Comment by dang
5 months ago
I agree in principle, but these are the dynamics of every intense polarized issue and I don't think there's much we can do about it other than nibble around the margins. For example, we try to downweight comments that are primarily name-calling or flaming, in the hope of giving more oxygen to posts that are reflective, find something new to say, and so on.
At bottom, it seems like this is just how mass psychology works—it's what you get when the inputs are (1) human nature, and (2) modern media. It stresses me out too, but I have to remind myself not to fight battles we can't win. That's a recipe for burnout and worse.
Also, when the nature of an intense polarized issue about things of great importance overlaps into the things Hacker News is about, that's when to try very hard to study what's happening. What's happening with modern media is Hacker News-adjacent. What's happening in how modern world wars are fought is Hacker News-adjacent.
When the mechanics of how these things are put into play, begin to affect not only Facebook, Twitter etc but also Hacker News itself, that's very much Hacker News-adjacent. It's a meta sense where control of the discourse becomes not only the ground but also the figure.
Hackers are eager to think they, like the internet, will route around any censorship. If their ways and belief systems are studied to the point that flagging and argument becomes able to unilaterally censor discourse against the wishes of the hackers, that's when your action of picking a thread and taking pains to unflag it and attempt discussion anyhow, becomes the right thing to do :)
On mastodon I noticed an interesting approach: to warn in a visible manner that a topic is "sensitive". Not sure if that triggers less aggressive behavior, maybe its even the opposite? But just as there are instinctive red dots that grab our attention there might be digital blue dots to calm us down.
https://www.audubon.org/news/why-do-gulls-have-red-spot-thei...
I get your reluctance to do things you can't take back, but it seems like the emotional response to thinking your comment's being down weighted but not being told that's happening, or not knowing why, might be helped by being told why. eg if I'm calling people names but don't know or don't realize that's not accepted behavior here, someone with a persecution complex is going to think you're personally out for them and not their behavior.
I hear you and I'm sure you have a point. But my experience is that adding information of this kind diminishes some misperceptions but fuels others. I don't know is what the tradeoffs are and I don't want to do things that make either HN, or the job of moderating HN, worse.
If it is any consolation, I don't think there's anything more you can do as a moderator to solve the problem, as it will require the underlying human nature to change. In this context, the problem is with what is called 'peasant mentality'[^1], specifically defending a bureaucracy that is being dismantled by DOGE.
[^1]: https://x.com/sridca/status/1846935493100888262