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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

We don't need more than one story about this on the front page, so I'm killing the others.

Commenters: To state the obvious, this is an inflammatory topic. If you post a comment, make sure that it is a thoughtful one.

Readers: If you see a comment that is not thoughtful, please downvote it. Most comments in this thread so far have not been, so you have your work cut out for you.

In extreme cases, flag the comment. To flag a comment, click on "link" to go to the item page, then look for the "flag" link at the top. As a calibration hint, I haven't seen any comments in this thread that deserve flagging. But I can't read them all.

As I hope everyone knows by now, we're experimenting with ways to solve the problem of toxic comments on Hacker News. I believe that the community has to solve this problem, rather than us imposing a solution. Consider this our appeal to all fair-minded readers to pitch in.

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Thanks, dang. I'm glad to see HN staff engaging directly with users.

I think submitting a separate story would be better so it gets proper attention and can be discussed without derailing this submission.

Hmm, yeah I guess I just accused the mods of derailing.

I'm afraid you may have missed my point. I was deliberately intervening in this submission, because the thread sucked. Edit: it might be a bit better now.

All: Unthoughtful comments should be downvoted. Have at it.

Edit: I've mollified my wording slightly. Please downvote judiciously.

Sorry. I wasn't talking about this.

I was talking about the invitation to pitch in how to solve the general problem of hateful comments. Which I think shouldn't be discussed here, because it's not only a problem of this specific submission.

Sorry if I misunderstood this invitation.

We're entering a period of experimentation where things will be in flux for a while. For now, as one experiment, I'm adding moderation comments to specific posts. I won't keep doing it, because it's tiring and tedious to write (and no doubt to read). But I want to send a clear signal to the community that we're engaged, and also address the low-handing fruit of transparency concerns, if that makes sense.

The problem with asking people to downvote is that some will downvote opinions they disagree with. What's your definition of "unthoughtful"?

We don't have a great answer to that yet, so I'm using general terms and asking everyone to apply their own best-faith interpretation to them.

We're going to solve this problem sooner or later, because so many of us are sick of it. But the specific form the solution takes has to evolve in the community. When systems are evolving, overspecification is a mistake. For that reason, I'm going to stick to commenting on particular examples for a while.

"unthoughtful"? "toxic"? Those are what wikipedia would call "weasel words". If you have some rational criticism, spill it out and we'll deal with it like adults. Hiding your censorship under "obvious" labels is bad.

This isn't Wikipedia. We're happy to learn, but we're not going to import.

I notice that this is the second time you've challenged me with personally charged language. If you have more to say, email would be better.

Edited for clarity.

> Edited for clarity.

I prefer the original, overtly aggressive and unapologetically abusive version. At least with that we know where we stand.

The original was: "This isn't Wikipedia. We prefer to think for ourselves here". My meaning was that we prefer to find solutions that are appropriate for HN rather than copying what another site does. Since my original wording left room for misunderstanding, I changed it. (I do that all the time, incidentally; I am a compulsive, inveterate editor, and always have been.)

If that is what you call "unapologetically abusive", we have nothing further to discuss. I'm going to invest time answering users we have a hope of satisfying.

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