
The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News - lordnacho
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news
======
mushufasa
I liked this article, though I think it missed the best part of Hacker News.
To me, Hacker News can feel like walking through Dumbledore's office --
magical and mind-bending collections of incredible devices, ideas, and
oddities.

Just yesterday someone posted a comment with links to UI design libraries that
I've been subconsciously wishing for in my dreams (humaans, undraw.co), and I
used it in a product demo. As a self-taught technologist, HN has exposed me to
SICP, functional programming, and just yesterday someone posted a book about
Data Structures and Algorithms that I started reading. Dang was quoted as
describing HN as a "hall of mirrors" or "fractal tree."

The author's focus on the controversial political parts of HN seems to me like
going to a music festival and commenting on the food trucks. Yes, it's part of
the experience, but that's not why people go and not what makes it magical.

Communicating the beauty of unfamiliar technical topics to a lay reader is
much harder than politics, but the New Yorker has done well at that elsewhere
(I like the Sanjay and Jeff profile). Moderation is an interesting topic in
its own right, though, especially in the age of the IRA and meme-warfare.

~~~
mushufasa
Since this comment gained traction, here are some better examples of what I
meant by dumbledore's office:

A romp through approaches to generative adversarial networks described as if
they are realms in a Tolkein world.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20251308](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20251308)

(This week's) complete guide to building a terminal text editor from scratch
in C which gently holds your hand at each step:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046446)

Stumbling down the root domain of the above link leads you to the collected
archive of _why_the_lucky_stiff, a hacker artist who created technical
documentation as if it were a work of literature, animating and writing songs
about ruby in a unique aesop meets kaftka meets neutral milk hotel style, and
who then suddenly disappeared and deleted his whole internet persona,
transmitting a 96-page oblique missive years later as individual PCL files.
[https://viewsourcecode.org/why/](https://viewsourcecode.org/why/)

Someone documents how using the 30+ year old, tiny awk language let him do
what all the latest fad big data tools couldn't
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20293579](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20293579)

Several posts this past week from natashenka's Project Zero blog led me to her
passion project of being the world's leading expert in hacking tamagutchis,
which read as part instructional and part love letter to digital pets
[http://natashenka.ca/](http://natashenka.ca/)

Even though I'm ostensibly in the same industry as retail brokerages, I've
never understood their business models as well as I did when I read this
thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20276551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20276551)

Not to keep going, but just to have a less lame example than a couple
introductory textbooks -- I didn't mean to imply HN as a surrogate class
syllabus

~~~
Unbeliever69
I think that the Dumbledore's Office analogy is perfect for my use of HN.
Frankly, it is the ONLY reason I use HN as I find the discourse (mostly)
elitist and exclusive (tiringly).

------
IfOnlyYouKnew
This article does seem to get at the essence of HN, appreciative of dang and
sctb's humanity while not ignoring the problems. Personally, I would actually
consider it an excellent demonstration of the fallibility of one of HN's
favourite tropes, Gell-Mann amnesia.

If there's one critique that I believe is paramount it's that HN has, due to
its readership, an ethical obligation that goes beyond making discussions all
nice and civil.

Political issues are obviously divisive and it's perfectly fine to keep stuff
like the El Paso massacre of the front page. But when hot-button issues
intersect with technology, the HN readership is in a position of power, and
shouldn't routinely be spared the anguish of being reminded of their
responsibility.

Yes, articles about, for example, discriminatory ML do often make it to the
front page. But in my impression, that topic (as well as employment
discrimination, culture-wars-adjacent scandals in tech academia etc) are far
more likely to be quickly flagged into oblivion than similarly political takes
that just happen to be in line with HN's prevailing attitude (e.g. cloudflare-
shouldnt-ban-<x>).

The article impressively articulates what toll divisiveness takes on the
moderators: Even if I read the same ugly comments, I am unlikely to experience
the sharpness of emotion that apparently comes with considering the community
one's baby, and making it's failures one's own. When such divisiveness is then
reflected in the "real world" of mass media, the pressure only increases.

But as this article shows, abdicating the responsibility by keeping the topics
sterile is similarly suspect, in the sense of fiddling while Rome burns. I
believe a willingness to confront the ugly sides of technology with some
courage of conviction would eventually be recognised, even if it may
occasionally involve a bit of a mess.

~~~
azangru
> HN's prevailing attitude (e.g. cloudflare-shouldnt-ban-<x>).

Funny, I thought HN's prevailing attitude in the case of the recent ban of
8chan was, hell yeah, good riddance to those reprehensible twats. (Which,
personally, annoyed me, because I believe that even the deplored should have a
space for communication.)

~~~
SolaceQuantum
Could you clarify why you thought this? What evidence do you have that
supports this? The big thread shows that the top comment agrees that 8chan
should be left alone. [0] and the comment chain shows that there seems to be
something like a significant minority against 8chan, but it doesn’t appear to
be a prevailing majority.

0\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395)

~~~
tomp
The _current_ top comment. IIRC it was fluctuating wildly while it was on the
front page. After it's gone, comments can get reshuffled, because some people
might keep replying/reading/up&downvoting (arguably those with more of a
"vested interest" \- likely those that disagree with the original article)

~~~
SolaceQuantum
Doesn't that provide more evidence that it is not the prevailing majority,
then?

~~~
thetrumanshow
Also, does it suggest that the most engaged HN readers (who come early to
topic discussions) have a starkly different opinion to late comers?

------
Mizza
Shout out to dang! You're doing a great job! Thank you!

Strict moderation is the reason HN is the only reasonable discussion forum
remaining on the internet. I wish good moderation was a skill that more people
learned - would you ever be interested in writing a guide or teaching a class
on moderation?

~~~
ekianjo
> Strict moderation is the reason HN is the only reasonable discussion forum
> remaining on the internet

Not at all. It's rather the community that makes it a reasonable discussion
space. Most people here understand that this is not Reddit and that proper
answers are needed when you interact with other members. Of course moderation
is useful and necessary in certain cases, but it's certainly far from being
the key factor here.

~~~
rubidium
No, it really does make a difference. I've got a close friend who's been
involved in many discussion forums, both as user and mod. His experience is
mods are the critical link that prevent the community from descending to ugly
chaos.

The community helps... but someone needs to be doing some policing to limit
the effect of the bad actors or the community starts to get pissed off/wander
off/degrade into pettiness.

~~~
ekianjo
> who's been involved in many discussion forums,

in many discussion forums... that are not HN. There is only one HN, so you
can't make comparison with other communities out there.

------
dredmorbius
It's interesting to compare HN with attempts which claimed they were striving
to create an inclusive space but which failed.

I'd encountered one such newly-launched site, heralded as "a kinder, gentler
Reddit" in 2016. Not only did the site itself collapse and fail a year later,
but it failed, in the extreme, to live up to its promise, in part through the
user community (always a confounding factor) but also through exceedingly poor
moderation both by volunteer user mods _and_ the site's paid staff and
management.

I'll note: I was largely in agreement with the site's stated principles and
politics, and _still_ found myself very much on the dark side of it. Contrast
with HN where I consider myself frequently contrarian and yet reasonably well
tolerated.

In writing on the experience I called out the contrast with HN specifically.
In part:

 _The really striking thing for me is that a bastion of one representation of
what Internet critics, erm, criticise, HN, is proving much more effective at
accomplishing and embodying the goals which Imzy, a "kinder, gentler" place,
has set out to achieve._

... with a longer discussion of the things that seem to work particularly
well. See:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imz...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imzy_experience_well_that_escalated_quickly/)

I disagree with dang and sctb on occaision. I am disappointed that there are
topics that HN doesn't seem able to discuss (and have called these out). I've
been admonished a few times.

But on balance, the site works, and rewards time spent on it. And credit must
go to dang and sctb.

Thanks, guys.

~~~
tomcam
_I disagree with dang and sctb on occaision. I am disappointed that there are
topics that HN doesn 't seem able to discuss (and have called these out). I've
been admonished a few times. But on balance, the site works, and rewards time
spent on it. And credit must go to dang and sctb. Thanks, guys._

Same here. I believe I have been throttled unjustifiably on a couple of
occasions, but so what. They responded quickly to my pleas for help and I also
learned stuff. I feel very grateful to have this site as part of my life.

------
Sukotto
I've been enjoying the "Against the Rules" podcast [1] hosted by Michael Lewis
[2]. It's related to moderation so I'll post it here.

The show is series of stories/reports on the work of refereeing fairness in
different parts of life. With views into how those referees are changing, and
in some cases, outright disappearing.

Fascinating stuff from an author who really knows how to tell an engaging
story about a potentially dry topic. (Moneyball, The Big Short, Liar's Poker,
etc.)

[1] [https://atrpodcast.com/](https://atrpodcast.com/)

[2]
[https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/776.Michael_Lewis](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/776.Michael_Lewis)

~~~
artemisbot
I've been on a bit of a Michael Lewis binge myself recently, just finishing
his book "The Undoing Project" \- would definitely recommend if you're even
tangentially interested in human psychology. It's a great introduction into
why we make errors on a cognitive level and is a great follow-up to some of
the concepts discussed in Moneyball.

------
PaulHoule
One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not
limited to Silicon Valley.

For instance, the person who has the highest karma is in Brazil. Very few of
the people I have met on Hacker News are in the Valley and San Francisco, but
I have met people from North Carolina, Philadelphia, Portugal, India,
Singapore, ...

If you're interested in both technology and business and you've had enough of
the self-promoters promoting self promotion that dominate LinkedIn and other
social media places, Hacker News is a refuge.

