I'm curious how many people who have the ability to upvote or flag stories actually do so. For my part, I'm very conservative:
- I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions.
- I rarely upvote stories, mostly because I'm usually browsing stories that are already on the front-page. Occasionally I skim through the new stories and if I see something interesting there I might upvote it.
- For comments, I upvote comments I find particularly helpful or insightful. I don't downvote comments very often unless they're particularly rude. However, I never downvote comments that are part of a discussion I'm having; I don't trust my impartiality in that case.
If my behavior is typical, then stories are being controlled by a 'vocal minority' who take the time to upvote or flag them. As in any group, the vocal minority tends to have the more fundamentalist / extremist points of view on a subject, which could lead to the outcomes TFA discusses.
- I flag stories only if it seems like the story is abusive, not just off-topic (e.g., overly self-promotional, complete noise, etc). This happens very rarely.
- I don't usually upvote stories. I only do so if I have a very immediate "holy shit this is amazing!" reaction to it.
- I upvote comments frequently, particularly if it's a good, well-argued point done in good style (i.e., more factual than rhetoric). I downvote a lot more than I used to, but usually reserve it for posts I consider abusive. This means ad hominems and egregious displays of fundamentalism/extremism (e.g., "all laws are paid for by big corporate interests", which comes up every. single. time. AirBnb or Uber is mentioned).
That last part is subject to some personal bias naturally, but I do think it's important to reward posts that provide a holistic, nuanced view of issues rather than the fiery rhetoric of people banging on black and white drums. I've noticed a lot more of this sort of drumbeating on HN nowadays.
There are some topics that show up on HN frequently, but the discussion is incredibly poor every single time. I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything on sexism in tech.
There are some topics that show up on HN frequently, but the discussion is incredibly poor every single time. I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything on sexism in tech.
I don't blame you, but I find it especially sad, because sexism in tech is one area that actually needs more meaningful nuanced discussion. Not to be too elitist, but if we can't have this conversation, who can?
Unfortunately, a large subset of the people who wish to have the conversation, consider lesswrong.com to be sexist and that being "logical" and "rational" are part of the problem. I don't believe it is a conversation that can actually be productive, at all.
Those sort of discussions are probably most effective when had in "meatspace" (I dislike that term, but I dislike the term "real world" even more). No 'throwaways', fewer 'throw away opinions', no voting systems or flagging, greater communication bandwidth (access to body language and tone reduces misunderstandings), etc.
Trying to get HN to productively discuss topics like this is like trying to get 4chan to "count to 10". The site just really isn't set up to facilitate it.
Why would HN be a particularly good venue for that conversation? There are a lot of smart people here, but a lot of the factors that make HN a good place for technical discussions make it a horrible place for softer discussions like those about sexism.
I am still rather surprised at the number of HN folks that believe we can somehow detach the socio-political / cultural / gender aspects of society from the technological choices.
The notion that HN should only focus on the “technology” establishes a rather broken model, where no such polemic or axis exists.
Are there not potentially greater entrepreneurial opportunities for a collective that has a holistic view of the culture?
Sure, whenever there's a massive imbalance between the genders, it's going to be less productive than when there's a balance. It also doesn't help much if the sexism discussion occurs among a group of 95% females - which is typically what happens.
It's interesting that none of the smart hackers here have 'innovated' an open discussion forum yet. Everyone knows of the problems with moderation and hellbanning, everyone knows that this forum isn't a democracy and yet, here we all are.
Why do you assume that democracy is the right model for discussion? Even with the problems of moderation and hellbanning, the system here is better than something purely open.
I've seen pure open discussions, and I don't want to have anything to do with them.
> I've given up on upvoting/downvoting any such discussions and simply don't read them anymore. This includes everything on sexism in tech.
You know, I've noticed a lot of the 'superstar commenters' on HN have polar opposite views from each other on a lot of these touchy issues. So, it's sad to see that what ensues out of smart people disagreeing is a plain refusal to talk about these very things.
Why does it have to be this way? Why are some of the most respected and the smartest commenters on this site unwilling to have an intellectually honest debate?
Is it because of time? I've noticed that if I just sound the first thought in my mind, it's likely to come out as being rude ("wow, this sucks", "this is the 100th time I'm seeing this", "why did this person make this obvious mistake?"). It takes effort and time to structure these first thoughts as positive criticisms. Presumably, the smart folks here don't have a lot of time, so maybe it's just that they end up sounding terse and rude only because they don't have the time to reword things to sound more polite and supportive?
> Why are some of the most respected and the smartest commenters on this site unwilling to have an intellectually honest debate?
