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Comment by dang

1 day ago

Everything I know about internet dynamics and human nature tells me that that wouldn't work—it would just exacerbate the conflict.

The problems we're talking about come from the fundamentals: how HN is defined (i.e. its mandate), how the site is structured (one front page that everyone shares, only 30 stories per page, etc.), how people feel, and what's going on in the world at large. Given those fundamentals, these conflicts are inevitable. All we can do is work on how we respond to them—trying to respond better, more creatively, more relationally. By "we" I mean all of us: mods qua mods, users qua users, mods qua users, and users qua mods.

That's not going to happen to anyone's satisfaction, but if it can happen at all, that has to be good enough.

I feel like Freud telling you guys you're all doomed to frustration!

6 comments

dang

Reply
ryandrake  1 day ago

Thanks. Ultimately, as users, we need to trust that you guys are taking the right actions to defend against what appears from our point of view to be a sustained and coordinated cyber attack on the website. I hope I speak for a lot of my fellow users, that we trust it is being treated with the seriousness that you'd treat any other security vulnerability.

  • dang  1 day ago

    I went through and looked at all the accounts that flagged the current thread, which took a long time since there were many of them. I found a handful (about half a dozen) who looked to be flagging for exclusively political reasons. That's a small fraction of the total.

    In other words, the situation on this story turns out to fit the usual pattern as I described it a few weeks ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818):

    The accounts that flag these stories are almost always established accounts, so I'm not too worried about them being sockpuppets or paid influencers.

    From everything we've seen, flags on political stories are a coalition between (1) users who don't want to see (most) political stories on HN, and (2) users who don't like the politics of a particular story they are flagging. In other words, users who care about the quality of the site, and users who care about a political struggle. This dynamic shows up on all the main political topics.

    There are some accounts that abuse flags in the following sense: they only ever flag political stories, and their flags are always aligned with the same political position. When we see accounts doing that, we usually take away their flagging rights.

    This, so far, seems sufficient to me. If we start to see indications that it's not sufficient, we'll take more action.

    To make the point clearer, I went through all the other accounts that flagged the OP (i.e. not including the half dozen abusive cases) and collected examples of other stories they had flagged. I'll put that list in a reply to the current post since it's so long. I think anyone who browses that list will see what I mean when I say that most of these accounts are not flagging for purely political reasons.

    I don't know if that assuages your concerns—probably not, because it's in the nature of the internet that people feel this way and explanations, data, etc., don't address those feelings—but we can at least try.

jacquesm  1 day ago

I flag a lot and I would be absolutely fine with those flags being completely transparent.

I understand you're between a rock and a hard place on this one but I also notice that this thread has not had its flags removed, which you could easily do.

Imustaskforhelp  1 day ago

I understand what you are talking about but trust me when I say this that HN users are genuinely really really frustrated about current flag situation of HN.

Please don't just say that the system is as is and no change can be upgraded.

I feel so frustrated at times whenever I comment in posts and I am observing a lot of the articles themselves getting flagged effectively killing the discussion.

I spent an hour today trying to find HN api to build my own custom HN alternative on which people can respond after a post turns dead for not much apparent reason.

It frustrated me because it was about Children's safety & how EU's taking action against Grok in this case... I mean I just want to share my frustration right in here that people aren't thinking of even children but an us vs them dynamic or some reason and flagging and deadding posts. This is a new low that really really frustrated me & I feel like you might understand why too.

Please change the system. I beg of you to fix it because I am seriously frustrated by not even knowing what can get flagged or not or even Dead. I am not against the moderation but can we make it so that instead of auto flagging atleast, its a flag that moderators have to pass?

Please dang, I know you want the best of HN community too. Let's work together, I feel like much of HN community really appreciates you (myself included) but we are all frustrated about it. How do we convey such change in any way where the idea of change seems feasible because It just seems that the idea of change seems like something which doesn't feel possible in HN from whenever I read such threads and that does depress me because HN is the best community i am part of. I am proud of being part of HN and many others are too and this is why we are vocal about some need of change. Some need that moderators are willing to hear our demands of frustrations and fix some aspects with change.

Once again, thank you for your moderation efforts. And I hope we can have a fruitful discussion about my comment in which I have tried to express my deep frustration today...

I am a minor dang, I have got female friends my age and If any one of these photos would've been abused by Grok, I will tell you that they would've been scarred for life, maybe worse. These could have been someone's sisters and daughters.

And what HN community flagged was a post about EU trying to levy a 6% fine on Grok...

My blood boils thinking that there are people in the community I am proud of being whose first thoughts were to flag such an extremely important discussion to make it dead.

I don't come here for politics but I still discuss about them often. I primarily come here to enjoy tech but man oh man I hope you realize my frustration and other users frustrations & are able to implement some thing which can satisfy us well instead of doing nothing please!

I know you aren't a corporate sellout and are passionate about this community, I just hope that something can be done. I believe in you & trust you after writing this message that you will do what you feel is right.

Have a nice day dang.

Edit: Looks like the other thread got reopened again. If Dang opened it (maybe after reading this?) then thanks a lot broski! This is absolutely great that you fixed it man!

But I hope that Hackernews can have such that things like these just don't happen ie. wrongful flags of genuine topics in the first place etc. or something can still be done or atleast some discussion about it within HN discussions or if possible, please discuss it with a community by creating a ask HN just once and discussing it with other (moderators? if I remember I think you are the only one paid moderator, or maybe tomhow iirc) but my point is please just involve the community just once and weigh in for this problem once again.

Modern problems require modern solutions. I just hope that Hackernews keeps on growing and false positives can be stopped and such system can be generated to prevent such as I must admit that the amount of frustration at that time was seriously immense.

Thanks once again for opening that discussion again and once again have a nice day dang!