What is missing from Hacker News is a handful of sensationalist topics that
dominate the mass media but lead to discussions that never go anywhere and
never terminate.

That's what they are designed to do. Neither the democrats or republicans want
the situation with guns or abortion to change dramatically because it would
disturb an ecosystem where they can count on a large proportion of the
population to vote for them automatically, thus they can get elected while
promising less.

What both sides have in common is they look at a place like HN and think that
their side is being discriminated against because they are special snowflakes
who really have something to say that matters about fake controversies and
they don't seem to be satisfied posting to the 99.99% of forums that are
choked with that stuff.

The real difference between HN and the social media giants is the business
model. I believe Y Combinator runs HN to extend it's reputation, attract
startups to join Y Combinator and otherwise participate in it's ecosystem. To
do that it has to have quality.

Facebook, Google and other companies based on advertising pretty much have to
be merchants of outrage because that is what people click on.

~~~
edubs25
>One thing the article got wrong is that the Hacker News community is not
limited to Silicon Valley.

I thought the article was pretty clear that Hacker News user base is
predominantly North America and Europe, not just the valley?

I don't have any data to back this up, but based on the sources that are
posted and gain traction in the community, I suspect majority NA & Europe is
accurate. But that's just an observation based on my personal experiences that
different regions of the world view information sources differently in terms
of reputation and trust.

Has HN or anyone else ever tried to aggregate stats on content sources or user
location data?

~~~
PaulHoule
For one thing, all content on HN is English, which is well-known to people in
NA and Europe.

Japan is famous for its indigenous forums; Japanese people seem to sneak some
English words into every anime theme song, but they do awful on the TOEFL.

When you look at South America and Africa I think that educated people are
often good at English but even though there are a lot of people in those
zones, the size of the "startup sector" or even the "modern sector" is small
compared to NA/Europe. (e.g. look at GDP as a proxy)

------
_hardwaregeek
> N-gate, a satirical Web site with the slogan “We can’t both be right” (a
> NAND gate is a kind of logic gate that only outputs “false” if all of its
> inputs read “true”), offers a weekly summary of Hacker News discussions,
> dubbed “webshit weekly.”

I always find these critics a little funny. It's like the classic Beatles joke
about record burners: They're still buying the record. If you're writing
weekly newsletter about how Hacker News sucks, you're still reading Hacker
News every week.

Seems like every internet community has some form of built in hatred of itself
as a gestalt. Redditors bemoan how much the "hivemind" sucks. There's endless
Facebook posts about how Facebook is so terrible.

~~~
MarcScott
From the N-gate proprietor

> these are people who spend their lives trying to identify all the ways they
> can extract money from others without quite going to jail

I don't think this individual understands how diverse this community is. I was
a teacher when I started reading HN, and now work in the charitable sector
(albeit tech centered).

I know musicians, educators, academic scientists and historians that read and
participate here. We're not all founding or working for startups.

------
2T1Qka0rEiPr
Thanks to Dan and Scott for their moderation, and whilst the article
highlights some of negative aspects of discussion on HN, I for one keep coming
here because it's still on average the most reasoned and thought provoking
part of the internet I'm aware of - so, thanks to you all for your positive
contributions :)

------
lucb1e
Has anyone ever seen an online community (with more than a handful of users)
that focuses on more than cute puppy pictures and that is not described as
"toxic" by "critics"? I'd say that HN does a great job at avoiding that. The
article is titled "moderating hacker news" but fails to describe just how good
a job the moderators and owners are doing. The moderators for moderation, and
the owners for (as I perceive it) giving the moderators the freedom to try
things that are best for the community (such as the politics-free experiment).

~~~
catacombs
It's not up to The New Yorker to give praise to moderators or owners. That's
inserting bias.

It's up to the readers (us) to determine whether the moderators are doing a
good job.

~~~
slang800
> That's inserting bias.

Are you implying that this article was trying to be bias-free? The author
spent entire paragraphs just cherry-picking "toxic" things that have been said
on HN to make discussion here look bad.

~~~
lucb1e
That's a very good description of what I mind about the article. Cherry-
picking "toxic" things, that's exactly it.

------
Fnoord
> Gackle is drawn to healing workshops; Bell, to Indian philosophy. They seem,
> at times, to be applying old, humanist techniques to a culture obsessed with
> the future.

I wouldn't have guessed that. What's next though is even more interesting:

> “Something that’s deeply interesting, I think, to both of us,” Gackle said,
> “is the way in which one can arrive at a nonviolent reaction to somebody by
> having greater awareness of the—” He paused. “I’ll say violence in oneself.
> By which I mean the kind of agitation and activation that is causing people,
> including ourselves, to react in a kind of fight-or-flight way that leads to
> misunderstanding, conflict, and, ultimately, Internet flame wars. This
> seemingly trivial stuff, about people getting mad at other people on the
> Internet, is actually tied to this much deeper and more fascinating process
> of what goes on between people and what goes on in oneself.”

Essentially, the task of Dan and Scott is akin to the task of a (good)
teacher. A communication teacher, perhaps?

~~~
chippy
This also caught my eye and it would be something I'd like to read about and
discuss here too!

~~~
carapace
I was taught a metaphysical law (a psychological heuristic, if you prefer)
called "the Mirror Principle" (it has other names), to wit: When someone has
some behaviour or quality that irritates or upsets you, you will often find
that you have that behaviour or quality yourself but are unaware of it.
Becoming aware of it helps to "move your energy" on the underlying issue or
tension.

------
danso
If the author is reading this, I would really enjoy hearing what the story
pitch process for this was like. Even if it punches above its weight in terms
of "mindshare", HN is still niche as far as tech subjects go. And, in terms of
online communities, boring as hell compared to Reddit, 4/8chans, and even
Usenet. The angle of focusing on the two human mods – particularly in the
context of contemporary online content being associated with algorithmic
moderation – is a good one, but still seems niche for the New Yorker. OTOH, it
would definitely be a more obviously attractive pitch to Ars Technica or
WIRED.

~~~
ergl
She has written several posts about Silicon Valley culture before, both for
the New Yorker and other publications—I learned about her work back in 2016,
on N+1. I recommend reading it, it was quite fun and depressing at the same
time: [https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-
valle...](https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/)

------
adrian_mrd
Amidst all the ambient craziness of our ever-changing world, I raise a glass
to Hacker News, the team who moderate it and to all who wish to make it a
community driven by erudite discussions :)

~~~
chmaynard
I'll drink to that. There's a constant tension in my life between time devoted
to reading books vs. time perusing HN stories and comments. It's hard to reach
a good balance.

------
Thorrez
>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.”

It seems to me that comment is a joke. Playfully nitpicking word choice while
putting in a bit of banter. But the article seems to be taking the comment as
a serious argument/insult.

~~~
LandR
I think this is quite a common thing on the internet, people feigning
ignorance to be upset about something.

~~~
tomcam
I can tell you as a person who has been spanked by dang a few times that there
truly are people who can be ignorant in the other direction.

I have written a number of replies that to me were simply neutral questions
but which felt like an attack, from what I can tell, because they were harshly
downvoted and I was even throttled by the mods.

I have to assume that’s on me and I have largely stopped asking for
clarification because I seem to do it without sufficient empathy or something.

dang did reply thoughtfully to my inquiries about what I had done and that
actually made me feel worse! I know those two are busy doing way more
important things and I hate making their day worse.

------
vinceguidry
> The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational,
> dispassionate, contrarian, authoritative—often masks a deeper recklessness.

I recently started contributing on another online community, a Slack, and I've
found the rhetorical habits I've unwittingly cultivated creating a weird sort
of mood. Nothing I'm saying is _wrong_ , but HN has managed to make me
somewhat oblivious to tone.

It's exactly as she describes, 'reckless'. I dare to go places that will rile
people up. The silence that met my initial posts was deafening.

I initially wanted to retreat back to my familiar communities, Quora, HN. But
I've never backed down from this kind of challenge before and I'm not about to
now. I'm slowly managing to discover better 'hygiene' so I can fit better into
this particular community of wonderful people.

But I wouldn't give back my participation in HN for anything. More than any
other place I've ever found, HN makes me feel like I _belong_.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
I may be misinterpreting what you're saying, but just in case: the critique
isn't about "style", as in being too direct or offensive or anything like
that. It's about the value system, and about how arguments are evaluated.

Case in point: a few days ago an article about India/Kashmir shortly made the
front page
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20612461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20612461))

The ensuing discussion is entirely obsessed with the legalistic details of
India's action: what sort of law is it/who has the authority to recind it/etc.

Read any news report on the topic and those questions are secondary to the
intentions and actual effects of the policy, i. e. "is this intended to allow
resettling a majority-muslim province with Hindus and thereby dilute it's
culture as part of a nationalistic campaign?"

That sort of superficial legalism is rather prevalent. Any discussion of a
public protest will include some people complaining about protesters not
staying on the sidewalks. Discussions on law frequently find really clever
"cheats" relying on too-literal a reading of the text ("Freedom of 'Speech',
not of 'Writing', the New York Times doesn't have a case").

