Comment by _DeadFred_
4 days ago
This conversation already has comments on one side flagged to invisibility. If you are going to allow these conversations, but only allow one side, then Hacker News is not about discussion but about what?
4 days ago
This conversation already has comments on one side flagged to invisibility. If you are going to allow these conversations, but only allow one side, then Hacker News is not about discussion but about what?
If there are flagged comments which are not breaking the site guidelines, I'd like links to take a look at.
The moderation intention is for comments which break the site guidelines to be flagged, regardless of which side they are or aren't on. It's not possible to reach this state perfectly, of course.
95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion. flagging been used forever to silence "inconvenient facts" and "dissenting opinions"
as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
> 95% of flagged comments don't break guidelines in any given discussion
That number is much too high IMO, so I assume we interpret the site guidelines very differently.
> as example, just below there is reply to you saying that flagging been abused, been flagged
I assume you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221396? No, you'd see "[flagged]" if that were the case. The comment is [dead], but it was killed by software, not flagged by users. I'll restore it.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46218945
That one doesn't seem to violate the rules, and there is a lot of discussion below it.
Agreed, and I unflagged that one a while before you posted your comment here - most probably you had a non-refreshed version of the page.
Dude, your flag function is abused to no end, and you don't really do anything about it. One of the earliest comments I've made was one on semi-recent X11 history, and got flagged for it, because apparently everything is political now.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728
I agree with you that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45796728 should not have been flagged, and have fixed that now.
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At least one of mine, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46219068
The last sentence breaks the site guidelines.
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I know, right? Check this perfectly reasonable one: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=46218955
There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics as war in Isreal, Donald Trump (be it "stolen elections", or foreign politics), or Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Nobody will ever think "That was a well-reasoned argument I now believe war crimes were, or were not, committed".
The best thing to do on posts like this is avoid reading them, or flag them.
It feels like there's an obviously correct side to most of these issues, the problem is half the audience here believes their side is correct and yours is wrong.
> There are no useful discussion to be had on such topics
I think there are useful discussions to be had on these topics, and in fact, we must have those discussions. The issue is that, if we want to do so productively and a comment section is the only venue for us to speak to each other, then we must be extremely patient with others and ourselves and reflect on what they say and what we say (i.e., discuss in good faith).
That burden may be too high for most people, but collectively, we don't have a better forum anymore, and we need to have these discussions and come to consensus before the world is engulfed in authoritarianism or war (which is not hyperbole).
Comment sections are not the only venue for us to speak to each other and we must be able to consider that they might actually make the problem worse.
Other venues - real life, talking to people in person - telephones, audio & video calling, talking to people - writing op-eds, blog posts, sub-stack newsletters - podcasts
None of these of course produce the dopamine hit of seeing your likes/retweets/karma go up and that of your opponents going down though, so we would have to give that up. I think that's a good deal.
We can call internet comment infrastructure "community" but that doesn't mean it actually is one or functions to enhance community.
You might believe there are useful discussions to be had, but when a faction of readers like the GP flag or downvote every thread they don’t like, then it’s impossible to have any conversation, no matter how much good faith is brought to bear.
Manually appealing to dang for unflagging is not a workable solution either.
This really is an entirely unsuitable forum for this discussion.
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> It feels like there's an obviously correct side to most of these issues, the problem is half the audience here believes their side is correct and yours is wrong.
You think half the audience here or anywhere is on the side of israel and genocide? The only reason no discussion can be had is because of the influence of israel in tech, media, government and the bot farms they are allowed to employ all over social media.
I don't know what the numbers are, nor is it possible to determine this from the data we have, but I am reasonably sure that most of the commenters who post about this to HN are doing so in good faith. That doesn't make it any less tough to discuss (or to moderate the discussion). If anything, it makes it tougher.