
dang
As other users have pointed out, to flag a comment you have to click on 'link'
to go to the comment's item page [1]. I don't know why PG designed it this way
but have always assumed it was a speed bump to reduce impulsive flagging,
since flags are more powerful than downvotes.

We never remove flagging privileges because of just one flag. The concept of a
mistake is all too familiar over here.

1\.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adang+flag+link#!/comment/...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adang+flag+link#!/comment/sort_by_date/0/author%3Adang%20flag%20link)

~~~
DanBC
Is there any way for me to tell if my flags are useful or stupid?

I tend to pre-emptively flag stories which I know will draw out the worst bits
of HN. That's probably a bad thing, and I wouldn't be surprised if it caused
my flags to be ignored.

~~~
gaius
Same here. I generally flag gender stories, not because I disagree, but
because the comments quickly deteriorate.

~~~
phkahler
Perhaps flagging those comments would be better, since they are what you claim
to be the problem.

~~~
gaius
I have only just become aware of flagging comments. Some of the threads tho'
you would need to flag 100 and a lot of bad feeling is generated. Best nip it
in the bud early I reckon.m

~~~
aaren
The threads that you are flagging are the ones that need to happen.

I can see why you would flag a whole thread, but I don't think that will
ultimately get us anywhere. If you care about the accessibility of this site,
then I implore you to upvote those threads^ and flag the bad comments within.

^presuming that they have some techy slant

------
readerrrr
If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with
a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments.

But is fading the comment really the correct behaviour. Isn't the position on
the page deciding whether the community agrees with the comment?

My suggestion is: remove the fading; let downvoting only move the comments
down, since the comment is appropriate yet the community doesn't agree with
it; and let flagging remove inappropriate comments.

~~~
hackuser
> downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment

I hope downvoting has nothing to do with agreement; I thought it was for
comments that aren't valuable to the conversation (e.g., not substantive,
poorly reasoned, false, or poorly communicated).

I want to see many more comments that are valuable and challenge the community
(and challenge my thinking too). The groupthink is already well known and if
not, will certainly be posted by someone.

In practice, I do see downvoting used on comments that are valuable but
challenging. It's disappointing.

EDIT: remove embarrassing typo

~~~
lotharbot
pg has said many times that it's OK to downvote out of disagreement
(particularly since it's OK to upvote due to agreement.)

I generally don't unless the disagreement has another value-subtracting
component (lack of substance, poor reasoning/phrasing, factual errors,
unnecessary incivility.) For disagreeable but worthwhile comments, I prefer
responding instead. But I recognize the value in having differences of opinion
over the use of downvotes -- comments of marginal quality (which some people
disagree with, and others don't find valuable enough to upvote even if they
agree) will end up dropping down the page.

~~~
hackuser
> pg has said many times that it's OK to downvote out of disagreement
> (particularly since it's OK to upvote due to agreement.)

What value does this provide to the reader? Community groupthink is not
strongly related to truth, IMHO, and provides little marginal value, because I
already know what it is and it's easy to find. In fact, I wouldn't read HN if
all I found was the groupthink -- I gain far more from new or challenging
ideas.

EDIT: When Amy up/downvotes, it is for the benefit of Bob and other readers.
Amy receives little benefit besides maybe a little emotional satisfaction. If
the vote mainly was for Amy's benefit, HN wouldn't need her vote to impact
anyone else's threads -- we all could have personalized, independent scores
for each comment. What benefit do I, Bob, receive if Amy is just voting on
what she agrees/disagrees with?

~~~
Crito
Downvoting because you disagree provides the exact same benefit to the reader
that upvoting because you agree provides. _" Downvotes aren't for
disagreeing"_ is an absurd redditism.

> _" Community groupthink is not strongly related to truth"_

In strongly technical discussions, which are common on HN and which HN should
be optimized for, "groupthink" and "correct" tend to correlate quite nicely.
Whenever there is a concrete notion of "correct", it works well. It is only
when "correct" becomes subjective (such as in political discussions) that shit
gets messy.

------
chrisblackwell
I would love to see them lower the threshold for down-voting. I've only got
200+ karma, and it's hard for me to get more. I can't be on here all day
commenting, and being the first to submit articles.

If I have something important to say, I comment, otherwise, I mostly consume.
But that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to download a comment I don't agree
with or find offensive.

~~~
zanny
As someone who has had downvote powers for a year, you should not be
downvoting comments you do not agree with. Downvote trolls or other
violations.