If I were to over-psychoanalyse, this approach seems to gell with a certain
type of uber-rationality that denies the value of anything that cannot be
measured. Hence, I've seen repeated suggestions that web fonts shouldn't exist
because nobody needs more than one readable font or, more generally, that
"design" is superfluous wastefulness at best and often akin to lying.

~~~
vinceguidry
> It's about the value system, and about how arguments are evaluated.

Sure, that critique is all over the piece, and quite valid. So valid that
calling attention to it again feels like beating a dead horse.

It was the 'performative erudition' part I wanted to share my experience with.
HN has changed the way that I communicate and think, in ways that I couldn't
put a finger on until I started reading the article. It's changed how I come
across at work, how I interact with my friends and family.

> Hence, I've seen repeated suggestions that web fonts shouldn't exist because
> nobody needs more than one readable font or, more generally, that "design"
> is superfluous wastefulness at best and often akin to lying.

Why do people insist on things being pretty? Obviously they're
overcompensating for deficiencies in some other area. I'll stop now before you
start thinking I'm serious.

------
flexie
Very interesting article :-) I had no idea that the community is this large
and that there are only two moderators.

The article could have explained the other part of the moderation better - the
user moderation provided by up and down votes. Bad comments are not only
flagged but also tend to be pushed further down the page towards oblivion,
while better comments tend to be lifted up towards the top of the page.

Anyways, King Canute: He was Danish, not Swedish :-)

~~~
eyeundersand
Ha!

After rigorously reading the article and the commentary here, I found the end
of your comment deliciously humorous. Oh, the irony!

Also if the author or any of the moderators read this comment, Hello!

------
danso
I’ve always thought HN is so relatively pleasant because of the investment it
puts into quality moderation. But reading this profile really underscored how
different things would be had two other people, of different temperaments and
perspectives on life, been selected as mods. I imagined the mods to
stereotypically be, at oldest, late-20s techies in SV. But it makes sense in
retrospect one is in his mid-30s, and one is old enough to have 2 children of
his own.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Heck, raising kids might even have helped Dan get better at moderating. Both
in terms of doing it and handling the mental burden. Seems like there's some
overlap in skills like trying to understand them, giving guidance, having
patience about the process, etc.

------
rland
I have seen dang's tailored-to-individual responses to provocative comments on
HN, and in my view they are THE gold standard method of diffusing these
difficult sorts of discussions, both in real life and on the internet.

That type of moderation is rare and it is the thing that sets HN apart from
other forums.

------
citilife
I gotta say, I appreciate the moderation on Hacker News. I've appreciated
several messages back and forth with dang and sctb, about moderation, my
behavior, even UI. From my experience, it's the best moderated sites on the
internet. Kudos moderating team!

------
defterGoose
Just last night I went down a rabbit hole reading about perspectives on
climate change. I googled "hacker news for environmentalism", looking for a
forum similar to this but with a less direct focus on software tech. This led
back to an ask HN thread asking what users were doing to help combat climate
change. This in turn led me to a comment that mentioned the "Deep Adaptation"
paper by Jem Bendell which was something of an epiphany in that it's an almost
perfect exposition on the existential dread that has come to be a low-level
hum in my everyday life. It was also comforting to know that someone had
codified my attitude about this dread being not a hindrance but rather a good
thing.

Anyway, it just goes to show that while I wish this forum had more of a focus
on these issues, the discussion here is almost always a great source of
thoughtful perspectives and a place to come express oneself honestly and
openly. So thanks for that, HN.

------
lapnitnelav
> “There’s often a strong wish to solve these contentious problems by changing
> the software, and, to the extent that we’ve tried things like that, we
> haven’t found it to work.“

Software might be eating the world, I don't think people will eat software
anytime soon.

It's a good reminder that we can't solve all problems by just throwing some
code at it. Unfortunately ...

------
tosh
The profile was exciting to read. Similar to devouring "making of" bonus
material that used to be bundled with dvds.

Made me think: I'd like to read/hear more from dang & sctb and how they look
at things.

Have you ever thought about something like a podcast or blog or something like
a microblog or commented bookmark feed?

edit: completely forgot: thank you so much for pouring your hearts and souls
into this community.

like another commenter already noted: hn is one of the few remaining well
moderated corners of the web. feels a bit like all the other elves already
left middle earth. it is wonderful to have you.

~~~
tomcam
Completely agree. It’s also stunningly impressive to me that the parent
company pays the salaries of two full-time, severely overqualified moderators
for site I can use for free.

------
onion2k
I've been reading "dang" as the word "dang!" without realising it's actually
"dan g" all this time. :)

~~~
lordnacho
I thought it was a Chinese name

~~~
bookofjoe
Related: My daughter's second grade teacher was Mrs. Emily Chewning, of
Scottish extraction. She told me that when the first parent-teacher
conferences happened, a number of parents were surprised at her appearance:
kids always referred to her as "Miss Chew" and from the sound of the name,
parents assumed she was Chinese.

~~~
benjaminbrodie
You shouldn't just mention her full name like that lol bruh

------
laurex
I admit that when I joined Hacker News, I viewed it to some extent as an
anthropology experiment, since discussions I encountered reflected some of the
issues cited in the article, specifically that some discussions seemed to
reflect a myopia that suggested participants were likely rarely exposed to
people outside their bubble, and often a lack of respect for views that were
outside that paradigm. However, I've seen discussions become more tempered,
and a great influence from Dan and Scott as moderators (thank you!). At this
point, I do read and contribute to Hacker News in lieu of most other social
media, though sometimes I still read comments that feel arrogant or dismissive
of outside views, especially when topics that are cultural enter the picture.
My general approach is to just ignore them and move on to more productive
discussions, and sometimes to feel like it might be time for a break for me,
though I'm not sure there are any online communities I think do a much better
job of having civil discourse.

~~~
tomcam
Also, I often find it that it is better to skip right to the commentary
because it is often so much better than the length article.

------
lynnetye
I loved this article and just want to thank Dan and Scott for all that they
do. I appreciate how moderating a forum like HN leads to deep introspection
about what triggers us. "This seemingly trivial stuff, about people getting
mad at other people on the Internet, is actually tied to this much deeper and
more fascinating process of what goes on between people and what goes on in
oneself."

It's too easy to judge quickly (i.e. never reading but criticizing an article
based on its title) and misunderstand strangers on the Internet. I admire the
extreme patience that our HN mods have in helping us to judge less quickly and
respond more thoughtfully to one another here. It's no doubt a challenging,
emotionally taxing, and never-ending job, but y'all are doing it and doing it
well. Thank you.

------
SoylentOrange
Big thanks to dang and sctb. You’re doing an impossible job, and doing it as
well as two humans can. As others have said, this makes HN the best forum left
on the Internet.

I want you to know your efforts aren’t wasted or invisible to me. I am very
appreciative of the tough work you both do.

------
sgt101
"Gackle replied. “We can’t stop that any more than King Canute”—the ancient
Swedish king who demonstrated the limits of his power by trying, in an ironic
spirit, to command the sea—“could stop the waves.""

Canute was King of England, Denmark and Norway. He was not Swedish. I think
that The Newyorker is trolling Hacker News by dropping this quote in.

~~~
everybodyknows
Never ascribe to malice what can be put down to incompetence. The article
hasn't even been properly proofread, let alone fact-checked:

>... experiment with and idea ...

~~~
jessaustin
I took the final paragraph of TFA as an indication that this is just ironic
fun. "Couch alluder", indeed.

------
arendtio
FWIW, I find that the political discussions here are still a lot better than
in most other places on the internet and sometimes I find them quite valuable.

For example, I have a pretty solid attitude against genetically enhanced food
and where I live, there are quite some people who think likewise (central
Europe). But through HN I learned, that there are other places in the world,
where such food can significantly improve the lives of many humans and where
educated people can't understand how on earth you can possibly be against
using such technology.

I find such insights very valuable because it shows me how limited and
filtered ones real-live perception can be.

~~~
burfog
The attitude against genetically enhanced food is purposely promoted in
Europe. You could say the attitude is not organic. :-)

It serves as a non-tariff trade barrier against the USA. Promoting this
attitude serves the European agricultural producers, particularly the seed
suppliers. European consumers of course pay higher prices.

------
interfixus
Although being - sometimes wildly - at odds with many of the leanings,
assumptions, and perceived biases underlying the generality of HN, and often
not sharing editorial viewpoints as expressed by dang and sctb, I am
consistently in awe and absolutely drooling fanboy adulation over the quality
of the moderation and everything else which keep - miraculously - this site
running, healthy, useful, and mostly spam-free. From over here in a very
different set of values and mind: Thank you for all that.

As for the article: King Canute was a Danish and for a while English king.
Never Swedish.

~~~
tomcam
Hell to the yes on your first point. I’m in the same boat.

------
75dvtwin
I liked the article's info on the background of the moderators. It was
informative if anything. And made me feel that they are more human than I
thought :-).

However, I disagree with these nuance-avoiding characterization of
participation and discussion.

Eg, the article makes participants in Boeing crash discussion, seem inhumane
and devoid of 'outrage' that the authors of the article were expecting.

On the other hand, the article is not analytical enough (or purposefully
avoiding) mentioning the potential causes, that make moderation of a technical
forum difficult.

As I had noted somewhere else in my posts, this forum allows a
disproportionaly high number of one-sided article submissions.

It is those type of submissions, by often high-karma users

(eg.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jbegley](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jbegley)
)

that continue to create selective-outrage, counter-selective-outrage
arguments, and overall high stress, low technical information content
discussions.

And cause continuous moderation stress.

------
jasoneckert
I'm relatively new (this year) to HN, but it has quickly become my favorite
site for news (and tech news). While part of the reason for this is the clean,
non-commercialized interface, the primary reason I frequent this site is the
expert commentary on posts.

------
tanilama
Definitely noticing the trend of politicizing of this place. But yeah, if that
is what people cares about then so be it.

Performative erudition is an interesting characterization, especially when
this is from New Yorker.

------
kashyapc
[Forgive if I've missed this in the deservedly KM-long thread; I didn't find
any in a couple of rushed `grep`s.]

On the "sheer quantity of it is so overwhelming":

Not that I didn't already guess the workload would be staggering, given the
gargantuan flow of comments and submissions ... _still_ , I find the above
somewhat disquieting—for the long-term health of both the moderators.

I realize that some long-time members of this community assist _dang_ & _sctb_
in helping moderate. Regardless, I hope they can have a slightly larger
"official" team to spread the unstoppable stream of workload. Not merely for
the sake of quantity, but to have fewer occurrences of having your
psychological buttons get stress-tested. (I'm sure they know this, and
consider this topic from time-to-time, as mentioned in the article.)

    
    
                    - - -
    

Also happy to have learnt some background and interests of the human
moderators.

Thanks for the fine work, folks.

------
MrXOR
Such a lovely place!

Thanks Paul Graham, @dang and @sctb for HN.