Unwilling? No, HN is more than willing to have a good debate. The issue is that with some particular topics, HN is unable.
HN is not a perfect platform for intelligent discussion. It is unable to handle certain types discussions and the only effective mechanism it has to keep those discussions from consuming the rest of the site is to crudely cull them.
Humbly, I suggest that if HN's inability to discuss some things surprises you, then your opinion of HN is too high. It is imperfect, very imperfect.
> The issue is that with some particular topics, HN is unable.
Agreed, it's actually just impossible to have a non-polarized discussion if people identify too strongly with one of the poles. This isn't unique to HN, we essentially live in a bipolar society. Even if you present a middle ground, someone identifying with either pole will assume you are identifying with the opposite pole, because they see that part of the world in black and white.
Nevertheless, these discussions are good for clarifying your understanding of the world, just try not to expect much in the way of respect, appreciation, agreement, or understanding.
Religion, politics, professional sexism, all these are topics that infringe on people's identities, causing a strong gut reaction that leads to terrible discussions. Even programming languages can end up in a similar category, if you have too many people that identify as a "C++ programmer" or a "Pythonista", or a "Lisper", which leads to the oft-seen programming language flame war.
> Nevertheless, these discussions are good for clarifying your understanding of the world, just try not to expect much in the way of respect, appreciation, agreement, or understanding.
That's a good point; an effective compromise may be to allow heavily flagged discussions to continue after being pushed off the front page, instead of [dead]'ing them (which halts conversation abruptly.) This is actually what happens currently most of the time (as far as I have seen anyway) and I don't think it is particularly bad. The people who are already involved in a discussion can continue it, but more people are not drawn into it as the poisonous discussion doesn't stay visible on the front page.
That's an interesting philosophy. I guess it's like that, with the exception that eventually I'll withdraw from a persistently hostile conversation because I know my own limits and I want to avoid getting destructively angry. Similarly, I'm learning to avoid saying precisely what I think on certain topics around certain people, even if I know that it's a balanced position, because dealing with the aftermath isn't worth it. But yes, it's nice hanging out with friends who don't get all worked up just because I happen to have an opinion that they don't share.
Why are some of the most respected and the smartest commenters on this site unwilling to have an intellectually honest debate?
Because after the tenth time it's discussed and turns into a verbal food fight, many people intuitively realize that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I think the problem is that some people are not as thoughtful as you are when it comes to up/downvotes. The terrible "downvote because I disagree" is not as bad as in other forums but it's definitely on the rise. When people use the voting system to express an opinion instead of judging the quality of the comment itself it kills the quality of the discussion very very quickly in my experience.
The people who don't take the voting system seriously are probably those who are the most likely to mindlessly upvote/downvote stories and comments.
I think up and down votes should be rationed. Or at least have some kind of cost (when your ratio is depleted you can upvote by using your own karma?). I remember slashdot had (has?) a similar system. It would force the users to think twice before mindlessly up or down voting anything. Maybe a downvote should be more expensive as an upvote, even.
Flagging stories would still be free for completely off topic contents (and fighting voting rings).
EDIT: or as an alternative: the more you vote the less your vote is meaningful.
Voting system is a great cleaning mechanism (akin to current in a pond), something that keeps mediocre submissions and poor comments out of sight. If this feature is rationed (eg flow of the current is weakened), comments and posts ought to be rationed as well, otherwise HN gets overwhelmed with poor input.
It means the votes will be more meaningful. Unless the ratio of votes/comments gets really really low it wouldn't be much of an issue I think. This can even be tuned dynamically.
- I only flag stories that are clearly posted here for promotional purposes only (example: Ask HN threads where the author does not ask anything but just posts a link to his site/startup)
- I upvote stories that I feel have a very good level of quality (i.e., deeply technical stuff) and have a low point count (support the underdogs)
- I upvote any comment that's mature, respectful, and which the author clearly spent a decent chunk of time on.
- I never flag stories, but would if it was spam or trolling (but I've not seen any of either hit the front page, and that on /new is already [dead])
- I upvote stories fairly liberally. I use the saved_stories feature on my own profile as a lightweight bookmarking solution. So anything of interest that I think "I may want to find this again in future" I upvote. I tend to visit /new once or twice a day to spot interesting things that haven't hit the front-page, I think of this as community service.
- I upvote only the most insightful comments, I upvote comments less than I upvote stories. I downvote only the most rude or dumb comments, the ones filled with bile, hatred and flamebait views... downvotes are very rare but that's my criteria. I don't downvote dumb jokes, but notice other people tend to.
I never upvote/downvote other people's comments if I've taken part in the debate. I do notice that it's not possible to downvote the branch of the debate you've participated in, but I just avoid voting on any comment on a story I've posted a comment on.