If I ever make a site with community comment contributions, and include
upvoting, I would just leave downvoting out of the picture entirely. Etiher
you do not agree and do nothing, you like a post and upvote it, or you report
a comment in violation of the site rules. Downvoting just means dissenting
against those you do not agree with rather than having a conversation about
it.

You should be replying to the comments you dislike and state why, rather than
just think hitting a down arrow is going to right all the wrongs with their
statement.

It is the most infuriating thing to make a statement, have it downvoted, but
have nobody say or argue why or against your points. The whole point of forums
is discussion, and downvoting (especially when it outright removes comments)
defeats the purpose.

~~~
DanBC
I would modify your system to include a placebo downvote. There is a downvote
button, and you can click it. It just doesn't do anything. Or maybe it only
has locel effects - that comment is grey on the user's local system but not on
anyone elses?

~~~
hayksaakian
the downvote button could simply function as a `hide` button

~~~
vannevar
I like this idea, particularly if you communicate the number of hides. The
poster is made aware of how the comment has been received, so there's feedback
while not affecting other users.

------
sciurus
"To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke
flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately."

When I first joined HN, I aggressively flagged stories and comments that
didn't meet the guidelines. I thought that's what I was supposed to do.
However, one day my comment flagging privileges disappeared with no
explanation. If someone had contacted me and explained how I was misusing
flags, I would have happily self-corrected.

~~~
dang
> comment flagging privileges disappeared

Comment flagging privileges don't disappear (edit: alone). Please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585939).

~~~
privong
Would you mind clarifying? The blog post (quoted by parent) seems to explicity
say that flagging privs can be revoked, which directly contradicts what you
are saying in the comments. Or was the quote from the blog post only meant to
refer to flagging of articles?

~~~
dang
My apologies—I wrote that in haste and I see now that it was unclear. What I
meant was that you can't lose comment flagging privileges while story flagging
privileges remain intact; the software just doesn't do that. Either all the
flag links would disappear, or none would. So there must be another
explanation for what sciurus described (as I understood it). Does that make
sense?

~~~
privong
Thanks, dang. Your response to sciurus makes more sense now. Though, his
description was lacking enough in detail that I suppose he could have also
lost story flagging descriptions.

But I am still confused about the apparent contradiction with what you've
stated versus what was stated in the blog post, about losing flagging privs.
When flagging privs are lost, are _all_ flagging privs lost? Or is minimaxr
correct[0], that it works the other way, where you can lose story flagging
privs without losing comment flagging privs?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8586144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8586144)

~~~
dang
I need to check that. Could you please email hn@ycombinator.com if you don't
get a reply here soon? I don't intend to forget, but I have a lot of packets
dropping at the minute.

Edit: Ok, I checked it. Story and comment flagging privileges are lost or
retained as a set. You can't have, or lose, one without the other. It's not
clear why minimaxir thought otherwise, since I'm pretty sure the code has
always worked this way.

------
minimaxir
Last month, I posted an analysis of all 5.6 million Hacker News comments at
the time: [http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-
comments/](http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/)

It should be noted that during the aforementioned six month periods, both the
number of new comments made monthly and the average score for a given comment
decreased, although this post claims a 30% increase to Hacker News traffic due
to changes in the comment system, which is interesting assertion of causality.
(in fairness, the decrease in number of new comments could be caused by the
increased moderation of bad comments.)

It would be helpful if this article in this submission clarified how to flag
_comments_ , as that action is unintuitive (you have to click the comment
permalink first) [EDIT: looks like this was added to the submission]

~~~
danielweber
How do you see the scores of comments? I only see the points of my own
comments.

~~~
minimaxir
Comment scores are visible to the Algolia API after a period of time.
Otherwise, the API returns a "null" for the points field. (example:
[https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/2921983](https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/2921983))

This is apparently unintended, as the official API has no points field.
(example: [https://hacker-
news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/2921983.json?prin...](https://hacker-
news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/2921983.json?print=pretty))

~~~
thaumaturgy
Oh, interesting. I stopped indexing HN comments after the points data became
unavailable (it was still available through the Octopart guys' api, until
Algolia took over). It looks like comment scores start showing up around the
30 day mark.

------
grandalf
In my opinion the only real annoyance with HN is when story titles are edited.

Maybe it will take an updated policy to fix the core issue, which is that
while linkbait headlines are annoying, some original works are titled very
badly and the poster may actually add useful information by customizing the
title (often by highlighting what is most interesting/relevant about the
linked article).

~~~
xnxn
I think this aspect of HN has improved immensely in the past several months;
dang in particular has done much to increase the transparency around title
editing. I find myself less likely to knee-jerk reject a title change when the
rationale is right there in the comments.