~~~
tomcam
Seconded. This is a very special gift to our community.

------
billfruit
Strange that the article seems to hinge mostly on moderation, rather than any
of the other things that make HN a great resource.

To me the great difference of HN over anything else has been the expectation
on commentors to write something thoughtfull and well argued, and it's
discouragement of frivolous commentary.

The mainstream media seems hungup on the concept of moderation when discussing
online communities, and I think the moderation framework is only a minor part
of what make these communities work.

~~~
tomcam
> I think the moderation framework is only a minor part of what make these
> communities work.

With all due respect, it feels to me that you have never had the experience of
running an online community at scale. I believe the moderation for this site
is the only thing that keeps it from deteriorating into complete chaos and
toxicity.

I am also amazed that the two moderators have managed to hang on for so long.
It seems to me like the archetypal burnout job.

------
TailgateShrub
_Skipping from thread to thread felt a bit like arriving at a party where half
the room was sipping non-alcoholic shrubs and the other half had spent the
afternoon tailgating in a stadium parking lot._

This kind of vibe is why I read HN.

~~~
52-6F-62
I think it was much in the tone you described—at least that's how I read it.

As for myself, I like that I can—on different days, or times of day—one of
either camp!

------
khawkins
>The most ideologically motivated or extreme posts and comments on Hacker
News—an interview piece from Quillette titled “Understanding Victimhood
Culture”; a link to a video of James Damore and Jordan Peterson in
conversation; one user telling another that all Jewish people should relocate
to Israel—tend to get flagged by the community or the site’s anti-abuse
systems, many of which Bell and Gackle have written themselves...

>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.

These are features, not bugs, and testaments to the quality moderation. All
over the internet these topics are discussed, ad nauseam, and they're some of
the most divisive issues in modern day discourse. Even the author can't seem
to represent her political opponents fairly.

Without removing these topics, these ideological wars will irrevocably divide
the community, sending one segment away in deep frustration. If we'd like to
unify society, it's far more important to have spaces which don't immediately
polarize along these lines.

------
justin66
dang and sctb possess admirable patience and persistence but I've always
enjoyed dang's posts when he participates in a conversation. I wonder if his
time spent serving as a moderator somewhat robs hn of an especially thoughtful
poster. Thanks guys.

~~~
dredmorbius
dang does submit articles with some regularity. They're suprisingly rarely
voted up, though as a reading queue are themselves very highly recommended by
me.

------
creaghpatr
>For decades, the phrase “Eternal September” has been used to describe the
tipping point for a message board or online community—the inclusion, or
invasion, of new users who dramatically change the existing subculture.

I’m guessing that’s why this article was written.

------
bifrost
I had the honor and privilege of working along side the HN team and I think
the best description I can put out there is that they're wonderful.

HN is a unique place on the internet, I'm hoping it never changes.

------
gigama
"They are hopeful that, as Hacker News continues to grow, it will become,
simultaneously, more diverse, more interesting, and more humane, while
remaining in some fundamental sense a single community with a common goal."

Right on. Greatly value this melting pot of diverse views and links that often
lead to serendipitous discovery, clever ideas, and considered thought. What I
originally hoped the internet would turn out to be.

So in case no one's said it in awhile, thank you to Paul Graham for starting
and sustaining this outlet for reckless thought experiments, and to Scott and
Daniel for their devoted management to herding all us feral cats. Keep up the
good work!

Now back to the lab to continue coding my dueling libertarian Markov bots...

------
kuu
Interesting that only 2 people can moderate million users

~~~
mschuster91
Millions of readers, the amount of active commenters is much lower.

In addition, HN doesn't get much of the "classic" troll crowd (no matter if
4chan/8chan/outright real Nazis/gamergate) or Trump supporters - from the
occasional politics thread aside, there's nothing much of interest for them
here, and so the biggest blocks of trolls simply stay away.

~~~
kuu
Still... I wonder how many messages are reported per day. BTW, I don't get why
you're being downvoted...

~~~
fphhotchips
I do. The direct call-out of a specific group of people for their position on
the political spectrum is pretty much directly against what (I think) we're
trying to do here. It's unnecessary, too. Could have just left it at "classic
troll crowd".

~~~
komali2
Eh. I read it less as "general people that happen to support the current
administration" and more as "posters on t_d," which is a very different thing
in my mind, and yea, does point to users that are inherently trollish/toxic.

------
amrrs
> On any given day, its top links might include a Medium post about technical
> hiring

Isn't it quite ironic to see the article suggesting that HN top link might
include Medium post. I've usually read not-so-positive feedback about Medium
posts. Isn't it the case?

~~~
malux85
Why not judge the post by the insightfulness of the content, rather than the
domain from which it originates?

~~~
paulgb
When you're looking at a page of 30 links, the signaling value of a domain is
useful. Medium is a low-barrier place to publish, and has discovery built in,
so it ends up attracting a lot of bad writing and promotional material. That,
combined with the degraded reading experience, is why I am happy to judge a
book by its cover in this case.

~~~
LandR
I've found the majority of content on medium.com to be so useless that I now
run a plugin in my browser to block medium.com from my DDG results.

------
carapace
Huge thanks to dang and sctb! I really appreciate your work. I feel like it is
working, FWIW.

------
stormtv
I'm surprised that the quality of HN hasn't fallen as drastically with user
growth as much as other sites such as reddit. Thanks to the moderators for
keeping HN great.

------
roymurdock
Thank you @dang and @sctb!! Loved learning more about you and reading about
your passion for the community, it really comes through in the quotes. Keep up
the great work.

------
kingkawn
I think that the censorship of viciousness rather than content is a reasonable
compromise. I have engaged in a wide range of political and ethical debates on
hn, and the few times the mods have shown interest has only been if I am
beefing too hard with someone. The exercise of power is not to be superior,
but to give the forum a sense of shape so that people can relate to it more
readily. I think given the scale of the site they are doing good work.

------
alanh
I love the article illustration. It's really stellar work. Good job, Scott
Gelber!

[Explaining more is difficult, and vague praise can seem insincere. I am
serious, not sarcastic]

------
rbancroft
Congratulations Dan and Scott! Well deserved recognition and I learned a thing
or two about you that I didn't know. All the best from Ryan in Calgary.

------
debbiedowner
Very nice that dang and sctb were involved in such a timely and solid startup
idea! If they were luckier, they could have been bought by Google sheets,
which acquired XL2Web, DocVerse, Quickoffice in their improvements 2006-2012:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sheets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sheets)

------
samgranieri
I didn't even realize this place had mods or needed moderation, and I've been
reading it for almost a decade.

------
agumonkey
HN being it's own top topic. Such Y

~~~
arethuza
A recursive application of Y-combinator to itself seems appropriate? :-)

~~~
kreetx
The "Show HN: This upvotes itself" came to mind. :)

But regarding the article: I don't think HN is getting worse. But why it might
look like it is is that it has become a very very busy site - which makes it
seem hectic and thus might appear "worse".

------
jrvarela56
Does anyone here have a forum they like more than HN? Don't tell me 'it
depends for what'. Just your overall go-to place on the internet to find
content and read discussions about it.

------
pessimizer
> “Almost every post deals with the same topics: these are people who spend
> their lives trying to identify all the ways they can extract money from
> others without quite going to jail[...]”

A money quote for me, but it's not inclusive of the angry bystander
programmers raging about externalities and corruption, and the employees
trying to figure out a way that they can ethically stay employed when their
boss (and probably their company's business model) is this. HN is all three.

Less so with time, though, it was once a more equal mix.

------
howard941
Guys, thanks for the work you do.

------
ilamont
Two questions I had after reading this article:

1) Of the 5 million users, how many are active readers and active commenters?

2) How can the careful moderation described in the article scale?

------
IfOnlyYouKnew
Congratulations to "paulmd" for getting a flagged comment cited in The New
Yorker!

([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13094354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13094354)
is the comment, which I find entirely reasonable but obviously people
disagreed, or at least it was considered off-topic)

~~~
danso
Really surprising to see that comment, which, full disclosure, I agree with,
get flag-killed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it get a few downvotes. But
rarely have I ever seen a thorough, well-sourced, and civil comment actually
be flag-killed. If anything, the shallow replies to his comment are the type
of things that typically seem to get downvoted (though not necessarily flagged
either).

~~~
vonmoltke
I think this is a side effect of self-moderation. By making everyone in the
community (over a certain threshold of participation) a mini-mod you turn
rules enforcement into a popularity contest. Valid, interesting, yet unpopular
points get suppressed. Rules violations that are popular get ignored, and
sometimes even lauded.

