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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

> everyone hates the umpire.

I'd say @dang is pretty liked around here! Ups to the great umpire, keep it up. This shit is hard.

He is, but maybe there’s some survivorship bias there. We can’t really ask the shadowbanned people what they think of the moderation because they’re shadowbanned.

You can turn on dead comments in your preferences and see all the nice things they have to say.

Most of the things they have to say are reasonable most of the time. Like mundane comments about programming languages and whatnot.

I think they would be pretty pissed off to know that they've been banned for months or more because they said something that rubbed the mods the wrong way at one point.

> I think they would be pretty pissed off to know that they've been banned for months or more because they said something that rubbed the mods the wrong way at one point.

We know, but some of us enjoy reminding Ian Murdock's friends-in-need of what they did.

Preferably before it's their turn to ask for help...

> We can’t really ask the shadowbanned people what they think of the moderation because they’re shadowbanned.

Just flip the showdead switch in settings and you can enjoy the infinite wisdom and feistiness of banned users. Can’t be easier. For instance, in this thread there’s exactly one banned sibling, making a gross, sexual personal attack.

We don't know what they think of the moderation though. These folks aren't bright enough to know that they've been banned.

Which always puzzles me. I have showdead on, just to get the whole picture. And because it is sometimes hilarious, to be honest. But how an you not realize you have been banned, when everyone on here is talking about it?

Moderator-banned accounts usually get a moderation comment announcing they are banned. There are accounts killed by software though.

Far fewer people are shadowbanned these days. And I think if people are commenting reasonably without realising they are shadowbanned, dang will try to get in touch to let them know they are banned.

I don't want to blame @dang for this, but I see plenty of people talking about the toxic content of "The orange website", and several people have bothered to explicitly block links from here.

Really? What makes someone view HN as "toxic content"?

HN is a much more civilized place compared to the wild west.

Could that just be a size thing? I remember Twitter being a lot more sane place before it was overrun by politics a few years ago. Or maybe the algorithm was better at keeping that stuff away?

It is a size thing, but it's also a moderation thing. I haven't seen moderation this good anywhere else, no matter the size.

I think large scale makes it impossible to be good. Small scale doesn't guarantee good.

Reddit, slashdot, and a whole slew of others went through an HN-like phase of high-quality discussions and content before turning into cesspools.

I think what makes HN unique is benevolent sponsorship. There isn't pressure to grow. It's recruiting for Y-Combinator, which eliminates most of the normal pressures.

My favorite article on the life cycle (growth & collapse) of online communities is “Attacked from Within”* from the old kuro5hin site. I’ve always been curious to how it’s suggested solutions to the moderation problem would turn out.

* Archived here: http://atdt.freeshell.org/k5/story_2009_3_12_33338_3000.html

It wasn’t so long ago (less than 10 years, perhaps more than 5) that HN was full of similarly bad comments

i also think it's a content thing. the content of HN doesn't lend itself to lunatics most of the time. i say "most" because it certainly happens (see the early covid threads and the hatred spewed for anyone questioning or even just wondering aloud about the lockdowns)

I don't think the incendiary rhetoric of most of Twitter (let alone Trump) would pass muster with HN moderation.

Edit: People downvoting me even though I'm right. Take most of the comments you see on Twitter in subject matter and/or delivery, and they would be either downvoted or moderated off this platform. No-one in good faith (who has had reasonable exposure to Twitter) could argue this is not the case. Just to be clear, I believe this to be a good thing.

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