One thing I have noticed, on a couple of occasions I've made a divisive statement and whilst it would overall get upvoted my total karma gets reduced. It seems a few people throw hissyfits when they disagree and go check other comments you've made and downvote a bunch of them.
My voting behavior on HN is very different from other websites. Since the saved stories and upvotes are the same, and upvotes cannot be taken back, I use the upvote as a "save story" button. There are many submissions which are not of a good quality, but the ensuing discussion on the wider topic prompts me to save the submissions as there is no option to save comments. I maintain a separate database of my saved stories, which I keep preiodically updating and pruning, primarily for NLP and ML experiments. So that is my personally "curated" list of HN bookmarks. Though I must say my visits here have become less frequent.
- I flag stories only if they're poorly-written and completely unrelated to tech, or if they are opinion pieces that fail to back up their assertions (two or three short paragraphs)--in those cases I'll try to comment on why I flagged it.
- I upvote stories if they're technically interesting or socially relevant; I try to make a pass through the new section at least once every day.
- I upvote comments that are thoughtful or witty but on-topic, and downvote comments that are poorly written, severely off-topic, or mean in a non-clever way (dumb trolls).
The practice of downvoting because you don't agree with something is tricky--it makes sense (I can more easily pick out comments that probably run counter to the community and thus have better entropy) but also is kind of detrimental, because it conflates "This is a bad, poorly-worded off-topic comment" with "This is a comment I find disagreeable".
>> "I flag stories only if they're poorly-written and completely unrelated to tech"
Why the tech requirement? It's HackerNews not TechNews. There are plenty of good posts I've found useful which fit the hacker label but not the tech one.
If they are well-written but don't involve technology, they don't activate the flag criteria. I may even upvote them if there are cool enough (many New Yorker essays, for example).
If they are poorly-written but do involve technology, they don't activate the flag criteria. I simply won't upvote them.
If they are both, they are taking up link space.
(I'm also personally opposed to the "Let's use hack to describe everything!". That said, I do appreciate good writing--for example, the piece on Frank Lucas that showed up a while ago.)
It might help the discussion to provide an example of something really borderline rather than theoretical exploration.
"Bird Bath: The Conservation of a William Morris Textile"
I didn't click flag because I have a certain fondness for dead media preservation, someones going to be writing something very much like this in 50 years for preserving 5.25 floppy media, or flash drives, or a museum preserving its vintage iphone 5, which gives you something to think about. And, after all, its jacquard woven which means a lot to CS/IT/tech people who know what that means (which is probably not many). But its really darn close to the line and I would not feel its excessively outta line for someone else to click flag, if they want to.
Your heuristics are a very close match for my own. I've written similar options in previous threads here concerning flagging and the ranking algorithm.
Whenever this matter surfaces, I recommend the HN Slapdown user script [1] which indicates stories that have been moved below the position they would have based on points only. In other words, it draws attention to stories that have been flagged or otherwise adversely affected.
In my opinion, the homepage either weights non-upvote inputs too heavily or receives too many non-upvote interactions from users.
I can't be certain whether flagging or other measures such as the "flamewar detector" are more or less responsible for the volatility of the home page ranking. My only anecdotal evidence is that when I have (very rarely) flagged stories, I've witnessed an immediate and severe rank adjustment, often immediately sending the submission into second-page purgatory. This has given me great respect for the severity of flagging.
My heuristics:
1. Most of all, I try to keep my interactions positive. If I don't agree, I act as if I don't care, by which I mean I do nothing. I see little value in downvoting something I disagree with. It won't change the person's mind—only a comment in reply has a chance of that.
2. I will downvote comments that I believe are objectively wrong and potentially misleading to other readers or are clearly intended to be offensive or mean-spirited. Still, I feel I am very sparse with downvotes. I downvote approximately one out of every 1,000 comments I read.
3. I've only flagged stories that are unrelated to technology, but even then only in extreme cases. I don't bother flagging stories about popular fiction, movie reviews, or other elements of geek culture because I don't think those stories are an epidemic at HN. Like you, I feel it's important to leave a comment when flagging a submission. I have flagged two stories if my memory serves me correctly.
4. I skim the new section on every visit to site; about once per day.
5. I upvote stories I find interesting or agreeable. I think this is the point of the upvote. Upvotes are where I can be entirely subjective. I upvote approximately one out of every 10 stories I read.
6. I upvote comments by the same rule as stories. I upvote approximately one out of every 100 comments I read.
7. I strongly disagree with downvoting or flagging simply because of disagreements. I don't think use of downvoting is as problematic at HN as elsewhere (e.g., Reddit), but I do feel there is still slightly excessive comment downvoting and moderately excessive story flagging (or other adjustments).