------
angersock
_A third experiment didn 't go so well: we briefly made the software kill
comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing
that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular
opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We
heard that and reversed the change._

Good to hear they decided to roll that back.

PG opened a pandora's box when he said that downvotes were acceptable when you
merely disagreed with someone, instead of doing so for civility. There is no
end of sadness and bullshit caused by that remark.

It'd be nice to see an official policy statement changing that position, but I
don't think it's likely. In the meantime, we will simply have to stop assuming
that downvoted comments are actually, you know, _bad_.

~~~
krat0sprakhar
> In the meantime, we will simply have to stop assuming that downvoted
> comments are actually, you know, bad.

I don't think this is true. Given that downvoted comments become faded, I have
a strong reason to believe that the intent is to hide them because they are
actually _bad_

~~~
vacri
It only takes a single person disagreeing with you to fade your comment.

~~~
readerrrr
That is also a problem. One downvote later and the comment is immediately
biased toward future readers.

------
btreecat
> The threshold for flagging is low (only 30 karma), so everyone can help
> there.

So I guess I am not able to help.

~~~
dang
An earlier draft of this post that Sam sent me had "nearly everyone can help
there". I'll ask him to put it back. But it's not like this is much of a
barrier. Even this one comment moved you significantly (as of right now at
least).

~~~
delecti
Just curious, but are you saying that because of the relative position of the
parent's comment in this thread, or is there a threshold for karma that
unlocks seeing the karma on comments other than your own?

~~~
MrJagil
Just click on his username.

------
tikhonj
Flagging seems like the solution to toxic comments, and should be more
encouraged. At the same time, this means it overlaps with downvoting—but only
_one_ use of downvoting. Really, the meaning of downvoting on HN is somewhat
confused and muddled: is it a "flag lite"? Is it a way of disagreeing? Is it a
way to push worse content to the bottom? Is it just the opposite of an upvote?

Any one of these would be reasonable, but having all at the same time is not
great. But that's exactly what we have now, both in the design of the feature
and in how it gets used in practice.

Personally, I think downvoting should move away from being an alternate form
of flagging (with flagging, perhaps, taking a slightly more prominent role for
dealing with actual _abuse_ ) and more towards just being the opposite of an
upvote. This still makes it a bit of a hybrid (both for moving bad content
down _and_ disagreeing), but one that makes a lot more sense because it works
just like upvotes do.

For one, this is what the interface already implies. The downvote button looks
just like the upvote button upside down. Seeing the two as exact opposites is
entirely natural, and that's how it plays out in terms of karma too. But in
terms of social conventions and, importantly, greying out comments, this
doesn't quite hold.

I also think that some symmetric way to counterbalance upvotes is actually
useful in and of itself: downvotes can offset comments that gain a lot of
upvotes before getting a strong rebuttal or comments stuck at the top of a
discussion because of other quirks in the system. But people now seem pretty
hesitant to use them this way. Which makes sense: if downvotes are, in part,
mini-flags, they are too strong just to indicate that you think something has
been upvoted too much or is not a particularly good comment (without being
_bad_ or _abusive_ ).

So what would I do? Well, from the site's perspective, the main tweak is
greying out comments after _more_ than one downvote. Still have the votes
change the order, but only have a really visible effect after a few have
accumulated. More importantly, from a social perspective, it would be good to
reach consensus on what a downvote actually entails, namely that it's just the
opposite of an upvote, neither more nor less.

Disentangling flags and downvotes like this will improve the utility of _both_
features by making them more focused. Downvotes can be a symmetric force in
shaping discussion while flags could be pushed a bit more as means of pruning
actively harmful comments.

~~~
zanny
My position is that downvotes should not exist. There are three ways to view
posts and comments:

A. you agree with it, and appreciate it, so you upvote it to give it more
visibility because that is how this whole system works - popular stuff should
rise to the top, and an upvote is a measure of popularity. If you see popular
stuff but have something to add, you will usually upvote and comment on it.

B. a comment or post is a violation of site rules, and should be reported. You
flag these and leave it up to moderators to deal with it.

C. you disagree with a comment or submission. If you are given a downvote
button, people will often just downvote the stuff they do not like and leave
it at that. But that is antithesis to discussion, and it is a very real
problem on reddit, where users often use downvotes as a substitution to real
debate or testing ones beliefs or knowledge. The correct answer is to reply
_why_ you dislike a comment, and try to start a discussion on it. If it is not
violating site rules (and trolling can be, depending on site, one of those
rules) then it is your duty to inform the poster why they are wrong.

Downvoting is a cop out to take the truly controversial topics that make for
the better discussions out of consideration, and that is why you get an echo
chamber - when you only have upvotes, if there are three opinions, then those
three will be ranked by popularity. If you have downvotes, only the most
popular opinion will ever show up because not only is it upvoted the most but
the other two are downvoted off the site and those with dissenting beliefs
just leave. And then you end up with the echo chamber and no real discussion
left.

I think that is why HN gets higher quality, in the general case, than most
subreddits around technology. They have downvote buttons that naturally turn
their communities into hive minds, whereas here you have to actually
contribute a bit to get that power. I'd rather see it removed entirely, tbh.

