Ask HN: Getting a Lobster.s Invite in '22 | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Getting a Lobster.s Invite in '22

20 pointsrpastuszak24 comments

Apologies if this sounds as if I was trying to start a controversial or inflammatory thread. I'm just a bit tired of the comment section here and Lobste.rs seem to be a bit more friendly. This is not a thinly veiled comment/hot take about the state of HN.

Getting invites using their IRC used to be easy, but now it takes ages, so I thought I'd ask here.

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The first time I submitted an article on lobste.rs, I picked a tag that was apparently disallowed for new users. I then selected a different tag (thinking I was abiding by the systems in place) and posted the article.

Mods sent me a nastygram about it - apparently they checked the logs to see that I had originally submitted with a “disallowed” tag - as if I should have known that the message actually meant “you may not post this article now at all because you initially picked a tag that is disallowed for newcomers.” My bad, what a totally intuitive unwritten rule you have there - “any error from the system means you should just go away.”

Said nastygram also threatened to ban me for self-promotion. I didn’t write the article in question, so I’m really not sure what they mean over there by “self-promotion.”

I replied to the nastygram seeking some clarification on what I was doing wrong, but never got a reply. Haven’t bothered to interact since, because apparently a mod is pissed at me for reasons I truly cannot understand, and I don’t want to get my friend’s account banned for having invited me.

Doesn’t seem like a great place to me.

Lobsters is wonderful for hard-banning politic, more programming focused, but is even more groupthink-heavy in the Haskell direction which gets a little boring. Conversations on programming are usually more informed, but also more predictable. They also ban really great contributors like https://github.com/BurntSushi for “self-promotion” which is very frustrating to me. I still visit both sites and probably comment more here still.

https://lobste.rs/u/jitl

> They also ban really great contributors like https://github.com/BurntSushi for “self-promotion” which is very frustrating to me.

BurntSushi was most definitely not banned; he removed his own account.

BurntSushi wasn't banned, they left the site voluntarily after reading a possibly inflammatory canned passage in a moderation message.

Edit to add the discussion about their decision is the most-commented submission on the site so far

https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg

This is misinformation. I wasn't banned. And I was never warned about self-promotion. I left because I got flagged so much by my fellow community members that the web site promoted a banner that asked me to consider leaving[1].

I don't understand why people lie so blatantly like this. Please stop.

[1]: https://twitter.com/burntsushi5/status/1399543042261061633

> This is misinformation.

> I don't understand why people lie so blatantly like this.

Why assume malicious intent? Couldn't he just be wrong?

Oops! I misremembered things. I shouldn't have used your name – what I remembered is that you're gone, and other contributors who posted great content (that they themselves wrote) and good comments have also been banned for "self promotion". I conflated the two, but not maliciously/intentionally.

Fair enough. Thanks for clarifying. Although I have never seen any case of banning by self promotion that I thought wasn't warranted.

Basically, you used my name to support a narrative that Lobsters moderation is too heavy handed. But I have actually thought that Lobsters moderation wasn't strict enough. I wanted more moderation, not less, in order to raise the level of discourse.

We need more sites in the same vein as HN & Lobsters but dedicated to controversial and up-and-coming (and therefore heavily criticized) topics like web3, and AI. There is a huge amount of pessimism towards web3 on here, and whilst most of the criticism is valid, it would be nice to have a forum where such pessimism is not allowed. As for AI: it's getting so popular that a day doesn't go by where several AI links are not in the HN top 100.

You could open web3news yourself, the software for a forum like HN is available [0] from Paul Graham himself after all.

However, a site that is defined as being dedicated to controversial topics is likely to turn into a flame-fest or an echo-chamber quite fast. Do you have a proposed mechanism for preventing that?

[0]: http://arclanguage.org/install

Why do you feel compelled to have an account there? All the discussion shows that the place is a hostile police state. You can still read everything without contributions so why bother?

Keep in mind that inviting strangers to the site carries risks. After being an active member on the site for about a year - and liking it - I sent out my first ever invite for someone I didn’t know personally, but who seemed to be alright based on Twitter. That person was promptly banned for self-promotion [1], I apologized on behalf of this person I didn't know but invited [2] and was subsequently banned for having sent the invite [3]

Making it hard to get an invite, and not inviting strangers is by design, as I understand.

[1] https://lobste.rs/u/sebastienlorber

[2] https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1295409271119765504

[3] https://lobste.rs/u/gregdoesit

> I was also banned for having sent the invite

wow, that's pretty wild. May need to "invite" a couple of my own backup email accounts then? Didn't realize that's a possibility.

I think the chance of banning diminishes with the size of your user tree (as it grows). But don’t take my word for it; someone told me that but I have no proof of it.

Lobster.s is really great for a very different kind of news than HN. Although I have no idea if my experience would be different as a contributor.

Contact me if you want an invite; e-mail in profile.

Awesome! Done. Thanks

Done. Thanks!

Sent, cheers!

I am also seeking an invite. Tried being active on IRC et all. @ccu508, how to reach out to you for sharing my email? Thanks!

> Getting invites using their IRC used to be easy, but now it takes ages, so I thought I'd ask here.

How long, exactly? Weeks? I'm only now hearing about lobste.rs and I'm also interested.

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