There is no reason, based on the HN guidelines, that the referenced post
should have been downvoted, let alone flagged. Whoever did so abused their
power to make such decisions.

~~~
TeMPOraL
There's a counterbalancing option to downvotes and flags - you can "vouch"
comments. Enough people using it[0] can make the software unkill a comment
provisionally, though doing this puts your own reputation and vouching rights
at stake, since according to [0], vouched comments are eventually reviewed
manually.

\--

[0] - Not sure what's the power of a vouch relative to a flag or a downvote,
but my impression is that it's stronger.

[1] - [https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-
announcements/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements/)

~~~
vonmoltke
Yes, and I use both when I feel it's appropriate. However, it's still
fundamentally a popularity contest rather than guidelines enforcement. If
enough people simply don't like what a post has to say it will stay grey/dead.

I'm coming to the opinion that downvoting should not grey out posts, or that
there should be some number of downvotes (greater than 1) required before it
starts. It should be harder to suppress constructive, on-topic posts just
because a bunch of people don't like the point.

------
ggm
I think HN like ALdaily has a curated "you can't bottle it" quality. They
might add another, or pass it on and ... It would change.

Don't change.

------
Insanity
Mostly off-topic: for anyone wondering, the image looks like a poker II
keyboard. (slight glow under the right-hand). Which is a great 60% keyboard!

------
raverbashing
It's a very interesting take to put a face on people who we only know for
short acronyms and interaction which usually happen when things are not going
smooth.

It's easy to think moderation might be too active (or not active enough)
though it's not us sitting on their seats.

(Though I agree with the critique that the site is "too orange" and I'm all
too happy to use the available customization option)

------
TACIXAT
The moderation here is amazing. Thanks to the mods!

------
romaaeterna
Hacker News is a well-moderated community, but it's illustrative to see where
Hacker News fails at moderation. While Hacker News is great at protecting the
community from disruptive individuals, it tends to fall down when protecting
unpopular individuals against the community turned mob.

I support Hacker News moderating itself however it chooses. However, if we are
looking at it as a moderation model for large, open, non-editorial platforms
(Youtube, Facebook) -- which I believe should all be covered under public
accommodation law -- it clearly fails. And even if when we are looking at
ostensibly neutral, publicly-orientated sites like newspaper comment boards,
it fails.

Hacker News moderation is not appealable, not auditable, does not have bright
line rules, and there are no due process rights. It simply does not respect
individual rights.

So while this moderation method succeeds for Hacker News, and perhaps should
become the model for small private sites, we should not try to scale it
internet-size companies. Platform companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter) and
backbone companies (ISPs, Cloudflare!) need a different set of rules geared
towards protecting individual rights and freedoms instead of protecting a
community.

~~~
Fnoord
> While Hacker News is great at protecting the community from disruptive
> individuals, it tends to fall down when protecting unpopular individuals
> against the community turned mob.

Isn't every community -barring a few wild west's- like that? One Usenet,
someone with an unpopular opinion would end up in people's kill file. On IRC,
someone with an unpopular opinion would end up on people's ignore or would get
kicked off the channel or klined off the server. Except for the kick and kline
the effect of a kill file or ignore is akin to a global shadow ban.

The solution to the problem you mentioned is that unpopular opinions _with_
merit will find their way to become eventually popular enough that they're
adopted. Whereas unpopular opinions _without_ merit eventually end up existing
on the cesspits of the Internet. Because somewhere on the Internet, any person
can spout their unpopular opinion. The question is, who reads it? Is it so
much different from a shadow ban?

~~~
romaaeterna
I don't mind this sort of moderation on community sites like Hacker News.

Still, as the error keeps coming up, I will repeat myself (I apologize to
people trying to read the whole thread, but this is the main point): For the
big platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) and backbone
providers (ISPs, Cloudfront), we need the right to appeal, public auditing,
bright line rules, and due process rights.

~~~
Fnoord
What about market competition? Won't that work out for the reasonable content?
Won't a platform like Tor always allow all content (reasonable and
unreasonable) to at least stay available as it is censorship-resistant?

------
fallingfrog
I want to just say that I really appreciate the work that the hn mods do:
thank you and keep up the good work!

------
4ntonius8lock
Some heroes don't wear capes, and I believe our moderators here are heroes.

Providing a platform for free expression and creative thinking.

It's truly a noble pursuit. I can't imagine the personal toll of moderating
people's baser instincts (my own included)

------
yters
My account gets the 'posting too fast ban' more than I'd like, but cannot say
it is always unearned. My runin with the mods is always cordial. I will say HN
is more open minded than most forums these days. Good job mods.

------
sunstone
Interesting that almost all the comments on this thread are related to
politics whereas the primary value to me of HN are the technical topics and
discussions.

There are plenty of other places on the net to argue politics with bots and
paid influencers.

------
Tiktaalik
Yep strict moderation is required for (quasi) anonymous internet discussion
sites.

Strict moderation is why olde forums like Somethingawful don't have nazis, but
weak/no moderation twitter is full of them.

~~~
the8472
Twitter may be full of nazis, but when I am looking at a feed of cute cat
pictures I don't see any of them.

That they merely exist shouldn't matter, what matters is giving users the
tools they need to look at the content they want to see instead of random crap
injected by others. Choose your filter bubble.

------
incompatible
Couch alluder?
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=couch+alluder](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=couch+alluder)

------
ausjke
for fair and balance as a moderator, I hope they're not too left or too right,
though I will not be surprised their political view are already on the left,
since it's from Silicon Valley.

also the system should have a way to know who is upvoting all the time or
downvoting all the time, those are noises statistically and should be somehow
mitigated.

------
etchalon
I don't have anything insightful or critical to add, but I did want to say how
much I enjoyed the article.

------
rebuilder
A complete sideline, but I thought the age of the IRA was past. What have I
missed?

~~~
monocasa
Internet Research Agency, not Irish Republican Army

------
peterwwillis
Are the moderators interested in automating their jobs at all? I really don't
understand why the site continues to have no means to help people communicate
better, other than a couple dudes that manually respond to people over and
over all day. From a technologist perspective it seems archaic.

~~~
dang
How can we automate our jobs?

~~~
peterwwillis
By applying a process to begin identifying the needs for moderation and
developing automated solutions. Later, designs can be modified to remove the
need for the automation.

~~~
dang
I feel like this begs the question. How do we develop automated solutions?
This seems much harder to me than it appears to seem to you.

~~~
peterwwillis
Well granted it's not something you can finish in a weekend. A lot of things
seem hard because they're difficult to imagine at the beginning. Who in the
past would have guessed that in the future we'd all be running around in
carriages whose front part literally explodes 25 times per second?

From a general standpoint, we develop automated solutions by following new
product development[1]. More specifically, we develop features for users to
provide different kinds of feedback, and write functions that combine that
feedback with machine learning to perform actions when necessary.

Even more specifically, the entirety of forum interaction is an input/output
of information in people's brains, computed along with emotion, heuristics,
and whatever knowledge the brain has, and generates output. By collecting
meta-information about the input and output (such as crowdsourced content
flags like category of information, perceived intent of a comment, training
data models on old content, etc) we can make functions that use the metadata
to perform actions, such as auto-detaching threads, muting users, delaying
reply buttons, providing feedback to commenters, and highlighting or shadowing
content. A lot of these are already done (some automated, some not), but I
think the big feature is _when_ these are done; find the emotional pain
points, provide functions that mitigate them based on metadata.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_product_development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_product_development)

------
piketty
I loved this article. I'm a software engineer in Chicago and I had stayed away
from HN, not knowing that there might be a humanist angle to the site that
would be appealing to someone like me.

------
PieUser
This is a wonderful article. I love The New Yorker.

------
piketty
I liked this article a lot. I'm a swe in Chicago and I had stayed away from HN
previously, not knowing that there was a humanist side to the site that would
appeal to someone like me.

------
nailer
dang / sctb: do you get alerts when we mention your usernames? You always seem
to respond relatively quickly.

~~~
pjc50
I wouldn't be surprised if they got a continuous feed of all comments. The
volume is _just about_ possible to keep up with.

~~~
dang
There exists a public feed of all comments (just click on 'comments' in top
bar), but we don't monitor the site that way. It's too much. We basically read
the threads spottily like anyone else, plus rely on moderation lists, such as
what has been flagged by users.

------
pastor_elm
No mention of perma bans of specific users? Michael O. Church comes to mind.

------
ymAg
I'm not an unconditional HN fan (avid reader of n-gate), but the article is
just a silly covert hit piece against the evil nerd morlocks (who of course
build the infra that the NewYorker Eloi use to distribute their vapid
opinions).

------
dunkelheit
I guess it is a perfect opportunity to thank dang and sctb for their
unobtrusive and friendly moderation efforts.

The article itself was a bit disappointing because it focused on political
issues. In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is _both_ a
"sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right", as evidenced by the fact that a
comment on a controversial topic can easily float near zero points while
raking in both upvotes and downvotes. And even those who refer to it as "the
orange site" still come back and comment. In other words, HN may be an echo
chamber but it is a pretty big one with a lot of voices in it.

~~~
FussyZeus
This is actually my sole complaint with HN. I love the community and I
understand where the moderators are coming from, but I feel that it's
important to point out that the position of "keep politics out of $X" is the
purest expression of privilege, and in general is an attitude that embraces
the status quo, no matter how horrifying it might be for the unprivileged.