~~~
lotharbot
One thing we try to discourage on HN is "me too" or "disagree" posts that
don't have much more content. The presence of upvote and downvote buttons
means that those comments don't get made, because votes serve that purpose
instead.

There's still room to start a discussion if you have a specific point to make
(and the desire to make it) about the problems with someone's comments. Those
discussions do tend to happen when someone makes a disagreeable but thoughtful
point. But sometimes it's just better to throw a downvote at an obviously
wrong (or stupid or offensive or mean) comment and move on.

~~~
krick
That only makes sense in case of "me too" comments. You have 4 options of
response to somebodies comment:

1\. Agreeing while providing some new information. So you write a comment
(actually you'll probably upvote in this case as well, but whatever).

2\. Agreeing without providing any new information. Like, "yeah it's
completely right what this guy just wrote". That comment wouldn't be very
useful indeed, so that's why upvoting exists. And that's totally normal
option, because it's very much possible that some guy just "nailed it" and
thus you don't have much to add, yet you want to show your approvement
somehow.

3\. Disagreeing providing new information. Like, "no, your statement is false,
because _that_ and _that_ , here you have logical mistake and there you just
got facts messed up: here some link for you to verify that". Obviously, that
would be a comment. And that's what constructive conversation is made of.

4\. Disagreeing without providing any new information, so you have downvo… but
hey, wait, what was that? You can agree without providing any new information,
but disagreement is meant to have some reasons for it. So if I disagree I'd
better clarify _why_ I disagree or just remain silent completely. Basically
downvoting here just means "I don't like your comment" and it's quite
reasonable that one _shouldn 't be able_ to do that unless he has something
more to say. There's just no sense in such a thing as "disagreeing without
explanation", unless that guy you disagree with isn't an obvious troll, and,
honestly, you can never know if somebody is "an obvious troll" — it's quite
likely that you just don't understand his reasoning, so if you don't want to
continue discussion you'd better just ignore him.

~~~
lotharbot
Sometimes I disagree and someone else has already provided the new information
I was planning to.

Sometimes I have a problem more with tone than with content -- someone was
right, but being a jerk. I'll both downvote them and upvote someone else who
was right and more appropriately civil.

Sometimes a comment is simply pointless. Someone posted a meme, a lame joke,
or a comment that has nothing to do with the topic at hand (like "this" or
"totally correct"). Downvoting is a nice shorthand for "this comment doesn't
add anything to the discussion".

~~~
djur
It's the distinction between "this isn't the content I'd prefer to see at HN"
and "this comment is abusive or inappropriate for the venue". Karma doesn't
mean much, and getting the occasional off-topic or vacuous comment downvoted
is just a soft form of negative reinforcement.

------
rsync
Is this a reasonable place to plead with people to stop the practice of meta-
commentary on downvotes ?

I am sick and tired of seeing the scoring system injected into the comment
thread:

"let the downvotes begin" "EDIT: you can downvote all you want, but ..."
"EDIT: not sure why I'm being downvoted, but ..."

... and so on. Just comment and respond, don't add all manner of meta-
commentary on voting and the score system into the discussion.

Thanks.

~~~
facepalm
Well it insults peoples feelings if they are being downvoted. It seems
unrealistic to me to expect that they just accept the humiliation, even if it
would be the rational thing to do. (I'm guilty of meta-commenting, too).

------
natch
It seems like early comments on any article generally have a huge advantage in
garnering votes.

This appropriately rewards engagement, but also pushes down other worthy
comments that come slightly later, often to effective near invisibility when
replies to the top comment dominate the discussion.

