Comment by dang
5 months ago
I appreciate the thoughts! I still think you're underestimating the damage that flamewars, especially the shallow intense ones, do to the community, but I suppose we've each made our points and I shouldn't harp on it. I want to correct one thing though. This isn't true:
> your attrition in moderating another post to your self-satisfaction was what encouraged you to make the decision to not even bother attempting with this one
It was, as I said, a secondary consideration. The primary ones are the ones I've spent much more time explaining, because they're primary. If they had pointed the other way then I would have gone against that preference in myself. I do agree with you about self-awareness, though; it is a precious thing and probably the most elusive one.
p.s. for selfish reasons I'd be curious to hear your take on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306, in which I attempted at unfortunate length to talk about this issue from a different angle. Don't read it unless you're actually interested though. It wouldn't be surprising if no one were; sometimes I just write these things to get them out of my system.
Sure!
In that thread's comment, your “sequence” perspective makes sense; it’s clearly more complex than it looks from the outside, and I don’t envy the ontological challenge of deciding which submissions are repetitive or closely related. Still, from a user standpoint, it can feel inconsistent: sometimes S1 and S2 look almost identical, and the fact that S1 “won” first might be just because the earliest, most active users or moderators happened to see it and push it forward. After that, the community tends to gravitate toward S1 by default, so S2 never really gets a fair shake, even if it’s potentially more interesting or revealing. That's just c'est la vie.
But this thread feels like a good example of that mismatch. If S1 got topped while S2 was flagged or buried, and users are complaining in a relatively united way, maybe that’s a sign the initial choice favored the wrong post - or standing on the "offending" post (if no S1 is, in fact, present). Sometimes it’s worth re-checking whether the “winner-loser” framing actually got it right. A bit more leeway for topics that initially look flame like a flame war farm could reveal more thoughtful angles than expected, especially if the community is giving feedback that S2 might actually be the more worthwhile discussion (as we saw here - I think we're also seeing it in the Ross Ulbricht pardon thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787555).
Anyway, I appreciate the deeper look at how you’re handling these issues. It helps me see why certain threads get the bird! I think, especially for you and because of the stated mission of HN, that you believe - even more than me - that it's always a shame when we miss the better conversation.
users are complaining in a relatively united way, maybe that’s a sign the initial choice favored the wrong post
which wrong post would that have been? i don't think there was any. the same users that are complaining about the flags are also not actually engaging in a worthwhile discussion. there are enough people here that did find this topic. it has, after all, reached at least 50 points before it got flagged. i'd even say that it was flagged because it got popular. and that means, despite the flags, this topic should have enough traction for an engaging discussion, and yet, no such discussion is happening. i have not seen a single comment worth engaging with.
instead of complaining, someone should write a critical editorial about what happened and what it all means. but i think it is to early for that. this was posted right after it happened. i believe we actually need to wait for the uproar to die down before we can have a calm and critical discussion of the events. wait a few days or a week or so until someone will write that editorial, and then we can discuss it here.
Thank you!