Comment by roflyear

That site had 11 major frontpage threads in the last year, which is a lot.

Every single one of them set off the flamewar detector. That's extremely unusual. If it were one or two I'd call it random, but 11 in a row, whatever the reason, is not random. We turned off that software penalty on about half of those threads.

I follow the HN subreddit and routinely see very active threads that aren’t in the feed.

I would also argue that shutting certain posts down early is what helps it thrive. Maybe you lose some value of topic but you gain the ability to discuss other things in depth. You also prevent pollution of discourse.

There are over 1,200 comments on this controversial story alone, with plenty of debate within: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43517833

What more evidence do you need that spirited disagreement is alive and well here?

Downvoting for disagreement has always been fine on HN. People sometimes assume otherwise because they're implicitly porting the rules from a larger site, but that's a mistake.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

> People will frequently say that downvoting is not for disagreeing

Those people are wrong.

>> Disagreement is alive and well on HN.

> I disagree.

Head explodes

We don't delete posts unless their authors ask us to. The most that happens to a user-flagged or otherwise moderated post is that it does into the [dead] state, and [dead[ posts aren't deleted. They remain visible to anyone with 'showdead' turned on in their profile.

If anyone wants more, here's a longer explanation from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538728.

Moderation does participate in the culture of course, but I disagree that it would drive it necessarily. You can only do so much by reminding people to align with the posting guidelines and removing ill fitting posts and individuals.

"Not thriv[ing]" is not the same as being quashed. Minority opinions don't always rise to the popularity or acceptance level of majority opinions, and that's OK.

> For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN.

There is a difference between expressing unpopular opinions (e.g. "manifest V3 is good"), which receive an appropriate level of considered disagreement; and expressing opinions that are removed administratively.

In my experience, the former is quite common, while the latter only occurs in cases of hateful or off-topic comments. That is as it should be. No one is obligated to agree with you, and that fact should not dissuade you from expressing yourself.

I’m a fairly steadfast holder of the “I like apples walled garden, it’s my choice to be there” argument, and I think as a dissenting opinion on this forum I get a lot of flak for it. But that’s not a moderation problem, it’s the fact that my opinion is different and I have 10x the number of people disagreeing with me than agreeing with me.

> having the opinion

What I see a lot of is this:

User posts "$opinion $generalization $snark $dismissal $adhominem".

User gets down voted or flagged. User complains that downvotes are for expressing $opinion and that $opinion is not allowed on this site!

But we can all see the other things in their post that probably brought on most of the downvotes.

> For example, having the opinion that manifest V3 is good for users is an opinion that will not thrive on HN.

That's not a moderation issue. You can post that opinion, and people will disagree with it, post responses to it, and downvote it. It will not be flagged out of existence, unless it's also violating site policy in other ways.

I, for one, come here in substantial part for the norms against aggression and toward calm substantive discussion.

Shouting matches and rhetorical posturing are exhausting. There are places for that—most places online, anymore; this is not one of them.

So, do you mean you don't like tone policing? You can say pretty much anything as long as the tone stays intellectual and doesn't go into brain damage politics, harassment, or conspiracy zone where it's being banned because it's off-topic and, frankly, exhausting and unproductive.

Moderation by the community is still moderation.

The value of "enough" is a moderation decision made by a human.

I feel like I often get into protracted discussions here in which I am defending a minority view, but I don't feel discouraged from doing so.

A huge part of that is that the tone is almost always civil and the arguments are typically in good faith.

I downvoted it because it bears little relation to this story, not because I disagreed with it. It's basically complaining that they're not getting enough love from other members. The mods don't quash comments merely because they convey dissenting opinions; they quash them when they become toxic to the community.

It is a shame that people will downvote a thing that is expressing an honest opinion.

I can't really relate to the mindset of people who use downvoting as a 'I disagree' button.

I don't think this extends to the way that HN is moderated or run. It is worth looking at dang's posts every now and again to take in the job that he does and how patient he can be, even with antagonism aimed directly at HN or himself personally.

From time to time I also have a look at the histories of some of those antagonistic people. Frequently there are signs that their behaviour was not always like this. Recent posts might be outright abusive and sound like the postings of angry teenagers. A few years earlier they might have been posting reasonable discussions on their thesis topic or tutorials on some useful subjects. Keeping that in mind helps you realise that these are real people and there may be other things going on in their life.

I think there are some good things to learn from people who work with addicts. You can simultaneously challenge bad behaviour and be compassionate to the person who committed it. Similarly, this is why I'm not a fan of cancelling people or holding them forever accountable for past bad behaviour. If they recognise that their behaviour was bad and are endeavouring to not be that way again, I don't think permanent ostracism benefits anyone. If anything it restricts people to a community that amplifies their negative behaviour.

It's not that they need to be popular, it's that voting them down leads them to be dropped off from view (and makes it less likely dissenting views will be shared). Reddit is the extreme case of this where anything outside the majority group consensus is heresy to be voted down/hidden/banned.

Better sites don't do this and have in-good-faith discussion despite disagreement.

Yeah, as someone who has criticized the mod team, saying you are biased is just laughable. You go out of your way to be as unbiased and user-oriented as possible. My biggest criticism is procedural, Dan and friends are doing good work.

If 2 people end up in a civilised debate. It’s not uncommon for people to flag and downvote the opinion they disagree with even if the opinion is valid or backed up with facts. Feelings get too hurt here.

> My comment itself was barely a criticism of HN

Your comment is (a) off-topic and (b) smacks of a complaint about not getting enough up-votes. Neither of these areas are looked upon positively in HN. If this style of comment is your modus operandi, it may explain why your work is not well-received, and in short it has nothing to do with the popularity of your opinions.

The effect is the same — the comment becomes unreadable.

I said nothing about that.

Probably because a single example at a single time point can't really be extrapolated to the entire platform across all times. The comment being downvoted proves nothing (as evidenced by the fact it's now upvoted to the 2nd top comment!)

And this comment of yours I'm replying to will probably get downvoted because it's a complaint about votes that contributes literally nothing to the conversation (in fact, detracts from it).

Yes, because the comments are offtopic and against the site guidelines (see the bottom of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

"I the noble freethinker, standing bravely against the mob" comments are boring and repetitive, and therefore always off topic.