I wonder if there is any mechanism that could help counter this.

~~~
hackuser
I expect that there is a strong correlation between how soon a comment is
posted and its points. Two thoughts from a relative noob (sorry if these ideas
already have been discussed or tried):

* On threads with many comments, few users have time to read all or even most of them. Perhaps find a way to shorten the list, improve signal-to-noise, and surface newer comments by burying older comments that haven't received votes.

> This appropriately rewards engagement

* It rewards engagement by people who have the time to frequently check HN, read linked stories, and comment throughout the day. My guess is that the smarter someone is, the less availability they have for such things. I would create a system that rewards engagement by busy people.

~~~
aragot
Have a colour scheme for the 15 most recent comments of the thread.

That way we can reload the page and see what's new.

~~~
natch
That is a cool idea. It would have to be done in a really subtle way to avoid
becoming garish, but I hope it gets tried out. Not sure about encouraging
reloading the page though.. maybe some kind of AJAX would be better for
protecting the server from overload.

------
peterwwillis
I'd love to see posts on the rationale between different design decisions,
particularly with regards to things that change group dynamics. For instance,
putting karma next to someone's name may produce leader-following social
behavior, meaning your high-karma users would reinforce general behavior by
encouraging other users to behave the same. But that would increase the
already prevalent concern of high-karma users overly influencing discussion
and getting upvoted based on karma alone. It would be interesting to see all
these examples stacked up and then a post about why they went one way or
another.

------
huhtenberg
Can you mark comments with the score of 1 in some way?

I suspect that I'm not the only one who downvotes the comments he doesn't like
or disagrees with, but who'd very rarely want to push a comment into gray. I
mean, it's one thing to vote a comment down so that it won't float at the top
and another is to punch its author in a face with a negative score.

~~~
dang
That's a good idea. Like so many of these, it isn't obvious how to do it in a
way that doesn't complicate HN's minimal UI. But it's worth noting that you'd
get this for free if we implemented vote undo, which is something we're open
to.

------
bayesianhorse
Voting is a dangerous thing. In German newspapers, an extreme right wing
minority has taken over most comment forums. In some of these, even belonging
to reputable newspapers, it has become extremely difficult to voice dissenting
opinion (for example defending human rights for foreigners and homosexuals),
mostly because "activists" have begun marking such opinions as spam or
inappropriate.

------
acheron
Is there any guidance on what _stories_ are appropriate to flag? Is it just
spam, or is it looser than that?

I sometimes flag blatant political stories, because I don't think they belong
on HN, so I guess if I suddenly can't flag anymore then that was the wrong
answer.

~~~
tptacek
Lots of us flag politics, or anything else that (subjectively) doesn't fit the
guidelines. It's definitely not just for spam.

------
shaggyfrog
I'm wondering if there's any official policy on linking to articles that are
behind pay/register walls. I've flagged two such submissions, and only one got
flagkilled.

~~~
tzs
There are a few reasons such articles usually do not get flag killed.

1\. Most of the paywall news sites allow free viewing of a few articles per
month and so many here do not hit the paywall.

2\. It is often very easy to get around the paywall if you are over the
monthly limit. Sometimes it is as simple as searching for the article by title
in Google and clicking Google's link.

3\. If you cannot get around the paywall, it is often the case that you can
find coverage of the same event at another site that is not paywalled, which
will give you enough information to meaningfully enjoy and participate in the
HN discussion.

4\. Even if you cannot find free coverage of the thing under discussion, it is
often the case that the HN discussion is entertaining and enlightening. HN
discussion often goes off on tangents inspired by the article, and those
tangents can be appreciated without having read the article.

5\. Many people here don't see the paywalls because they subscribe to the
paywalled sites.

6\. Most here do not have such big egos or senses of entitlement that they are
bothered by others reading and discussing something that they have not been
able to read.

------
lucb1e
> To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke
> flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately.

That seems like a lot of manual work, but maybe it needs to be. Perhaps it
could be part automated by revoking flagging privileges when others upvoted
the post? If it really are post nobody wants on the site, surely very few
people (if anyone) would upvote it. So if it gets both flagged and upvoted, it
are probably flags from users that disagree and you can pretty consistently
revoke their permissions.

Just an idea, I don't have the data to test this.

Thanks a lot for all the work you are doing and have done so far on the site.
I agree that the quality has increased!

------
bootload
"... I’d also like to thank dang and sctb for all the work they’ve done as
moderators and with software to increase story and comment quality. ..."

This is a good point and should be acknowledged. I was personally contacted on
how to improve HN. I've yet to get back to you @dang, replies are more fully
formed.

------
JoshTriplett
> First, we lowered the threshold for flags to kill inappropriate comments.

Excellent.

> Second, we've started indicating in the UI which comments/stories have been
> killed by user flags.

