| ▲ | kccqzy 2 days ago |
| For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN. Personally I hope Tom will bring new moderation policies that will truly let unpopular opinions thrive, but I don't have high hopes here since this is just an announcement of a new moderator, not an announcement of new moderation policies. |
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| ▲ | otterley 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| "Not thriv[ing]" is not the same as being quashed. Minority opinions don't always rise to the popularity or acceptance level of majority opinions, and that's OK. |
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| ▲ | kccqzy 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Let us not use the word "thrive" or "quash" to avoid misunderstandings. To rephrase, I hope that on HN even minority opinions have reasonable rebuttals. Unfortunately what currently happens is people flag minority opinions with no discussion. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | "flag" and "downvote" are two different tools with two different purposes. "downvote" seems more appropriate for for "this is not interesting and should be less prominent". "flag" seems more appropriate for "this should not be here at all". By way of an example, on a political story, if you say something merely unpopular, you'll get downvotes and replies; if you say something hateful, you'll (usually) get flagged. | | |
| ▲ | kccqzy 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I agree with you, but that's not what happens for polarizing topics that are technical in nature and not political. People on HN seem to flag comments rather than downvote them. |
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| ▲ | otterley 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I agree that that's not a best practice. It's not what the downvote mechanism was intended for. | | |
| ▲ | tracker1 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | In a way, iirc, it really is. It's as much a "I disagree" as it is "I don't like this". That said, I would like to see more people actually respond in addition to a downvote. I don't think that's generally a function of the moderators though. | |
| ▲ | MrMcCall 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Flagging is used by people who have no rebuttal but are mad. That's why I have only flagged one or two posts, ever, but not because I was mad, but because the comment was just plain beyond the pale. And my posts against portaying violent rape in film got flagged. Make it make sense, because I understand the failure of this system because systems are my trade-in-craft. | | |
| ▲ | jraph 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Nope, sometimes I would have a rebuttal but flagging is the better option (constructive discussion is hard without mutual respect, and/or don't feed the troll). Or, the comment doesn't even have anything to refute, it's just disrespectful or it's spam, or both. I have flagged a few comments but I'm rarely mad. And if one is mad because of a disrespectful comment, the flagging is probably appropriate too. | | |
| ▲ | MrMcCall a day ago | parent [-] | | > constructive discussion is hard without mutual respect Yes, indeed. |
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| ▲ | AlexeyBelov a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Flagging is used by people who have no rebuttal but are mad This is cope, just like "I'm being downvoted for speaking the truth!". Nobody thinks "wow, they said a true statement, I should downvote them". I suggest you try to steelman the idea of flagging and see that maybe there could be other things at play. | | |
| ▲ | MrMcCall a day ago | parent [-] | | > Nobody thinks "wow, they said a true statement, I should downvote them". Precisely. That's the biggest problem with closed-minded fools. | | |
| ▲ | AlexeyBelov 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't understand your point, sorry. Or maybe you misunderstand (on purpose?). I'm saying you attribute those downvotes incorrectly. It's maybe natural to do so as an instinct -- "those people are against me!" -- but on HN it's expected to be a bit more introspective. It's incorrect to say that "people downvote because I'm right" or "people downvote because they have nothing to say". | | |
| ▲ | MrMcCall 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | To be 'ignorant' requires willfully _ignoring_ the truth. That's why you say I'm incorrect, because you are the center of the universe and have nothing to learn. You say you don't understand, then accuse me of willfully misunderstanding? People aren't aginst me, they're against the truth, because very few people consider compassion to be the most important scale we should measure our attitudes and behaviors against. "Nothing is more important than compassion, and only the truth is its equal." "A fool is a person who hears the truth, and calls it a lie." I love you. You shouldn't denigrate me, friend. The point is that those who already know everything are ignorant fools who are ignoring the truth because they are self-satisfied with their own level of attainment. They don't know they have read a new truth that they should integrate into their being, so they lash out at that truth and the person who is trying to expand their worldview. In other words, most people are intellectual and moral cowards, happy to carry the torch for their cultures' idiotic traditions, without ever thinking twice or entertaining outside opinions. Peace be with you. | | |
| ▲ | otterley an hour ago | parent [-] | | > To be 'ignorant' requires willfully _ignoring_ the truth No it doesn't. To borrow from the law, ignorance requires no scienter. It simply means you lack knowledge of factual or situational context, willfully or otherwise. |
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| ▲ | hackyhacky 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN. There is a difference between expressing unpopular opinions (e.g. "manifest V3 is good"), which receive an appropriate level of considered disagreement; and expressing opinions that are removed administratively. In my experience, the former is quite common, while the latter only occurs in cases of hateful or off-topic comments. That is as it should be. No one is obligated to agree with you, and that fact should not dissuade you from expressing yourself. |
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| ▲ | maccard 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I’m a fairly steadfast holder of the “I like apples walled garden, it’s my choice to be there” argument, and I think as a dissenting opinion on this forum I get a lot of flak for it. But that’s not a moderation problem, it’s the fact that my opinion is different and I have 10x the number of people disagreeing with me than agreeing with me. |
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| ▲ | stuartjohnson12 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Upvoted, but your opinion is wrong and I didn't want to leave without telling you I hate your opinion. |
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| ▲ | buttercraft 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > having the opinion What I see a lot of is this: User posts "$opinion $generalization $snark $dismissal $adhominem". User gets down voted or flagged. User complains that downvotes are for expressing $opinion and that $opinion is not allowed on this site! But we can all see the other things in their post that probably brought on most of the downvotes. |
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| ▲ | ziddoap 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I agree. "It's not what you said, it's how you said it.". Most stuff I downvote is because of the way it's expressed, not because of the opinion itself. |
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| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN. That's not a moderation issue. You can post that opinion, and people will disagree with it, post responses to it, and downvote it. It will not be flagged out of existence, unless it's also violating site policy in other ways. |
