So today I wanted to say thanks, on behalf of the HN community.
I have never, ever seen any online community moderated better or even remotely close to as well as HN.
I am deeply thankful for HN. It is a surprisingly important part of my life, almost solely because of them.
1: Perhaps this one more then anything is maybe my favorite nugget:
>"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
This really does make such a different to repeat to myself. And even if the other person is not in fact acting in good faith, it doesn't hurt to try first and then disengage with reason rather then pure emotion.
So thanks to those responsible.
Which probably means that what they're doing is a good thing though, not a lot of flame wars going on! (Or alternatively, I just stay away from articles that might cause need for more moderation).
But thanks! Good mods are crucial for a place like this
As HN community is more and more becoming group think (watch how this post will be downvoted) and laying these extra layers of super powers punishing anyone ad hock doesn’t help. In few posts when I wrote non-popular opinion very respectfully these folks expressed their displeasure. Mods should NEVER do that.
The sign of such required moderators is indicator of how broken the algorithms driving HN. Instead of fixing these fundamental tech issues, the powers behind HN have doubled down on exercising heavy handed dictatorships. The least they could have done but never have bothered is to at least tell people they punish what they did wrong, how do they fix it and get back in community. The best they could have done would b ego open source HN and have honest discussions about various issues we have as community so more brain power is available to solve these issues. That’s the hacker way.
Update: Great! Group thinkers are already getting busy at casting downvotes.
Hear hear. This is by far the worst part of HN. It makes me very annoyed, more than any discussion on this site has, to see that I'm posting too fast... By having a discussion or responding to multiple people. What a horrible restriction.
HN is open source and you can see how they put a flag on your account if they think you argue too much.
Do you have any evidence whatever for that?
I appreciate the understanding, i once added a "post to HN" button to my RSS feed service and i posted too much..
I received a ban and only afterwards it seemed i was posting too much, but explained the situation and was met with understanding. Now, i'm much more considerate.
Thanks for the human moderation and keeping the quality on HN as good as possible.
And to be on topic, I'm not as familiar with sctb, but Dan's comments have always been nothing but constructive. They're never disparaging, they seem primarily to be nudges towards decent behavior. Thank you Dan!
I'll keep an eye out for you Scott ;-).
Cheers all, and happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating today.
So, thanks Dan and Scott for all the good work you do keeping the comment sections higher quality than most of the Internet. :)
Some Weirdo: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/74/40/f8744035e15d69eb8fd4c70de...
Monster Jobs: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/21/81/3e/21813e975f2aa35259246eeca...
Vultures: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/e4/d2/f3/e4d2f3b47c3de90e1a084d94a...
Construction Birds at Lunch: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/3b/c5/fd/3bc5fd323e791b6879529e6a5...
Blizard's A-Comin': https://i.pinimg.com/736x/61/f9/bb/61f9bb66cc0e79f06246876ba...
The Creeps: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/1c/5e/5a1c5ef2e9ab19d27970...
Superman In His Later Years: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/86/95/a7/8695a7c1cfffb69bc3b92c980...
Before Paper and Scissors: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a4/cf/ab/a4cfabe6847546e52343d4d15...
Sorry, Buddy: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/49/6b/3a/496b3a234ddeca894887b249e...
Nerd! ...: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c9/08/a0/c908a02a8dfa42db9973f743b...
The Thanksgiving themed one that I googled and googled and googled for but couldn't find, which was taped to my mom's refrigerator, was the disappointed bird standing in front of the open refrigerator, lamenting: "Dang, somebody ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs!"
And fwiw it’s pretty disgusting that people feel the need to kiss up to them all the time on HN, but it’s like supplicating before anyone with power, it’s done for a reason and it’s an ugly aspect of humanity.
Countless times I’ve seen interesting submissions buried, either by some behind-the-scenes process or via a title change that reverts to the authors boring or misleading title.
There are surely some griefers who need to be policed, but the HN mods are accountable to nobody and there is no public record of their actions which might reveal improprieties or abuse of the trust placed in them by pg and the community.
So I am thankful for any good intentions they may have, but sadly the evidence suggests that at least one of them is a bully who abuses the authoritarian power and lack of accountability.
I’m not arguing that moderation isn’t necessary, just that unaccountable and non-transparent moderation decisions are a recipe for corruption and abuse of power.
Basically, HN is run like Singapore. It’s very tidy but there is an authoritarian dimension that is unsettling. HN thrives when the mods are busy with other things and don’t have time to taze every so called flame war and “fix” every title.
Here's why I remember this: no one I know in real life reads fiction. I know plenty of people who read non-fiction (political stuff mostly), but no one in my circle takes the time to just sit back on a rainy Saturday and read something someone else made up. Even my wife is reading Bob Woodward's "Fear", and we aren't even American. So yeah, that little interaction made my day.
I think moderators are doing an excellent job to keep this forum decent and interesting.
Of course I also thank the people who make this forum and share interesting information.
The thread need not be deleted anyway. Nothing wrong with thanking some of the people that keep the site running smoothly. Especially on a day dedicated to giving thanks.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
and if there's a broad community sense that moderation is particularly good here, there may be something interesting to be learned from that.
In any event, it's (American) thanksgiving and they're about the best mods I've seen!
Thank you for "forcing San Fransisco liberal social justice politics down everyone's throat", you "west coast liberal elite echo chamber". Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!!! ;)
Maybe to find the issue you should pay less attention to your opinion and more to how you express it. Disagreeing with people is okay, even on the Internet there isn't always a side that's right and one that's wrong.
In fact, they remind me of Stackoverflow community.
I didn't ran into problem with sctb tho, i think he's fine. But dang, she needs tone down her impulse of over moderating everything.
I don't agree with all their methods and opinions. Most threads which hurt business are deranked and removed. Specially, the ones which discuss the dark side of the startups, after all YC has to make sure no one rocks their boat.
And the ones which discuss sexual harrasment or racism in YC Startups or Valley startups, are removed from the first page faster.
Lifestyle business threads are also removed from first page so that no entrepreneur might imagine that something is possible without VC funding.
Pretty, sure these guys get paid for their work. I don't see why should we be thankful afterall it's free market. If they don't like their job, someone else will.
The purpose of this forum is to attract talent from all around the world to silicon valley and mining the bright people who comment there for ideas for next billion dollar startup which YC guys will fund as they got those investors on their side.
Rest of us really don't benefit in material way other than probably a feeling of winning an argument on internet and raising testosterone/dopamine a bit.