What does this look like in the UI? I haven't seen any examples of it yet, and
I'd expect to see at least a few on a regular basis.

~~~
uptown
The string [flagkilled] is put before the title.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Ah, so this is only for stories actually _killed_ by flagging, rather than
just for stories demoted by flagging?

~~~
squeaky-clean
I've only seen it for comments, but it appears just like a [deleted] comment,
except the text says [flagkilled].

------
SCHiM
I, for one, am very glad that I found this website. I migrated here from
slashdot and arstechnica, and the community is much less toxic here. I also
find that the level of discussion is higher and that the comments are often
more insightful.

I very much hope that it can improve even further.

------
facepalm
A lot of effort to get rid of people, not so much effort to attract them.
Maybe it's not needed because the site is so popular. But it seems to
contradict the other messages where they try to encourage everybody to apply
to YC, especially the people who feel like they are not suited to it.

It's a bit funny if you consider these algorithms might be part of the
selection process for YC (consciously or unconsciously) - have they really
nailed the detection of trolls? Maybe eventually the algorithms will align so
well with the spirit of YC that they can eliminate the interview process :-)

I for one feel unwanted (it's not my first account - some got banned, one I
somehow retired after a couple of years). I long for another news source, and
also for open discussion.

In general discussion does not seem to be welcome, as there are mechanisms to
prevent deep threads. That's maybe OK, they want to be a news site, not a
discussion site. But it leaves a void to be filled.

------
DanBC
I hope that flagging is used to consider when a user is shadow-banned and that
down-votes just remove points.

> third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill
> comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing
> that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular
> opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We
> heard that and reversed the change.

I recently lost over 70 points across two posts. The first post was rightly
down voted. (I would have preferred it to have been killed to stop losing
votes) but the second post IMO was suffering from pile-on downvotes. Killing
the first post would have prevented some of those follow-on downvotes. Without
the context of the first postthe second post would have received some mix of
votes.

Killing unpopular opinions might be too harsh, but people need to start
applyimg corrective upvotes if they feel that strongly about minority
opinions.

~~~
craigching
I always thought that downvoting was to be used for comments that were off-
topic, not when you disagreed with someone, but I've learned otherwise I
guess. I really wish I could read dissenting opinions or when someone says
something wrong, instead of downvoting, I'd prefer someone explain why it's
wrong. Downvoting because you disagree with someone always seems off-putting
to me.

------
Bahamut
I very much dislike how the flagging system works currently (for posts) - the
stories that bubble to the top seem to become more uninteresting, and some of
the more interesting ones, & sometimes certainly relevant, get flagged pre-
emptively, which effectively only serves to squelch discussion at the cost a
perceived sense of avoiding conflict for the sake of avoiding conflict.

The point of view parroted out as justification for flagging stories though
appear to suffer from one thing: an avoidance of taking responsibility for the
results of the actions in full, and only accepting responsibility for the
perceived gatekeeping of "conflict" & not for the flipside of accepting
responsibility of intentionally barring any discussion on [insert topic].

The current flagging system for posts is not the solution, and it really
decreases the interesting content present on this site.

------
etiam
> best source of news and discussion about technology and startups

'News that hackers would be interested in reading' still applies, right?
That's a bit clunky to put in a press release, I will admit, but I would be
sad to see the range of HN reduced to merely startups and technology.

------
simonsarris
> To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke
> flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately.

You need to tell us what "flag inappropriately" means immediately. How do I
know if I've been flagging stories inappropriately this entire time?!

~~~
maxerickson
The flag button would disappear.

If you look at flagging links as (mostly) a chore, losing that ability isn't
really severe.

