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Comment by reductum | Hacker News Reader

I witnessed a recent front page link silently get changed to point to a parody video, then silently changed back later, with the top comment that remarked on the change silently removed.

That told me all I needed to know about the moderation of this site.

Thankfully someone captured a screenshot: https://merveilles.town/@cancel/111834048502040552

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> That told me all I needed to know about the moderation of this site.

In that case you drew a general conclusion from a freak accident so rare that I doubt it had happened in the 17 years this site has been around. (Edit: 17 years this month in fact! https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycomb...)

If what you require from an internet forum is that the moderators under no circumstances will ever commit a copy/paste error, HN is definitely below your standards.

Edit: the mods would like to share that they weren't drunk when they made that mistake, just rushed and watching a rather gripping tennis final.

> 17 years this month in fact! https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycomb...)

That prompted me to check other dates in the archive: apparently the "Startup News" title lasted for around six months before changing to "Hacker News". I was pretty sure the change was before I made my account, but I didn't realize the "Startup News" period had been so short.

pg got bored of startup news and switched it in August of that year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

Edit: here's the last copy of Startup News that archive.org has—from 2007-07-13:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070713212949/http://news.ycomb...

and here's the first copy of Hacker News they have, from 2007-08-30:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070830111558/http://news.ycomb...

I guess they missed 6 weeks there, but bless them for having anything at all—who among us preserves our own history?

Dang explained it was a mod error: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39182625, which links to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39170137

huppeldepup's comment in the screenshot is collapsed on p2 of the comments (after it was no longer relevant) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39157010&p=2, and is also accessible as the parent of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39170137.

What did you think he was going to say? Explain that it was in fact a big HN conspiracy?

I mean yeah it probably was just a mistake but what do you expect somebody to say?

I expected a matter-of-fact explanation of a simple error, and a comment thread that was collapsed - exactly what I found. reductum implied there wasn't an explanation and that the complaining comment thread had been deleted without comment, both of which were hard to believe, so I went looking.

You just need to move your game theory to a different level. The expected value of lying about such things is super negative and the expected value of telling the truth is super positive.

I'm sure there's a model in which lying some of the time but not too often has marginally higher expected value, but it's also going to have significantly higher risk and that's not worth it, plus you have to be disciplined enough to actually apply such a strategy. One slip and you're dead! I'm too lazy for that.

My point is obviously that you’d tell a lie that looks like the truth people want to believe. Which when you get away with it is the biggest EV of all.

Not once you control for risk, though. "When you get away with it" is a big assumption.

You could 100% edit any post you want here and replace it with a link to a funny YouTube video and call it a fat-finger typo and get away with it. There’s no risk for you (as long as you don’t try it too often).

That would be reckless. We must estimate risk differently.

Btw the more accurate reason why we don't do things like that is that we don't want to because it would feel bad. It's not who we want to be. However, the actual reason doesn't always have much persuasive power and when I'm sensing that's the case, I use the cynical argument ("not in our interests", basically), because it's also true. But as the cynical argument isn't persuading you, maybe I should switch back!

I mean I’m confident we have 100% different views for “who we want to be.”

This site is a marketing campaign for a VC company. If you see it the same way, I’d be shocked.

YC's a business and operates HN in the end for business reasons*. I don't have a problem with calling that marketing, but I'm puzzled why you bring that up in this context.

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

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