Discuss HN: We're not a community if we can't discuss it. | Hacker News Reader

Discuss HN: We're not a community if we can't discuss it.

53 pointsdaenz24 comments

The recent article, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108008 (mirror of content here: https://gist.github.com/2926119) attempted to discuss the hellbanning of a HackerNews veteran for talking about moderators changing submission titles.

The submission itself is now dead, after rocketing to the #1 spot of the front page.

How can we be a community if we aren't allowed to discuss ourselves? The lack of maturity by moderators who kill articles that offer criticisms to HN is astounding. What are they so afraid of? That if they allow discussions of criticisms to develop, the community might start to ask for changes?

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FYI, the "immature moderator" you are referring to was apparently pg himself. I'm also a bit surprised at his behavior.

I am not happy with the situation either, but pg states he banned him only temporarily while awaiting an email reply:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108293

Create a new Discuss HN section even - if mods don't want the front page to be inundated with meta-discussions. Those who have grievances would be able to voice them and discuss those publicly - even the mod replies ought to be public.

If that doesn't happen then the mods at HN are not responsible people - in the truest sense of the word.

That wasn't even the first post attempting to discuss it. In an earlier one (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102907) PG posted a reason for the ban (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103210), then the thread he posted it on was killed.

I'm curious how long some of you have been around for, when you're saying things like "discussion of HN isn't allowed".

There are usually lengthy discussions about stuff every time something about the site changes.

There was a lot of discussion about comment vote counts, for instance. That is "discussing the community".

I remember that that discussion was initiated by pg, so it was an implicitly "ok" thing to discuss. Double standard?

Uh, no. Actually at least one of those discussions where initiated by me.

Ok, so here's the poll created by PG 1.5 years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039

If you have a submission that's earlier than that, then I'm wrong.

Well here is one that I started:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445017

And here is another "meta" discussion that I started:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2663717

Right at four years ago this week: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=219081. The best part is this meta discussion was a top five item for the week. Times change though...

The current problem with hacker news is that every fucking discussion becomes meta and normal comments are buried. I'd be happy if there were a couple "Discuss HN" threads around, because then it would be less prone to leak out across the rest of the site.

We need a pressure release valve somewhere.

While I personally have no opinion on the issue of post title moderation, and I'm actually OK with most of the things happening here, I agree with you that the community appears to have a need for these discussions and I worry that excessive attempts to curtail them will backfire in the most unproductive way.

I like it here. For me, it's not about the news (I get them through my feed reader just fine), it's about spirited discussions with bright people. We have to realize that overall the user base of HN is something extremely valuable. This place lives and dies with its inhabitants. So if there is a sizable group who wants to get a specific issue off their chest, by all means have that discussion and then move on.

Let's get back to what we actually enjoy on HN.

We're not a "community". It's news for hackers. The site's owners have a very well-defined vision of the kind of site they want. Either you like that or you don't.

Personally I've never understood the "if you don't like it you can fk off!" response to constructive criticism.

The response makes perfect sense when the constructive criticism will never be taken into account.

If it's not a community then it shouldn't have usernames, a comments section, or trackable karma. Just reduce it to submitting and voting on links.

Bah. The site's owners can bite my shiny /etc/hosts file. I'm sure they won't miss me at all.

If we're not a community, why not remove the ability to comment altogether?

We have community guidelines, for crying out loud.

I got my account banned from posting for favorably comparing a post to Moby Dick, possibly the greatest piece of American literature of all time. The post was plodding in its pace, and intentionally so as the point was to demonstrate how one can become bored in their own startup. So it was with Moby dick. BANNED!

I'm not complaining, I'm just saying the moderators are funkay sometimes.

While the meta can get out of hand, the kind of petulant escalation and power-tripping mentioned here https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker... (assuming it's accurate) is invariably bad for a community-driven site.

And now this will be deleted because it's not what this site is for.

It's fine to want to have a meta discussion about the board, but there's nowhere on HN to do so, by design.

A) it's a site for posting interesting links and discussions, not meta-conversations about the site itself B) I don't think the moderators/administrators really care, and nothing engenders them to listen to you

So, this is a fine thing to talk about, but this isn't the place to talk about it. Start an off-site discussion, start your own site, do whatever you want, but making this post won't accomplish a thing. It will be deleted.

Just curious -- is the ban on meta-discussion spelled out anywhere? I didn't see it in a cursory glance at the guidelines. It seems slightly ironic to me that a site originated by a LISP hacker would ban meta-anything. ;)

It will be flagged, therefore deleted, I bet, due to people disliking its tone.

It's the community doing it though, not pg.

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