I'm not saying HN should allow ALL political discussion, but when
technological issues inevitably and undeniably involve politics, either by
influencing or being influenced, it seems a little cowardly that the general
attitude of HN is "just don't discuss it" when the it in that case is core to
the issue at hand, even if it happens to be political.

~~~
afarrell
Something can be both an expression of privilege and a very good idea.

Example: The advice to get at least 8 hours of sleep at a regular time each
night. This reflects:

\- the economic privilege of not needing to do irregular shift work

\- not having a chronic disease which interrupts sleep

\- not being a parent

\- having a regular place to sleep at all.

However, it is still a good idea for one’s physical and mental health.

Likewise, a community might reasonably decide that certain political
discussions are too acrimonious to have productively. Even if this decision
reflects privilege, it might be the only decision under which the community
could survive without rupturing.

I _feel_ inclined to agree with your second paragraph, but just don’t know if
such discussions are actually productive.

~~~
FussyZeus
Well, as I said, it shouldn't be ALWAYS allowed, otherwise you have that sect
of people who bring up the politics inherent in anything, and while it's true
and important, it's not what HN is about or should be about.

BUT, and this is a big but here, there are a small number of discussions on HN
where it can be argued that the politics involved in an issue are more
important than the technology. Or, that the technology involved is actively
shaping the politics related to it. Or, that the politics of those building
the technology are informing the technology. And so on.

And I feel like the attitude here is one mirrored strongly in the tech
industry at large, that somehow by not discussing it openly, we avoid the
stains and the ugly realities of the situations we're involved in, and I'm
sorry but that's just not true. Simply refusing to discuss the political
angles of what we all do doesn't mean we're above it or beyond it, we're
simply ignoring it, and ignoring politics can have catastrophic consequences.

~~~
rhacker
Like 1st day of month are the hiring threads... what about on the 15th we have
a very focused political debate - and no other threads are allowed to have it.

I definitely agree that tech lately is so intertwined with politics.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
What happens if on the 16th Bloomberg announces that all organizers of the
protests at Google have left or been fired?

What happens if on the 17th, during a big ML conference, a prominent computer
vision scientist was able to conclusively prove that x% of current facial
datasets are majority white male and that this results in y% increase of false
positive rates when identifying nonwhites as criminals?

What happens if on the 19th there is a report delivered by a special UN
comissioned research group that issues that global warming has destroyed coral
reefs in a way such that they will never recover?

What happens if on the 25th it is definitively revealed through a security
report that voting machines were actively hacked to detect if the voter was
registered female and made them vote for $party?

What happens if on the 1st Reuters publishes a investigative piece that
explores how Microsoft has been delivering accurate censorship algorithms to
China and the specific people behind it?

What happens if on the 12th a NIH paper is published unveiling definitive
brain architecture differences between male, female, and nonbinary brains due
to an innovative computer vision collaboration in MIT?

What happens if on the 14th a scientist who happens to be an assigned-female-
at-birth nonbinary latin american publishes the definitive proof that P != NP?
Also, this researcher takes 'they' pronouns, so commentors can either use
"she" or "they" and both are political statements? (Or is it inappropriate to
talk about the researcher and their/her work to discover this at all?)

That is to say- in the article, it was discovered that "what is political
debate" turned out to itself be a political debate, because some things are
obviously political, and other things are political just by existing and
referring to it.

~~~
nkurz
Most likely, in all these cases the story would be posted anyway and then some
small minority of users who find it offensive would flag-kill it. If the
moderators/vouchers disagree, the story and comments might be resurrected.
Which is to say, things would work much as they do now.

The difference would be that there would be at least one day per month when
unpopular opinions could be voiced without (potentially) being censored. The
most important unpopular stories of the previous month would get some
discussion, whereas currently they get none.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
Please note what I responded to was that _no other threads_ may have such
debates, so I'm not sure this would be the case.

------
not_a_cop75
It doesn't really seem to do justice to the problem that all moderation has:

1) Moderators always assume the worst of people.

I remember asking one time about car repair online, and at the time, I had a
repair that needed to be made to make driving at high speeds safe. But
moderators and others seem to assume that when you can't do something 100%
right immediately, you are therefore going to do something wrong. I simply
wasn't driving at high speeds to make up for the issue - not everyone has
access to the money they need all the time. I mean why would I even be posting
such a question on a forum otherwise.

2) Downvotes are based upon agreeing with your answer and not especially
geared towards how qualitative your answers are.

I've gotten upvotes for basically stupid answers, which have no business being
upvoted ad infinitum for essentially being a dumb meme. I've been downvoted
(rather than debated) for answers that others outright disagreed with. At this
point, it really feels like online forums are a place to beat people's
opinions into submission, which is something I strongly disagree with. There's
a famous saying that states "If everyone is thinking the same thing, then
someone isn't thinking." I hold fast to this comment, and I look forward to
hearing why people think and believe different things, especially when they
are able to articulate why. No forum I have ever been to has really
appreciated this, especially in the face of controversy. This feels too much
like a new breed of close mindedness, which I am supposing is not too
different from the thought crime, which if I recall correctly was conceived in
the book 1984.

~~~
brightball
2) That's also been my experience.

I've always been interested to see if a forum moderator would "down vote
proof" a post that falls into that category: Unpopular but well reasoned and
not inflammatory.

In the same way that "anti-brigading" approaches watch for floods of upvotes
from a single referral source, it seems like clearing + blocking down votes
would be beneficial in the other direction (or temporarily suspending access
to down voting for users exhibiting the behavior).

------
mieseratte
I think the HN culture is slowly dying. Reflexive downvoting has become very
common as of late, the eternal September is brining in more people steeped in
political hivemindedness. That isn’t to say all is lost, but this site feels
markedly different from the beginning of the decade.

~~~
arethuza
How do you know that downvoting is "reflexive" \- certainly any time I've been
downvoted it was, on reflection, fairly well justified.

~~~
mieseratte
> certainly any time I've been downvoted it was, on reflection, fairly well
> justified.

Typically when I find my statements are downvoted it is because I had a quip
that could reasonably be construed as negative, combative, etc. I tend to edit
and remove those bits.

When I find things to be "reflexively" (probably the wrong word) downvoted, it
is in regards to simple questions. Simple example, there was an article
regarding Manning's confinement yesterday. One top-level comment asked "Why is
this not cruel" to which I asked the opposite, "How is it cruel?" \- simple as
can be. I watched that one go down to fairly negative, then bounce back up,
settling on a score of 0. I don't care about the score itself so much as what
that delta represents.

Perhaps I'm just too narrow minded, but I fail to come up with a reason to
downvote a simple question asking for perspective that doesn't involve me
reading some kind of intent. One of the core tenets of this site is to assume
good faith, assume the most charitable viewpoint. When I say that I believe HN
culture is dying, it is this that I am talking about. There seems to be less
and less good faith discussion as time goes on.

As always, I'd love for an alternative perspective that I'm (probably) missing
here.

~~~
rocqua
It might be a feature of HN believing that HN is becoming more combative and
snarky. Hence, simple questions like "How is it cruel?" are more often read
like a quick snarky comment instead of like a simple honest question.

In other words, perhaps the perception of a drop in HN quality makes people
more likely to reflexively assume bad faith.

~~~
18pfsmt
Assumption of bad faith is a feature of nihilism, which is what I see as
gaining a foothold on HN. "For the lulz" is nihilistic.

"They're nihilists, Donny."

------
meowface
I think it's all our own fault if we ever expected expert political philosophy
or scientific debate from a group of people who mostly just, at the end of the
day, program websites and phone apps.

A high percentage of IT, software engineering, and professional advice on HN
is very valuable, but the percentage of other kinds of commentary that's
valuable is much lower. I occasionally also get sucked into the sorts of
debates that I just shat on, but most of the time I find myself having to
scroll past huge chunks of comment sections because half the sub-threads are
pedantic political debates over some term or whatever, nested 10+ levels deep.

~~~
jacquesm
To save you some scrolling: if you click the little [-] the thread will
collapse. I've campaigned to make the default an all-collapsed page but it did
not get much support.

~~~
nkurz
Arguably, by putting the comments on a separate page they already are
collapsed by default. Going to the comments page signifies that one wants to
view the comments. Why do you think a further level of collapsing would be
beneficial? Would you expand things once they are upvoted, or always require
an additional click to view the deeper levels?

~~~
cgriswald
I wouldn’t mind seeing sub threads collapsed by default. (Of course I could
always do that myself.) It would make for a cleaner page. I could scan the top
level comments for interest subtopics/responses, and it would discourage
thread-jacking.

------
ppod
>The site’s now characteristic tone of performative erudition—hyperrational,
dispassionate,

It's a good article overall, but it would be nice, just for once, to read
something in a mainstream "arts and culture" outlet that wasn't absolutely
dripping with fear and contempt for anything related to tech culture.

~~~
krapp
I didn't read anything dripping fear and contempt for tech culture in the
article, much less the excerpt you quoted. It seems accurate to me.

~~~
billfruit
Yes but it does have a tone like the authour is treating HN as the ”other”,
and trying to view it from outside with some bemusement.

~~~
krapp
To be fair, I've seen people here regard "mainstream" non-tech culture with
bemusement (and plenty of contempt) fairly often.

------
danaos
> In April, when a story about Katie Bouman, an M.I.T. researcher who helped
> develop a technology that captured the first photo of a black hole, rose to
> the front page, users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to
> undermine the weight of her contributions.

Hmm. I guess citation needed?

~~~
raldi
This seems to have been either a complete, sensationalistic fabrication, or at
best, a totally negligent misread.

