> I thought HN was purely community driven with only comments being moderated
HN is a curated site, always has been, and has never claimed otherwise.
It is an interaction between three subsystems: community, software, and moderators. All three are necessary. If you or anyone would like to know more, here are some links to past explanations to start with. If there are still questions after familiarizing yourself with that material, I'd be happy to answer them.
You changed what I said into "Of course on the surface you guys say you only downweight petty drama". That was (a) a massive distortion—you can trivially see from https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... that there are many other kinds of downweighting. On top of that, (b) you added snark ("of course") and insinuation ("on the surface") in a way that strikes me as particularly uncharitable.
You've done it again with "Seems reasonable to say, don't trust news about YC on HN", implying that we somehow intervene to distort that, when the truth is that we do exactly the opposite—as I'd just explained in the comment you were replying, as well as on many previous occasions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
Can you address the semantic intent of your use of the word only and what Dan said please: the substantive point to me is you implied only == specific == evidence of bias and as Dan said it is well established they down weight for more than one reason which implies != only which I think, personally you haven't adequately addressed. You're basically wrong.
You're not addressing the point. You said he only downweights for one reason. Plainly, he has declared consistency in downweighting for many reasons. No amount of self justification changes the fact you said he ONLY downweights for one reason, and that's factually incorrect.
What he did in this specific case? Different matter. What he does as a matter of both stated policy and declared intent and I would suggest, evidence is different. He downweights for a range of reasons.
Why can't you just accept that and say so? What's blocking you from acknowledging your own words are just incorrect?
>Why can't you just accept that and say so? What's blocking you from acknowledging your own words are just incorrect?
Very simple logic. He's in a position where he can lie. Conflict of interest. He's paid by the company who sponsors this news site. Why can't you get this simple logic through your head?
>You said he only downweights for one reason.
Please read my post. I said what I meant WAS THIS: The only thing Dang can say is that when he downweights posts he can only SAY that he does so in the interest of the HN community. That's it. Mainly the point is because this is ONLY what he can SAY (keyword) you can't trust what he says, because of a CONFLICT of INTEREST. Get it? Take note I capitalized some words for emphasis to help you understand exactly what I'm saying. The language I use is specific and exact.
>You're not addressing the point.
I am addressing the point. The point is I'm not wrong at all and I'm telling you why. That's really all you need to get through your head.
>What he did in this specific case? Different matter.
What he did in this specific case IS ENTIRELY the point. It is NOT a different matter. ANY thing off this point is off topic. My initial post is completely and only addressing the point. I think your mind is wandering from point to point not latching on the main topic.
>What he does as a matter of both stated policy and declared intent and I would suggest, evidence is different. He downweights for a range of reasons.
Your suggestion is noted. And I suggest there's a conflict of interest here. There.
> Why can't you get this simple logic through your head?
Everyone knows he's paid by YC and almost everyone is taking his decade long track record into consideration as an excellent moderator + that he literally didn't do anything wrong here. You're trying to defend your allegation and everyone else doesn't agree with you.
> That's really all you need to get through your head
Please chill. If you've never moderated a forum, you should start realizing that moderation is key to having a good community.
Cherry-picking statements and acting like this is not appreciated.
Fyi: I've been banned once and thought it was justified. They've done an amazing job to keep the community healthy and that's really hard to do.
What Dang mentioned seems pretty clear: we won't moderate this because it involves us, but this isn't the place for gossip.
YC has > 150 companies per year. Not everything is perfect, not everything is known and people will always try to say their POV of the story. That's life, we'll see how this goes, but I'd rather see it on Reddit than here.
It's perfectly reasonable things may never go perfect. However. Things become sketchy when Dang changes the title and pins his own opinion at the head of the comment section.
Gossip and news are literally the same thing. It feeds and lights up the same areas of the brain. It's hard to say whether this is gossip or news because from this guys post it looks like he got kicked out of YC for trivial reasons. It can potentially say as much about the reputation of YC as it does about the guy who got kicked out. That sounds like news to me.
>Cherry-picking statements and acting like this is not appreciated.