------
Eduard
What about the announced update to the rendering engine
([http://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news-
api](http://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news-api))?

~~~
dang
It's coming.

------
lexcorvus
I'm cautiously optimistic about this, but the reference to "inappropriate
comments" gives me pause. I'm reminded of this analysis [1]:

 _We have such labels [for heresy] today, of course, quite a lot of them, from
the all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded "divisive." In any period, it
should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by looking at what
people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue. When a politician says
his opponent is mistaken, that's a straightforward criticism, but when he
attacks a statement as "divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing
that it's false, we should start paying attention._

Especially when paired with coded language like "historically marginalized
users" (I'm pretty sure Sam isn't talking about Republicans here [2]),
targeting "inappropriate comments" suggests that Hacker News it at risk of
becoming a progressive echo-chamber. (Of course, there are those [3] who fret
that HN is insufficiently progressive, but the same people probably think
Harvard and the New York Times aren't progressive enough, either.) I can
understand flagging _uncivil_ comments, but "inappropriate" comments? I'm not
even sure what that means. Please proceed with caution.

[1]: [http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

[2]: If you don't think tech is hostile to Republicans, you've probably never
been a Republican in tech. Indeed, who's more underrepresented in tech: women,
or Romney voters? ( _Note_ : I didn't vote for Romney, and I am not now nor
have I ever been a member of the Republican party.)

[2]: See, e.g.,
[https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says](https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says).

------
raldi
I applaud experimentation, especially when done with copious transparency and
user engagement, as was the case here.

------
squigs25
Flagging posts and downvoting are important pieces to improving the content
here on hacker news. Interestingly, I think this one of the few forums where
"trolls" appear to be relatively absent.

One problem I have noticed is innapropriate downvoting. For example, if a
voter downvotes a comment simply because he/she disagrees with the opinion of
a commenter. How do we encourage a diversity of opinion on a site of like-
minded people?

And similarly, how do we prevent "downvote conformity" (I apologize for my
invented phraseology, but I'm creating a name for the concept that our
community upvotes posts that are generally agreeable and downvotes posts that
may be less mainstream, thus imposing a conformity of opinion?)

------
Torgo
What constitutes flag abuse? I only do it for stories which I know will only
produce flamewars.

~~~
danielweber
I wish there were something between "do nothing" and "remove this story." Like
a downvote button. But this is an experiment.

------
33W
I would be interested in a combined content and comments link. I am often more
interested in the HN commentary than the article itself, so I am always
opening the comments as well. This would mirror a feature in the Reddit
Enhancement Suite that I enjoy.

------
ende
There are many classes of topic. Many posts are considered 'on topic' for HN,
some are considered 'off topic' and flagged away, and then there is a lot of
grey territory which seems to be tolerated but can't exactly be labeled as
'hacker news'. Politics is the most obvious example. Should downvoting work
the same way in political threads as in technology threads? It really isn't
serving the same function.

Perhaps political or otherwise 'semi-topic' submissions can be flagged as such
and thereby disable voting within them. People can visit them if they want to,
but they do so knowing there is a different ettiquette.

------
dsugarman
> First, I want to thank the community for all the work people have done over
> the past six months to downvote, flag, and comment on content that doesn’t
> fit the site guidelines

Sam & co, great job on experimenting and improving quality, it shows. I find
this statement to be really confusing considering there is no guidelines[1]
for downvoting and, in my experience, it is highly used to put opinions you
don't personally agree with out of reach for the majority of users to read.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
alan_cx
Problem I have is that there is no way of knowing why posts are down-voted.
Quality? Politics? Just wrong? No idea. Sometime I see posts which are
factually correct, but clearly unpopular and voted down. And to be utterly
fair, I'm not even sure why I've down-voted or flagged in the past. Cant even
remember if I've flagged.

Now Im actually thinking about it, I think I'll only up-vote in the future,
and I think that would be if I think I've learned something from a top notch
post. Anything else feels like some sort of censorship, vanity or whatever.

~~~
Loughla
This is actually why I (sort of) prefer the slashdot voting system. It's not
just flat voting, it's voting with a purpose and explanation.

At least that way if someone downvotes for not agreeing with a statement, they
have to think about that reason and admit it to themselves, even if they don't
admit it to the website.

------
Yhippa
Sam, thanks for the update. I feel that the quality of news has improved
greatly as of late and the comments are getting better.

Does anybody know what the downvote threshold is? Or any other thresholds for
that matter?

------
jrs235
> To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke
> flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately.

At first I was appalled at hearing this until I realized I misunderstood the
change. I was mistaking down voting for flagging.

Flagging and down voting are two different things. Also, most everyone can
[now] flag comments but you have to take one additional step (extra friction,
perhaps for the better and to also prevent accidental flagging) which is you
first must click on 'link' next the the comment and then 'flag'.

------
xiaoma
> _" To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and
> revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately."_

I generally flag articles that are overly political, articles that look too
much like advertising and anything behind a paywall. I haven't lost flagging
abilities, but I do have some concern that moderators might not agree with me,
particularly about paywalls.

------
nextw33k
Rather than lower the threshold, which is just lowering the bar, how about
adding a time parameter to the points? (Older points are worth more, but not
visibly so)

Someone that has been using the site for a few years but only commented in a
positive way is surely more valid a moderator than a new account that has
submitted 10 articles in the last month. The time parameter adds continuity to
the quality of flagging.

------
NicoJuicy
Offtopic here, but i noticed a huge relay since recently on HN...

My initial loading time is 13 seconds (didn't realize it was that huge) since
a couple of days.

Note: didn't realize the lag was that high, i load some other tabs during the
waiting... Note 2: I'm from Belgium, so perhaps it helps to debug the issue.
Github account didn't seem to contain any items to report bugs/issues

------
kelvin0
I wonder how many moderators are needed to be able to keep up with all the
comments and traffic here? It must be a tedious job ...

------
lettercarrier
Comments are what gets me here, for discovery. Love when topics and links are
the subject of comments.

I think my CPS degree received when having to use IBM 129 and 3 runs per day
afford a great HN following.

I really don't get the down up karma thing. Just glad smart people with lots
of time on their hands post interesting stuff

------
Houshalter
I haven't noticed that many "toxic comments" and it doesn't seem like a huge
problem.

Automating removal of flagged content seems like bad practice. The majority of
users treat it like a "super downvote button" and a way to censor
controversial things.

------
Someone1234
Any chance we'll get some better text formatting options?

Here's what is currently offered:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

Basically italics and code blocks only. No lists or no bolding.