See for yourself:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086)

The thread began, _" If Katie was a man do you think people would be going
through git histories and their published papers trying to determine if she is
being over-credited for her achievements?"_

And it's not referring to others on HN; as the replies make clear, it's about
people elsewhere.

~~~
minimaxir
Scroll down to the _very_ bottom of that discussion thread and unfurl the
flagged threads.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19634262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19634262)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632301)

~~~
raldi
The comments on that story were nothing like the impression any reader would
get from the reporter's description.

Again: "users combed through her code on GitHub"

Reality: One user, in a detached, downvoted, flagged, dead comment invisible
to 99% of visitors to the site posted a link to an image analyzing her GH
contributions, and was immediately and widely rebuked.

~~~
minimaxir
I was in that thread while it was active: it took awhile for those discussions
to become "detached, downvoted, flagged, dead".

~~~
raldi
That's not what the capture at the Internet Archive appears to show:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20190411122008/https://news.ycomb...](http://web.archive.org/web/20190411122008/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19632086)

------
sohkamyung
Curious to know why this post has a "unvote" option. I don't recall seeing
that before. Is there a link that explains what it does?

~~~
nothrabannosir
It’s not this story, it’s a global feature on both comments and stories which
serves as a “undo” for fat fingering the upvote button. Before this feature
you’d often see comments along the likes of “sorry, I accidentally downvoted
you while trying to upvote.”

~~~
hef19898
One great improvement of UI for HN, don't ask me how often I fat fingered
before.

~~~
soneil
I fat-finger a lot, especially on mobile where these tiny little arrows are a
challenge. And one thing I notice is that since both the arrows disappear,
you're never quite sure if you did. You have to question your fat fingers
yourself, and if you're unsure, Undo gives you the option to take a second
shot. But you're never entirely sure.

~~~
cesarb
> And one thing I notice is that since both the arrows disappear, you're never
> quite sure if you did. [...] But you're never entirely sure.

The undo link says "unvote" when you upvoted, and "undown" when you downvoted.
And yeah, after every single click on one of these arrows, I check the undo
link to make sure I clicked the right one.

~~~
soneil
I must admit I never noticed that! Apparently I don't downvote often.

The more you know - Thanks!

------
hos234
Discussion in todays world is highly over rated.

There are people who build hospitals and there are people who stand around
talking about who should build hospitals.

The former group in any population in any country is very small. The latter
group is very large and thanks to the current architecture of the internet
have gotten so over amplified that they think they actually matter.

Their resumes don't have any actual achievement beyond drawing attention to
things. They don't matter. People who are driven to build hospitals will keep
building hospitals irrespective of all the "discussions" going on.

~~~
FussyZeus
The idea that the 'doers' are the only ones that matter, and that drawing
attention to issues is mere posturing for social standing is a bad-faith
critique of many people who act with good intentions.

Yes, there are always those seeking to attach their names to worthy causes for
their own gains. However people have taken that legitimate critique and
amplified it to the degree that "If you aren't fixing the problem, you have
zero right to complain about it" which is flatly ridiculous. You can be in a
position where helping fix a given problem is simply not possible for any one
of thousands of understandable reasons, but that doesn't mean you aren't
allowed to speak about it, if for no other reason than so the other people who
are able to help might know about it.

People like to rip on others for the perception that they only draw awareness
to issues and nothing more, but what exactly is a 20-something in college
supposed to do? They often don't have disposable income, they often lack the
means to travel to places, unless they are in the right college chances are
they can't join a protest, the one resource they have in abundance is _time_.
And so they use what they have to generate whatever impact they can.

However small it might be, that impact is still worlds more helpful than the
collected caws of "WhY aReN'T yoU fIxINg iT YOuRseLf?!"

~~~
vorpalhex
It doesn't take money to join protests. It doesn't take money to volunteer,
even if it's just maintaining a newsletter or occasionally seeking donations
for your local org.

It's very easy to throw stones from afar when you've never been in the
trenches. Those who don't do often make unreasonable demands because they have
no connection to the reality of the situation of actually getting a thing
done.

~~~
FussyZeus
> It doesn't take money to join protests.

Travel expenses, taking time off work, food and drink, accommodations...

> It doesn't take money to volunteer, even if it's just maintaining a
> newsletter or occasionally seeking donations for your local org.

Many activists _do those things_ , though. They're still dragged through the
mud for "not doing enough" or "just talking."

> It's very easy to throw stones from afar when you've never been in the
> trenches.

I've never flown a helicopter, but when someone puts one in a tree I can still
say "dude fucked it up." and be correct.

> Those who don't do often make unreasonable demands because they have no
> connection to the reality of the situation of actually getting a thing done.

"Reasonable," "civil," "practical," are all examples of words used by those
empowered by a status quo to resist changes to it. "We're happy to discuss
issues, but the discussion should be _ciiiiviiil_ " which I mean, yeah, I
generally prefer civil discussions, but when the topic at hand is decidedly
uncivil, for example taking people's children and imprisoning them at the
border, then I believe an uncivil response is warranted.

~~~
vorpalhex
> Travel expenses, taking time off work, food and drink, accommodations...

Most protest organizers can set you up with a free bus ticket if you reach out
to them and are in a reasonable bus distance. Your city may even have discount
bus tickets already available if your protest is happening at a government
building (which is an ideal place to protest). There are people at protests
who go not for any protest cause itself, but to make sure people get water and
don't die from heat stroke. Fill a water bottle before you go.

No, going to protest on the cheap won't get you an airplane ticket and a free
lunch. Pack a sandwich if you want to eat. If you can't afford that, ask your
fellow protestors for some crackers or something. Remember that your fellow
protestors are on your side, and will actually help you.. if you ask them.
They're not psychic.

> I've never flown a helicopter, but when someone puts one in a tree I can
> still say "dude fucked it up." and be correct.

Can you? What if it was a SAR helicopter that was given bad flight relay
information and got caught in a storm? Helicopters sometimes crash, and it's
not always the fault of the pilot.

> but when the topic at hand is decidedly uncivil, for example taking people's
> children and imprisoning them at the border, then I believe an uncivil
> response is warranted.

It's possible to disagree with a situation, be civil, and take time to
understand it. I've spoken to the people who work in those "prisons" with
children, and most of them are dramatically against the wall, but also
recognize when a kid who is 8 shows up at an international border alone, they
need to go somewhere.

Again, that doesn't mean you have to agree with it, but throwing stones at the
people who are at least trying to help isn't productive.

------
StonyBrook84
As a Jewish coder, I would like to take this opportunity to thank moderator
"dang" for banning antisemites wholesale. As a fellow Jew, he has gone above
and beyond in preventing hate and ignorance from spreading on this website,
ensuring that there's absolutely zero tolerance for intolerance. Dang, thank
you for silencing the antisemites!

------
18pfsmt
[I, honestly, am hostile to n00b accounts discussing non-tech topics.]

I agreed with you from your opening thread until you held high Dylan's lyrics,
rather than his instrumentally produced melodies which entranced me in the
80s. Poetry is not legalese or code, and is open to interpretaion.

~~~
18pfsmt
Downvotes, but no arguments, because they have none. It is quite sick.

------
prepend
“In April, when a story about Katie Bouman, an M.I.T. researcher who helped
develop a technology that captured the first photo of a black hole, rose to
the front page, users combed through her code on GitHub in an effort to
undermine the weight of her contributions.”

This is an odd statement as it implies the purpose was to undermine. Reading
code and critiquing isn’t meant to “undermine” but to identify truth and
constantly look for better ways.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
...and here we go again.

What was, or at least felt, obvious was that there was a double standard being
applied. Not just in the sense that such a witch hunt would be unlikely to
happen to a man being lauded. But also that if there's one point that Hacker
News could probably agree on it's that lines-of-code is a bad metric for
evaluating programmers, let alone scientists.

There was also the pervasive sense of being on the side of the rest of the
team, even though highlighting their contribution was the first thing Katie
Bouman did. And at least Andrew Chael, who did write the plurality of the code
in the GitHub repo, did come out strongly in favor of her and was horrified of
the hate she got. Quote:

 _" So apparently some (I hope very few) people online are using the fact that
I am the primary developer of the eht-imaging software library to launch awful
and sexist attacks on my colleague and friend Katie Bouman. Stop."_

([https://twitter.com/thisgreyspirit/status/111651854496183091...](https://twitter.com/thisgreyspirit/status/1116518544961830918))

It's curious that, at least in my subjective impression, the tech community
has a far larger problem with women than any of the other groups that have
traditionally suffered discrimination: racism and especially homophobia really
are extremely rare, at least overtly. But the uglyness Katie Bouman, or Ellen
Pao, or Marissa Meyers brought out seems to be alive and well.

~~~
nailer
If a man received personal acclaim for a discovery, and someone looked at the
repo and found that someone other than the man wrote most of the crunchier
code, then yes I'd evaluate the acclaim for the man the same way.

Note most of the acclaim aimed at the scientist, rather than the team, was
from the media. Whom as usual, likes to omit their own role.

~~~
moccachino
But would you ever go and look at his repo?

If it is the case that she didn't contribute the most complicated stuff, then
I can assure you it is not the first time in history that the face of a
project is not the one that did the hardest work. Also as has repeatedly been
said, she always said it was a team effort.

This is all said with the caveat that I didn't follow this 'controversy' and
never cared to look at the contribution distribution of all the project
members.

~~~
nailer
> But would you ever go and look at his repo?

No. But if someone else checked the repo, I'd be interested. That said the
media would be less likely to publish 'this young man took a photo of a black
hole'.

> Also as has repeatedly been said, she always said it was a team effort.

Yep. Also mentioned in my comment you're replying to.

I think of this conflict as 'developers versus the media' \- the media having
pushed the narrative of 'a young woman who took a photo of a black hole'.

The media (who like to remove their own influence from discussions) have
turned it into 'sexist developers vs young female scientist'. They've been
very successful at doing that, yet again, because, well, they're the media.
It's easy to shape a story when you control all outlets deemed noteworthy
enough to cite.