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| ▲ | tptacek 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | As someone who actively believes Manifest V3 is good for users, I second this: my opinion is not suppressed by this forum. It's simply unpopular among nerds, the population to whom this forum is aimed. | |
| ▲ | nailer 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | A polite well worded post that disagrees with the mainstream will indeed still exist, but it will be moderated to unreadably transparent and hidden by default. It’s not a great experience. Meanwhile personal attacks and hyperbole regarding Elon Musk and Trump have become very common on HN. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > A polite well worded post that disagrees with the mainstream will indeed still exist, but it will be moderated to unreadably transparent and hidden by default. It’s not a great experience. Speaking from personal experience only: I have mostly not observed "polite, well-worded posts disagreeing with the mainstream" get downvoted to oblivion, unless some other factor also applies, such as that they're also things that seem likely to lead to a rehashed old-as-the-hills disagreement with no new information that will not on balance change any minds. If you post (by way of example only, please observe the use-mention distinction here) a polite version of "ads are good and adblockers are stealing", and get a massive pile of downvotes, I think that's a reasonable signal that the community isn't interested in seeing iteration 47,902 of that argument, and has no expectation that anything new will come out of that argument. If you have something new to say on that topic that is likely to lead into new and interesting arguments, at this point you would need to signpost that heavily, prefacing it with some equivalent of "Please note that I'm aware this is an age-old argument, but I think I have a new point to make that is worth considering", and then actually make a new point, at which point I think you're less likely to get downvoted to oblivion. Personally, I don't downvote "mere" disagreement. I downvote (among other things) what seems to me to be uninteresting or thoughtless or insufficiently diligent disagreement, or factually incorrect information, or anything that seems like a discussion that spawned from it will not be interesting. Now, that said, another factor here is that some people posting on political topics in particular believe they're making "polite well-worded posts disagreeing with the mainstream", and others do not share that belief and flag it to oblivion. For example, posts expressing bigotry mostly get flagged, no matter how surface-level "polite" they are. | | |
| ▲ | nailer 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > If you post (by way of example only, please observe the use-mention distinction here) a polite version of "ads are good and adblockers are stealing", and get a massive pile of downvotes... Sure, I imagine the grandparent poster means arguing something like "limiting access for extensons is good because they're often used to steal financial assets". Old extensions are sold, or cracked and updated to inclue malware. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I want to avoid letting a meta-level conversation slip into object-level. But using the object-level as an example, I would expect a comment that acknowledges the types of things that are hard to build with Manifest V3, particularly more advanced adblocking, and acknowledges that there need to be solutions for those things, and makes the point that letting extensions be all-powerful does lead to problems and that also needs solving, would not get downvoted to oblivion. That's much more nuanced than, for instance, suggesting that Manifest V3 is an unalloyed good with zero problems, which I would expect to get downvoted. | | |
| ▲ | a day ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | nailer a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > acknowledges that there need to be solutions for those things Why is this required, in order not for the comment to be downvoted to oblivion? You may be confusing bias with nuance. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett a day ago | parent [-] | | I'm giving an example, which to some degree was meant as an existence proof of a way to support an unpopular position without getting massive downvotes. "X is entirely good with no problems whatsoever" being replaced by "I think the benefits of X outweigh the costs, and here's some acknowledgement of the costs". I'm not trying to suggest only one possible way to do that, or only one pattern to follow. (This is one danger of using an object-level example.) | | |
| ▲ | nailer a day ago | parent [-] | | OK. Yes I agree there’s a cost to anything and acknowledging that is important. |
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| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Downvoting and flagging is not moderation. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Flagging does seem to primarily be a tool for moderation. But for comments, at least, I've mostly not observed flagging being used to hide things that shouldn't be; if anything, I think flagging is underused on comments. (It's still regularly abused on stories as a downvote, perhaps in part because stories don't have downvotes. HN sometimes "rescues" stories that get over-flagged, but it's still a problem.) | | |
| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Flagging isn’t done by moderators, it’s done by regular HN users. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I didn't say it was done by moderators, I said it was a tool for moderation. Flagging is the means by which regular HN users perform moderation activities, in addition to the actions available to the moderators. | | |
| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Ok, I see. I understood “moderation policies” upthread to refer to what guides the actions of the moderators. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Fair enough, I can see from the thread how that interpretation could arise. I would definitely interpret "moderation policy" to be policy implemented by moderators. In this case, I was responding to the statement that "flagging is not moderation", and I thought it was useful to distinguish that flagging semantically is a kind of moderation (done by users rather than by moderators). | | |
| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent [-] | | For me the difference is that moderation by moderators is (usually) guided by some content policy, and one can disagree about the biases of the specific content policy, or disagree about applying a content policy based on topics and themes at all (as opposed to based on mere style and civility). With user actions, there is no predefined content policy, it’s just how the set of users who happen to read the specific thread or comment happen to feel. Personally, I’d prefer no up-/downvoting and flagging at all (or flagging only to alert moderators), and purely chronological threading. But I also think that active moderation and crowd-sourced ranking mechanics are two different things. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Personally, I’d prefer no up-/downvoting and flagging at all (or flagging only to alert moderators), and purely chronological threading. I think that's a very different kind of forum, and it needs different tools to be usable, and it more quickly fails into unusability. | | |
| ▲ | layer8 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It’s how old-style forums work, and I’m still on a couple of them. It functions quite well with the right moderation. | | |
| ▲ | JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It can work, but I think it's harder to scale to something the size of HN without losing some of the important properties HN has. For example, I think it's useful that on balance the top few comments and their discussion are likely to be interesting, and the last few comments are unlikely to be interesting. |
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| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
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