You know I make a huge effort not to cherry pick anything. But it's inevitable things are usually interpreted this way because of the medium of communication or my own trouble with articulating the meaning of what I say. My experience is that when you "think" someone is cherry picking words on HN, usually he's not doing it on purpose and that's how he actually interpreted what you said.
Look carefully at what I wrote. The only thing I am doing here is presenting a valid opinion that goes against the grain of public opinion. There's nothing else going on yet it's exploding into some kind of drama where you're telling me to "chill".
Consider the fact that the bias lies with you. You interpreted my comment as not "chill" when I'm literally just calmly typing my thoughts. I am calm, but why did you insert emotion into my words where none initially existed? Because you are biased. My guess is that you injected hostility into my words because my opinion is simply against your opinion.
It's normal human behavior to interpret a difference of opinion as an attack. I point this out to you so you can better understand yourself and to not classify a unique opinion as an attack. This is my interpretation of what's going on with you and I think it's pretty accurate.
He also added ~"there's 2 sides of a story". I don't see why Dang wouldn't be allowed to add a comment regarding this topic.
Every post about a company has an employee/CEO stating an opinion and often even stating their side.
Even if you would think Dang's opinion is subjective ( which i didn't interpret as such). Why would that suddenly be a problem?
I said chill for example because of this:
> Down weight? So you guys internally pick and choose topics to weight down? I thought HN was purely community driven with only comments being moderated.
You seemed ignorant to the basic fact that every half decent forum is moderated. And you "attack" them on something that is known by ( almost appearantly) everyone and the very thing that makes+keeps this community interesting.
Good moderation is too much undervalued from my POV. You only notice it when it's gone.
If I'm free to give my opinion, you seem to frustrated because people don't agree with you. I understand, it's normal and human behavior. You are not above it.
As an example your most recent comment
(first line)
> Any post that challenges dang will likely get voted down.
Ugh.
(Last line)
> Still it's sorta good that this post wasn't outright deleted.
Full of human behavior ( as you like to mention), because it doesn't fit your endgoal. Downplaying that the post isn't deleted, while admitting that the moderation was fair.
To be honest. Dang could have just moderated this thread. Reactions such as ours are the reason why and don't have any meaningful content.
But he choose not to. Even though he probably knew it would lead to content as this.
>He also added ~"there's 2 sides of a story". I don't see why Dang wouldn't be allowed to add a comment regarding this topic.
The fact that it's the top post is the most questionable thing here, it seems pinned to the top.
The statement is seemingly fair and balanced but make no mistake it's not. A common technique among corporations and public relations experts is to try to seemingly be fair about things that are obviously wrong. A good example of this is educational creationism in the US. Many schools want to teach a fair and balanced view of biology by teaching both evolution and creationism. Like dang himself said, there are two sides to every story after all.
I never said Dang should be banned from commenting. It is a dictatorship after all. His opinion and comment and the fact that it's the top comment in this thread makes the whole thing sketchy. And that is all I am remarking on.
If I were him and my intentions were to be neutral I woulda just left the topic completely alone.
>Good moderation is too much undervalued from my POV. You only notice it when it's gone.
This is off topic. I'm not talking about moderation here as something to get rid of. My topic is the conflict of interest that has to do with this thread and dangs comment on it. That's it.
>If I'm free to give my opinion, you seem to frustrated because people don't agree with you. I understand, it's normal and human behavior. You are not above it.
You are, and I appreciate your opinion. I never said I was above it. But here you are again, after telling me to chill you tell me that I seem frustrated. Again it's your bias talking and inserting false emotions into places where none exists. I am simply explaining why I disagree with you.
>As an example your most recent comment, first line:
>> Any post that challenges dang will likely get voted down.
>It's snarky against a highly respected member that is part of the team that makes this forum HN.
It's not snarky dude. It's true. If I call someone who murdered 10 people a killer am I being snarky? No. I'm remarking on a fact. Now I admit I'm criticizing him but open and polite criticism is part of the spirit of HN.
