Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

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> This is YC pursuing their own best interests very openly with HN

That's actually true, but not in the sense that most people mean it. Usually when I hear this it means something like "HN promotes YC's business and suppresses criticism of YC", phrased in more sinister language. But that of course would be the dumbest way to operate such a site, especially with this crowd.

The way we promote YC's interests is simply by trying to keep HN interesting. The most interesting HN is the most valuable-to-YC HN. That's why people come here, so that's all we optimize for. Literally everything we do with site moderation derives from that.

For example, why do we moderate flamewars? Not because we secretly agree with one side or the other but because flamewars are repetitive and therefore bad for curiosity. Plus they encourage people to do worse things, so their damage extends forward in time. These are empirical observations, not moral edicts. We just look for what makes HN richer and more complex vs. what makes it dumber. Scorched earth makes it dumber.

I remember years ago hearing a radio interview with the CEO of Costco. When asked, "What would you say to Wall Street analysts who criticize you for giving all those benefits to your employees?" he replied, "I would say have you ever run a major retailer?" Something similar is how I feel when people criticize how we moderate HN. The trouble isn't the criticism—I'd be delighted to be shown how to do this better. The trouble is that the criticisms usually aren't relevant to the actual problem of running HN, which is: how to maximize the interestingness of a public-anonymous internet forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity. Maximizing interestingness includes preventing decay.

I hope that doesn't sound complainy. We're all lucky to have the opportunity to participate in an experiment like this. It derives from two things, btw: pg's own curiosity, which started the site, and the fact that the people running YC get HN's core value. It's an unusual set of conditions and we're all responsible for making something interesting of it.

p.s. I forgot to add that there are also some formal ways that HN gives back to YC: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs and https://news.ycombinator.com/launches.

For example, why do we moderate flamewars?

The desire to suppress "flamewars" is great, but once one has a tool called a "flamewar detector" it's easy to lose sight of the fact that not everything that triggers the detector is in fact a flamewar that should be suppressed. Occasionally (rarely? frequently?) what's being suppressed is high quality fast-paced discussion. Once one has a tool that provides some degree of the benefit (the flamewar detector), I'd guess that it can be easy to confuse the actual goal with the incidental behavior.

I'm intrigued by this idea of "expected failure". That is, cases where the outcome is actually non-desirable, but since the software worked according to spec, the failure is considered a success by those who designed the software. How do you go about assessing whether the suppression is having the desired effect? Is it based on something more subtle than slowing down the rate of commenting when it's going "too fast"? Are there knobs that can be tweaked to keep it from triggering on desired discussion?

> not everything that triggers the detector is in fact a flamewar that should be suppressed

Scott and I get emailed every time that software trips so we can quickly look at which threads are being penalized and reverse the penalty when it isn't helpful. The only time we don't do that is when we're sleeping.

We tend to call it the 'overheated discussion detector' these days, since it detects more than flamewars. However, that phrase is more awkward to say than 'flamewar detector'. If anyone can come up with a better name I'd love to hear it.

Turning that software off is not an option, because HN would be overwhelmingly more dominated by flamewars if we did so. It's not primarily the individual threads that I fear, it's the systemic effects of having them be more dominant. HN exists most of all for the quieter, deeper, more out-of-the-way finds that would be the first to get excluded under such a regime. That would really be an existential risk to HN.

Incidentally, that last point generalizes. When people complain that we don't do X, for some obvious X, it isn't because we don't value X (e.g. free speech or whatnot). It's because we're worried about systemic effects.

Do you have any quantitative evidence that shows that the moderation efforts meant to minimize systemic effects actually have the desired outcome?

What are the quality metrics?

Well, we have lots of data and we look at it all the time. Does that count as quantitative evidence? I wouldn't say so. I would call it just-so stories with data.

People who ask us about this usually would prefer a world in which all such calls would be free of human interpretation. That's a fantasy, in my opinion. We don't try.

> all such calls would be free of human interpretation

This is a straw man argument. Simply revealing on what basis the decision was made and letting the community voice approval or disapproval would go a very long way.

Consider a title change decision. Most of the time, title changes are minor and reasonable, but once in a while they effectively hide what is interesting about the story from readers. Readers should simply be able to vote on whether or not the title change was helpful, so that mods can learn from those votes how to effectively moderate the forum.

Similarly, it would make sense to reveal any strategies that are used to improve HN such as deducting points from stories, etc, and to make it obvious when this has been done to a story, so that the community can express approval or disapproval of the decision.

I think the main fallacy that the moderation approach embodies is the idea that by simply not discussing politics HN is avoiding becoming political. That is not the case at all. By suppressing or avoiding important political issues, HN is making a very vocal political statement that those issues should be ignored.

Instead, why not bless certain HN users to write comments on highly political articles that will be pinned to the top of the page to give voice to reasoned and discussion-shaping views. This would break the cycle of highly politicized retorts and rejoinders that is what HN should actually be trying to avoid. The key here is to grant more trust to the community, not less. There are a lot of people on HN whose views I deeply respect, and when there is an important issue going on I want to know what they think about it.

Human editorial is fine, but banning/throttling/suppressing users and views is a sinister way to express editorial views. You can frame it as being about manners, but it's rarely actually about manners.

Edit: My account seems to have been throttled for 30+ minutes. Thanks for the mature response.

> Not because we secretly agree with one side or the other but because flamewars are repetitive and therefore destructive of intellectual curiosity.