You know what sux, stories critical of HN are getting flagged and pushed off the front page, exactly the flaw that this article points out. This article is at position 58 now with 308 upvotes after being submitted 9 hours ago. There's another link from 9h ago with 48 upvotes and it's at position 36.
This article is direct user feedback and points out that moderation is just harmful for what HN stands for, why "making it disappear". You can't moderate a community-driven website. You can for porn or harassment speech, but not for critique, seriously. Even if the critique is unconstructive, that's how humans discuss, don't moderate that, otherwise you will falsify the outcome.
That's like the NSA, always trying to control things and sweeping things under the carpet, no like.
Hmm, well to make a community-driven website, but actually only with the content that the moderators deem worthy, is a good way to piss off users and to not make it change the world. It makes HN mediocre.
> - I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions.
I used to until I lost the ability. I guess the impulse came from stackoverflow, where you are encourage to try and make the site better by editing and flagging poor items.
I used to go to the new page and flag 3-5 stories a day. I thought this was a benefit to the community and one way I could help make it better.
Finally one day I lost the ability to flag. I assumed a moderator didn't like one of the stories I'd flagged and took the privileged away.
I avoid voting for exactly this reason. I prefer to filter the noise myself by ignoring it over decreasing it for others, and the only reason for this is that I don't want to be penalized for it.
- I flagged one story in my time on HN (< 2 yrs). It was obvious spam (referrer included and went to a webstore; unrelated title).
- I see newer stories thanks to some chrome extensions showing a 2 column layout. I rarely upvote though as I feel I am too inexperienced to decide what others should find interesting.
- I upvote comments that made me learn something. I downvote "redditism", flaming etc.
I heard about a guy getting hellbanned for flagging all but one of the "Steve Jobs is dead" stories on the day Steve Jobs died. Each time my finger hovers over the "flag" button I wonder ". . . is this really worth the hassle?" Then I close the tab and go off somewhere else.
(I've flagged probably 10 things total.)
EDIT: jlgreco corrects me. The guy I was thinking of was flag-banned, not hell-banned.
I know some people lost their ability to flag while doing exactly that (the 'flag' link is removed entirely when that happens, the removal of the ability isn't invisible to the user it happens to), but I am unaware of anybody being hellbanned for it.
I can no longer flag because I flagged every inappropriate political post on the front page for a couple days. (It was a pretty bad stretch). I knew it wouldn't help much but it made me feel better. As a result I was flag-banned.
I used to check the New page for spam and content-free posts, and flag obvious stuff. Then one day I lost flagging.
I believe that if you flag an item that then becomes popular it counts against you. If you flag a story that has a strong voter-ring or sock-puppet gang then, guess what: You end up being on the losing end and the sock-puppets win.
I guess I was flag-banned. I can't see the flag link anywhere, and I seem to remember it was there before. Must be that one post recently where I expressed a libertarian political view :)
Your HN behaviour is pretty much identical to mine. I rarely comment, I do occasionally but generally I skim through comments and upvote occasional comments I find interesting.
I flag when the story is deceitful or otherwise not a legitimate topic of discussion. I also rarely upvote stores, although I frequently up or down comments.
Yep, let's ignore the main issues raised by the post and have a meta discussion instead.
- Leftist orthodoxy (Keynesian good/Austrian bad, etc.)
- Disappearing dissenters (HeckBanning, NegVotesToOblivion)
- Apple the Immaculate (and Saint Jobs the Perfect)
- All startups are equal (but YC's are more equaler than others)
Please HeckBan this and prove the points made about HN's accoustics and whatnot. Whatever you do, must not upArrow and offend the hive mind.
Your comment is badly written, and mostly free of meaningful content, but I don't want to downvote it because I feel that it would somehow be gratifying to you.
- I never flag stories; I may not find a story interesting, but I don't feel it's appropriate to impose my interests on others or 'police' their discussions.
- I rarely upvote stories, mostly because I'm usually browsing stories that are already on the front-page. Occasionally I skim through the new stories and if I see something interesting there I might upvote it.
- For comments, I upvote comments I find particularly helpful or insightful. I don't downvote comments very often unless they're particularly rude. However, I never downvote comments that are part of a discussion I'm having; I don't trust my impartiality in that case.
If my behavior is typical, then stories are being controlled by a 'vocal minority' who take the time to upvote or flag them. As in any group, the vocal minority tends to have the more fundamentalist / extremist points of view on a subject, which could lead to the outcomes TFA discusses.