Thank you to dang and sctb
Dan and Scott do an incredible amount of work behind the scenes to make Hacker News what it is. I have never met two more thoughtful community stewards. They usually get more hate than thanks, which they deal with cheerfully. This community means a lot to a lot of people.
So today I wanted to say thanks, on behalf of the HN community.
151 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadRunning a forum is hard work and everyone wants to devolve every mod decision into rules lawyering, like "well, then why wasn't this specific thing in the rules?"
No, there can't be a rule for literally everything, so you're just going to have to be an adult and take it on the chin when the mods make a decision and double down on it. I completely empathize with dang's final post, that your "legalistic gambit" is a waste of everyone's time, and often the platform people like to spring off some sort of "omg the mod tyranny" campaign.
That happened over 70 days ago. Maybe it's time to let it go and learn to live with the fact that your tiny comment was flagged. Looking at your post history, you've lived through much worse, respectfully.
You're going to have to live with that.
If you disagree so much, maybe it's time to go somewhere else and spare the rest of us from your permanent, belabored grudge. Like, boo hoo. Seriously. Hopefully you find something else to spend your precious time on earth worrying about.
That nobody else really cares will be a critical life lesson for you.
But, when that arbitrariness always, always favors one set of viewpoints and suppresses others according to content, then in becomes a problem. That's not randomness, that's bias.
Eg: Person A says controversial opinion X, person B counters with controversial opinion Y. This can lead to a flame war. But which controversial opinion gets censored? The one the mods disagree with. And the excuse it, to prevent a flame war. Which is valid. But it's always the same side of the discussion that gets silenced by power.
The pre-judged outcome really drains the life and value from a lot of the most enervating discussions around here. I'd rather have read "flamewar" (as long as it's not personal) than an enforced echo chamber.
> pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_lioning
Or is your point just baseless name calling and dehumanization: that you think the humans on HN behave like chimps, but you don't have any proof of that, just proof of how chimps behave?
If you just want to call people chimps, then just call people chimps and take your licks for that, but stop beating around the bushes like such a chimp.
Looks like you blew a seal!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ETlTZoF1E
You've seen the cartoon of course, haven't you? Of course you have, because you're acting exactly as the cartoon describes, and you are well aware of what you're doing, while pretending you don't know, and that you never heard of the term, even after it's been pointed out to you several times.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sea-lioning
Now that I've given you a link and explained it to you yet again, your pretense of not knowing what we're talking about when we accuse you of sea-lioning is no longer valid, so give it up.
Failure to acknowledge that you've read the definition of that term, understand what it means, and how it perfectly describes what you're doing, constitutes an admission of guilt that you're not arguing in good faith.
Is it possible to bring up ape behavioral studies without being accused of bad intentions? What do you propose is the best way to go about it?
From the OSS (CIA) Simple Sabotage Manual: https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...
(1) Insist on doing everything through"channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make "speeches," Talk as frequently as possible and at great length., Illustrate your. points.. by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible - never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions. . . .
That was an interesting comment, it's a pity it went out like this.
> dang called me a troll after I simply asked him exactly what it was about my comment that warranted it being removed.
Why do you think this tiny little comment worthy of immediate massive downvotes so that no one even can upvote it any more?
Is it your expectation that people commenting here must submit themselves to popular opinion? Is diverging from group think or disagreeing with mods punishable by immediate shadow banning?
Fun fact: there are zero suppressions for any comments praising the mods in this thread. Now go read the definition of “echo chamber”.
Another highly selectively enforced rule.
It's unpleasant reading people taking out their axes to grind, especially on this page. "Boo hoo, they treat me so badly, it's a horrible place" etc.. That's why people downvote. The mods seem admirable here to me, very much so. And of course on this page you will find people who appreciate them, that's the theme of the page. No conspiracy theory needed. And most people here really like HN, don't think it's awful, or we wouldn't be here. So why are you here? If what you say is right, then life's too short to waste at a place like this, isn't it. Maybe look at what you've 'turned into'.
Yes, you're right about the moral police part, I'm trying hard to stop doing this. I try to help like this and usually just get downvoted. Plus it just adds more at-best-useless comments to the site. But it is hard not to want to refute what seem unjust, unfair accusations, of the site or people on here, when I see them. But the best answer is just to downvote and/or flag, as recommended in the guidelines, I guess. Ok bye.
Notice how that's apparently perfectly fine to say, but someone critical of something on HN would have to get lucky to be able to speak like that, as demonstrated in this thread.
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.
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
By all means downvote me, btw. This backslapping post on the front page only wants to hear about how amazing the mods are, so the bias is pretty evident.
It’s their site to do as they will, but it strikes me as interesting that they are held up as saints when they are anything but. Note that I’m not saying they are monsters either, but as someone on the receiving end of dang’s conduct I personally cannot agree with this post. It’s not like they are really accountable for their actions.
I am somewhat rate limited it seems for reasons but I won't complain. I'm possibly more annoying than them.
That's false. They also take away your individual ability to post a thread or upvote. They do this silently.
See that's where you lose me, I'm afraid. This is why it's vague to the point of being irrefutable.
edit: apparently it's updated daily, with 18,507,035 comments as of now: https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/bigquery-public-data...
The right response here is simply to ask for further substantiation, as danso did. It's not clear to me that the mods are directly responsible for what you've experienced. If you haven't, I would contact them for clarification.
Downvoting something for complaining about votes is fairly normal. Downvote baiting on top is flagworthy. I imagine lots of people quite sensibly apply these as a matter of course.
Suppose he is being treated unfairly by the mods. Is that not worth complaining about?
I don't give a crap about some silly "downvote every comment complaining about downvotes" rule. Complaining about downvotes was frowned upon because people get inexplicably downvoted as a matter of course here, and the frequency of complaints was deemed sufficiently detracting to warrant being frowned upon. Being treated unfairly by the mods, however, is another matter entirely.
I haven't seen a preponderance of evidence suggesting the complaint was ill-founded, and the guy's tenure and comment history (what I looked through of it) do not suggest he's an ill-mannered troll, so I reserve judgement as to whether the complaint is in the wrong. Like any reasonable person would.
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.
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!