Just because something is familiar doesn't mean it's not worth exploring. Often seemingly familiar things are misunderstood because we don't take the time to understand them.

> ...what things make the HN ecosystem more rich and complex vs. what things make it dumber...

I think "flamewar" avoidance leaves HN a little flat, actually. There is a lot rich and complex in giving the usual tech/SV crowd a challenge to its viewpoint from time to time. The goal isn't always changing minds or learning new things. Sometimes it's just to realize that smart people can disagree with us, and because of that, we need to respect people that disagree with us.

Maybe we need to let passionate, smart people have it out from time to time so everyone can be reminded which positions can stand up to the flames just fine. Otherwise, we forget that the farces of "them" that we enjoy are just farces, not reality. And that makes us dumber. And boring. And intellectually stale.

> "Maybe we need to let passionate, smart people have it out from time to time so everyone can be reminded which positions can stand up to the flames just fine."

While it may be enticing to think of a flamewar as a crucible for good discussion, I think that it's far from the case. Fierce, passionate criticism is not the same thing as people talking past each other to attack straw men. There's little time or incentive to sift through the ashes looking for some purified argument that's withstood the flames when you can rush into the next thread in the forum where the a new fire is just getting started. This is pretty clear to see when the same ideological discussions are rewarmed again and again.

I really like Jonathan Haidt's ideas about encouraging people from 2 different sides of an issue but who are both genuinely committed to the truth to battle each other with the intent of letting the truth emerge from the argument. This is extremely beneficial because we are all blinded by our own biases and it is very helpful when the other side helps us to see past them. This is admittedly difficult to achieve in a forum like hacker news but IMHO it would be amazing if someone could make this happen. The biggest improvements to my own predictive model of the world have always come when arguing with someone who held a contrary view and I'd like to believe that I have returned that favor from time to time as well.

In my experience, battling it out us part of the problem. HN already allows people with divergent views to discuss them. Discussion of that sort is enriching, with no winner and no loser. Sometimes views are changed, but it helps to assume the world is not black or white, not even shades of grey, but is a rich technicolor universe and sometimes we run across people who know things we do not who thereby have the capacity to broaden our views.

And battle is not how you get there.

Yes. I can see how that term might have a negative connotation for some people. We do indeed live in a world where most people more highly value their current beliefs and their ego than they do the truth. Those people, unfortunately, battle with the intent to defend their beliefs and ego and that kind of battle is admittedly unproductive. But there are other people, like myself, who genuinely value truth more highly than those things. For us, there is a hunger to get to the truth AFAP, to solve problems AFAP, to accelerate innovation AFAP by leveraging collective intelligence more efficiently because it could mean saving lives or solving really important problems. Currently I know of no forum which meets this need but hacker news does seem to attract a lot of really smart people who do indeed value truth more highly than beliefs and ego.

I quite enjoy a lively debate. Most argument on the internet is not debate. It us ugly and personal and fighty.

I think HN has been a place for lively debate at times. Perhaps it shall be again.

I think that’s highly unlikely.

I strongly agree (though I'd lose the antagonistic term "battle"). See my profile :)

Nice reads.

I have this hypothesis that thinking is layered on top of our two primal emotional strategies for stress: connection and aggression become diffuse mode (how is it similar?) and focused mode (how is it different?). When i use the word “battle” I am suggesting repurposing aggression so that instead of directing it at each other in defense of our positions and ego (system 1 thinking) we are working together synergistically in a battle for the truth which will enable us to solve the problem (system 2 thinking).

i.e. Turning a zero sum game into a positive sum game.

I couldn't agree more. Contrarian posts and comments which challenge the dominant beliefs are often the most interesting because that's where the innovation is. It would be interesting to see, say a contrarian view of a post where down-voted comments actually rose to the top. Because of the way down-voting lowers rank, I tend to view hacker news as "the view of the establishment". It's a shame because there are a lot of smart contrarian people on here, and it would be great if it were easier to zero in on their contributions.

If it were a question of letting "passionate, smart people have it out", then sure. Unfortunately that's not what you get in practice on the open internet. What you get are (a) people who want to vent their personal issues for whatever reason, and (b) windbags who think themselves smarter than they are.

These can quickly dominate the threads. That repels the smarter people. This is how we could fall into a death spiral. Worse, the risk grows as the site grows, because then more people are attracted to it for wrong reasons. (Right reason: curiosity. Wrong reasons: hearing the sound of one's voice, venting indignation, or making others do so.)

To sustainably have a forum of the kind you describe, you'd need to close it off from the public internet. We're not going to do that with Hacker News, so we rely on guidelines to prevent the worst. This does come at the cost of a certain blandness, leaving the site "a little flat", as you say. But better flat than dead.

That isn’t what I meant, at least as far as promoting business interests; at least, not beyond nurturing networking here.

As for suppressing critique... well... that seems to be the case, but I don’t see it as unreasonable. Besides, a lot of it falls under other guidelines regarding politics or flaming.

Edit: Just to be clear, I don’t think there is any hidden agenda, and by “dirty tricks” I mean the methods, not the intent. I wouldn’t waste my time here if I thought it was just an elaborate stage show.

> how to maximize the complex-system-interestingness of a public, anonymous internet forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity.

Without knowing what metrics you are using it's pretty much impossible to suggest improvements. I learn the most from reading a respectful back-and-forth that goes on for a few responses and is not just both parties making a single statement.

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