Anyway this subthread has already degraded to uninteresting talk that's against the spirit of HN. I would say normally dang would probably kill this subthread if he saw it, but he may not in effort to appear fair and balanced. That's a good thing. But that doesn't mean you should just ignore the conflict of interest at play here. Either way, it's best not to continue this debate, I've made my point and you evidently disagree but neither of us can definitively prove whether censorship is happening or if it isn't so let's end it here.
>Full of human behavior ( as you like to mention), because it doesn't fit your endgoal. Downplaying that the post isn't deleted, while admitting that the moderation was fair.
And what is my endgoal? I have repeatedly said he could not be censoring things and that he also could Why didn't you bring those up? Are you CHERRYPICKING??? No you're not, you're simply not clear about what I am saying so I am clarifying the facts to you.
My end goal here is to remark that the actions dang took here are a conflict of interest and that makes his post highly sus. Does it mean dang doesn't do good things? No. Does it mean dang has never done no evil? No. It means that what he is doing here for this specific post is sketchy. THAT is my end goal.
>Useless content :)
See. This is rude and the smiley face is truly snark. This is actually against the rules of HN. A deliberate violation. I wonder how dang would react to this kind that kind of remark. Truly a test of his ability to stay centered and unbiased. Most likely he won't do anything given the context.
Giving someone with a conflict of interest good faith is extremely unwise. I advise even for you never to do it.
In essence you can say my faith in him is 50% not 100% as good faith seems to imply. So with 50% faith, engagement is still has value. I never met a person who never lied, so every single person I've ever talked to in my life I technically never had 100% good faith towards. I expect everyone to lie and be untrustworthy at some point. For some people it's big things, for other people it's minor white lies. For someone with a conflict of interest I'd be more careful.
Additionally even someone completely untrustworthy can still be communicated with. You can still glean information from such a person by observing his actions. For example if dang censors this thread by deleting the whole thing, that would say a lot. Him not deleting the thread also says a lot.
What I don't understand about you is how you can say you don't "understand" something and then suddenly say "good evening" as if you're leaving. Wouldn't the goal be for you to "stay" and "understand" Or is the goal simply to debate and win or leave if you can't win?
No instead of blind faith I choose to not trust someone with a conflict of interest. You choose to give him your blind faith and call any form of doubt a conspiracy bubble.
He's probably not deleting or flagging anything because he's aware it will make him look biased. This is a common strategy. Dang picking and choosing only to censor the most insidious things remains an open possibility.
Also, what decade long track record? You have a record of posts that were deleted or censored? That would be a track record. But guess what? none exists. That's a fact.
All I'm saying is that a conflict of interest exists and because of this conflict of interest, dangs comment is pure sketch.
Am I going to let my neighbor borrow a million dollars just because he has good credit? No. It would be unwise to do so and you blindly trusting dang is highly, highly unwise.
All forms of faith are blindness.
I claimed multiple times that it looks like this was pinned. Whether it was actually pinned is open for debate. So you make a claim it wasn't pinned, why don't you prove it with something other than blind faith in dang saying he never pinned it.
You're response to my appreciation of moderation is ( while you are protesting against any moderation outside of the community ):
> This is off topic.
You are literally comparing things with ( in 1 post): China, covid, dictatorship, serial killers, censorship, educational creationism, biology in schools, ...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's an upvoted comment by a moderator... Nothing more, nothing less.
>You are literally comparing things with ( in 1 post): China, covid, dictatorship, serial killers, censorship, educational creationism, biology in schools, ...
Those are called examples. Examples in service of helping to illustrate a point that is still on topic.
You on the other hand wanted to talk about things that were never remarked upon or even true. I never said anything about how dang should stop moderating anything. You brought that up out of nowhere. Hence. Off topic.
>As I said before: chill.
>Ps. Still useless content :)
Then stop replying. Stop being rude. There's no point if it's useless for you.
HN is a curated site, always has been, and has never claimed otherwise.
It is an interaction between three subsystems: community, software, and moderators. All three are necessary. If you or anyone would like to know more, here are some links to past explanations to start with. If there are still questions after familiarizing yourself with that material, I'd be happy to answer them.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
> Of course on the surface you guys say you only downweight petty drama
That is obviously not at all what I said.