~~~
film42
It would be cool to see markdown support, but I totally understand that any
addition to the formatting spec is risky, because any new change means older
posts could be awkwardly rendered.

On that historical HN note, it would be great if someone made an app that dug
up really awesome older stories from the HN archives. I'd use that a ton!

~~~
Someone1234
They could do something like a BOM. Any comment without the wchar in position
[0] is rendered historically. Anything with it is rendered using markdown (or
another renderer).

It adds no new columns, and better still if you pick a symbol which is nuked
by TRIM() e.g. \x0B [U+000B] (vertical tab) then it might be ignored by
existing infrastructure/trimmed.

------
detroitcoder
When will I be able to collapse comments on HN threads?

------
shocks
What is the status of making HN more mobile friendly?

~~~
dang
In progress. Sorry that I don't have more specifics, but it's coming.

------
closetnerd
So they're going to do to Hacker News what they did to Reddit.

------
michaelochurch
I still read HN. There's a good article or two per day. That said, the
moderation needs work. (Or, more accurately, to be put out of work.)

I've been under "rankban" for at least a year, if not longer. This means that
my posts, even if they get a lot of upvotes, fall to or near the bottom. I
don't really care, and while I could use sock puppets to get around that, I'm
too old for that shit and I don't really care. Still, it's irritating.

I've used HN Search ([https://hn.algolia.com/](https://hn.algolia.com/)) to
verify comment karma and validate my suspicion.

I'm also on "slowban", as Hacker News performs worse when I use it while
logged in than when I do so in incognito, logged-out mode.

It's dishonest bullshit. My main reason for continuing to comment is (a) to
spite the moderators and (b) because there's a certain joy in getting +10
karma even when your post falls to the bottom.

~~~
maxerickson
An alternate explanation would be that your comments are frequently marked as
off topic.

(dang has commented about marking his own comments off topic, so the support
for that is in there, but I'm speculating about how it might be used.)

~~~
comex
Even if this is true, I doubt his comments are undesirable enough to passive-
aggressively try to get him to stop using the site by silently slowing it down
(if his claim to be on slowban is true). This kind of behavior seems like it
should be reserved for trolls and other highly noxious personages.

~~~
pc86
I obviously can't speak to whether MOC is experiencing it, but I can say that
with my first HN account, before I understood the context and spirit of HN, I
made a very Reddit-esque comment that got me banned. The first part of that
was the so-called _slowban_ , as the site was all but unusable when I was
logged in.

This was years ago and I have no idea if the mods still use this tactic, but I
imagine so in certain cases.

------
shitehawk
Can anyone comment on the reasoning behind the lack of a mobile style sheet?

~~~
mmwtsn
Until the redesign goes live, there are a few viable alternatives on mobile.

I have been using a mobile-friendly version of Hacker News called HackerWeb on
my phone and tablet:
[http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/)

A handful of browser add-ons exist that will update the visual design and
generally make the site more pleasurable to use. Here's one for Chrome:
[http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-
special/](http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/)

~~~
colinramsay
Yeah I thought that new HTML was supposed to be coming online a couple of
weeks ago?

~~~
0942v8653
October 28.

------
hueving
Reading this made me sick as I realized that optimizing the echo chamber to
remove dissenting opinions is the apparent goal. "removing comments we don't
want" is horrifying. Why don't we all just sit in a corner and pat ourselves
on the back about how intelligent and enlightened we are now that we don't
have to deal with unpopular opinions?