~~~
pron
> because, well, they're the media.

And because, well, it was true ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Every person I showed this to was disgusted, as was I. So even if you disagree
with the characterization, it certainly wasn't _just_ the media, but also your
fellow developers. It was a shameful moment (one of many, most of a similar
kind) for HN that reflected horribly on developers, and the media called it up
on that, as they should.

~~~
read_if_gay_
> because, well, it was true [...] Every person I showed this to was
> disgusted, as was I

What you’re saying here is: because the opinion of me and my friends is
objectively correct and yours is not ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
pron
Whoever is "right", it wasn't _just_ the media, but also lots of developers,
who felt it was a shameful display of misogyny. So it is certainly _wrong_ to
claim that the media spun this story a certain way out of the blue.

Also, if I didn't think my opinion was correct it wouldn't be my opinion.

~~~
read_if_gay_
One could say the exact same thing except for the other position. Certainly
there exist a number of journalists who think the media’s reporting on the
topic was biased in order to garner more clicks and/or push an agenda, so it
is wrong to claim Bouman just fell victim to sexists. Total non-argument.

~~~
pron
One could say anything, but while it's unsurprising that women's achievements
are highlighted because they are objectively a minority in a field that, like
other fields, was shown to suffer from sexism in numerous studies, the
response was different from when a man's achievement is highlighted, and that,
too has been shown in studies. So I do think empirical observation is on my
side as well.

~~~
read_if_gay_
Maybe the response is different because if a man’s achievement is highlighted,
the fact that a man did it isn’t highlighted, which isn’t exactly the case for
women (apparently a woman in the team suffices for an achievement to be
credited to a woman), making these two kinds of articles about fundamentally
different things: “X was achieved” vs. “A woman achieved X”. One of these is
far more loaded politically and hence of course more likely to elicit strong
responses. There’s no reason that indicates misogyny in any form.

~~~
pron
Studies show otherwise, and I think that the gut reaction of those who read
that discussion also shows that at least some developers felt that way, if not
in general, then at least in that particular case. Also, that women's
participation in software has drastically decreased since the eighties to the
point they're now a small miniority is just a fact, and so focusing on them is
natural, if not justified. Various causes for outbursts of xenophobia and
misogyny have also been studied, and no one thinks they're unexepected, but
that has nothing to do with their actual nature. I always anticipate a "strong
reaction" on HN when women are discussed, but I'm still saddened by it.

I could only recommend to the curious readers of HN, if they are interested
and certainly if they think they should voice their "strong reaction," to try
looking at the rather vast scholarly literature that research has produced
over the past decades. It's not a matter of a difference of opinions among
people with equal knowledge of the subject matter, but usually one between
those who have more knowledge and those who have less.

~~~
read_if_gay_
> Studies show otherwise

That’s a bold claim.

> the gut reaction of those who read that discussion also shows that at least
> some developers felt that way, if not in general, then at least in that
> particular case.

I can’t follow you here.

~~~
pron
> That’s a bold claim.

No, I think this is the consensus scholarly view.

~~~
nailer
Wait: read_if_gay_'s claim was:

> ...because if a man’s achievement is highlighted, the fact that a man did it
> isn’t highlighted, which isn’t exactly the case for women (apparently a
> woman in the team suffices for an achievement to be credited to a woman),
> making these two kinds of articles about fundamentally different things: “X
> was achieved” vs. “A woman achieved X”.

You dispute that claim, and say the consensus scholarly view is otherwise?

------
diminoten
I'm concerned that articles like these paper over the myriad issues that arose
when one person (dang) holds a monopoly on the content of a community. I
further worry that this is only going to embolden dang into further deluded
thought that he can't make mistakes, that his judgement is without flaw.

------
yesand
This is the largest circle jerk I’ve ever found myself in unwillingly.

~~~
dang
Unwillingly?

~~~
iron0013
^ perhaps the single greatest comment to ever grace an HN thread.

------
whiteopinions
>Strict moderation

I don't consider the moderation on this site to be strict at all?

It's tone police more than it is content police. HN continually lets comments
and statements go completely unquestioned, and in some cases actively supports
view points, that are objectively wrong in the most vanilla fashion all
because it was said in the correct manner.

~~~
toasterlovin
Tone is important. Nobody was ever convinced by being screamed at. People who
argue against tone policing are mostly just using that as a way to shut down
their opponents.

------
pbhjpbhj
How do you know their names, how do you know there are only 2?

One of the problems for me about HN is the secretive nature of moderation.

~~~
magpi3
Because 2T1Qka0rEiPr read the article :-)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
My only question now is why can't I flag my own comment ;o)

------
kentrado
My experience with dang have been limited to him accusing me of making a
personal swipe and me trying convince him that's not the case.

I think sometimes overly sensitive moderation is not good.

~~~
pmyteh
For what it's worth, my only interaction with dang was being gently chided for
a slightly glib dismissal at the top of a comment I made. The phrasing I used
is very common (and treated as harmless) where I was brought up in Yorkshire.
But he was right; without the benefit of that context it came over as rude.
I've been a bit more careful since.

Thanks, dang. A triumph of moderation.

~~~
frereubu
That's been my experience too. It's the only online forum where the style of
moderation has made me think twice about what I said.

------
thwythwy
This reads like a mediocre college admissions essay full of breathless,
overdramatic characterizations of minor, anodyne exchanges. I had to stop
reading when a two word response from a user gave the author "a small rush of
triumph." The tone and word choice is just nauseating. Examples abound: >
"Commenters . . . . bickered about the word 'soul.'" > "Conversation
spiralled, with users making arguments about Cartesian metaphysics and quoting
Socrates."

The interesting aspects of this article could fill a tweet. "1/3 of HN users
come from europe. It has mods. They have tatts. Check out @shit_hn_says"

~~~
dang
One has tatts.

~~~
tptacek
You know you want "Please don't do this here" on your arm. Maybe in, like,
kanji characters or something.

~~~
amyjess
Probably not the best phrase to get done in Japanese. There's no kanji; you'd
write all of it in hiragana.

ここでしないでください。 [koko de shinaide kudasai]

Or maybe if you wanted to emphasize the "this": ここでこれをしないでください。 [koko de kore
o shinaide kudasai]

~~~
tptacek
Seriously, what's the number we'd have to hit in a charity Kickstarter to make
Dan do this?

~~~
pvg
It's been a while since someone's made good use of the HN poll feature.

------
scoot_718
Since account creation was disabled, I'm sure it's the easiest moderation job
going.

~~~
thisabled
I always make a fresh new throwaway account here every time I make a post,
and,so, by this post you can deduce yourself. This is a zero-minute account,
as all my accounts are. You're welcome.

~~~
dang
This is actually something the site guidelines ask you not to do. Would you
mind reviewing them?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

HN is a community. It's totally fine not to use your real name, but users do
need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no
usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

~~~
throwaway5752
We all really appreciate the work you do here.

------
julienreszka
This apologetic article changes nothing.

The moderation of hackernews should be independently audited for biased
censorship.

~~~
dredmorbius
How would you propose doing that?

I've suggested some sort of transparency report. That wasn't warmly embraced,
but a viable model might stil work.

------
uptown
Why is this on the front page? /s

------
Eiriksmal
Deeply impressed by the author's dedication to fleshing out this story.
Learning about n-gate's existence, and then tracking down the creator to get
his take on Hacker News? Excellent work. N-gate's comments are an excellent
summary of the portion of HN's population that gives the website its unique
reputation:

>>>The proprietor of N-gate is an engineer who grew up in Palo Alto and now
lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he works in high-performance computing.
He agreed to exchange e-mails on condition of anonymity. “Almost every post
deals with the same topics: these are people who spend their lives trying to
identify all the ways they can extract money from others without quite going
to jail,” he wrote. “They’re people who are convinced that they are too
special for rules, and too smart for education. They don’t regard themselves
as inhabiting the world the way other people do; they’re secret royalty,
detached from society’s expectations and unfailingly outraged when faced with
normal consequences for bad decisions. Society, and especially economics, is a
logic puzzle where you just have to find the right set of loopholes to win the
game. Rules are made to be slipped past, never stopping to consider why
someone might have made those rules to start with. Silicon Valley has an
ethics problem, and ‘Hacker’ ‘News’ is where it’s easiest to see.”

~~~
klez
You just violated the prime directive.

------
HNLurker2
>Every single time poll restrictions have been proposed, it’s been for racist
causes,” wrote one user, in response to a commenter with the username
_rokosbasilisk_ , who...

This is why I don't read hacker news, unexpectedly you will get an existential
nightmare. (Lucky for those who never heard of LessWrong )

~~~
HNLurker2
Rokosbasilisk is what I mean. I suggest not googling that, down voters go
ahead

------
balozi
Call me cynical but that piece reads like an ad. Normally you see this sort of
articles when an entity is trying to raise it's profile for some reason. Maybe
a funding round coming up, asset sale, IPO, etc.

~~~
slang800
I didn't think it was very ad-like. If Anna Wiener were trying to boost the
profile of HN then she probably wouldn't have included all those random
examples of "toxic" comments and political discussions that she disagrees
with.

It was certainly positive toward the moderators, but not the site as a whole.

------
drinane
Yeah if I don't fall in line with our un-elected SJWs and push out bay area
propaganda I get flamed. Very interesting.

