[donkleberry]

When you’re in top position on a Stripe-related post, that has nothing to do with your karma score. It’s because dang has a pin button that he usually uses for himself, but very often is used for exactly the situation you describe when it comes to YC portfolio or celebrities showing up or something (without visual feedback of such a pin, as every single other website with the capability provides). It’s pretty obvious if you keep an eye out for it

This can undoubtedly be spun as “HN just trying to bring the right voice to the top of the discussion” but the alternative take is just as valid. It’s not bad faith feedback, it’s HN UX and practices confusing readers as usual

[dang]

You got me curious to look at the data. pc has had the top comment in 41 threads since Sept 2007 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50377). Of those, one was pinned to the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25073749. I vaguely recall that had to do with wanting to correct the misleading impression left by an inaccurate headline. All the other cases got there via the usual ranking algorithm. I guess you guys can decide whether 1/41 is moderator overreach or not.

We mostly use that mechanism for tedious moderation announcements ("All: please don't bash each other with clubs, even if you feel strongly about $topic") and for cases where project creators/authors show up belatedly in threads to discuss their work—those are extremely high-value comments that would otherwise get overlooked. Occasionally I use it if a thread is mostly aflame about some controversy and some commenter points out how the whole thing is inaccurate. We don't use it to systematically privilege high-karma users or YC founders relative to other users—that wouldn't be in the spirit of the site guidelines at all, and we take those pretty seriously.

[eganist]

> You got me curious to look at the data. pc has had the top comment in 41 threads since Sept 2007 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50377). Of those, one was pinned to the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25073749. I vaguely recall that had to do with wanting to correct the misleading impression left by an inaccurate headline. All the other cases got there via the usual ranking algorithm.

> We mostly use that mechanism for tedious moderation announcements ("All: please don't bash each other with clubs, even if you feel strongly about $topic") and for cases where project creators/authors show up belatedly in threads to discuss their work—those are extremely high-value comments that would otherwise get overlooked. We don't use it to privilege high-karma users or YC founders relative to other users.

Do you have the denominator (with root-level comments) for the 41 top comments by any chance?

Thanks for the edit with added context. Any chance of an indicator that a comment is pinned so that people can transparently see when this is done? It's predictable that your moderation comments would be pinned, but even pinning a founder's comment to apparently contextualize a potentially misleading headline adds substantial mass to the claim that certain moderation actions might be done for the benefit of the company or companies involved in the thread.

Framed another way: if PC's context for the article was relevant, it would've achieved critical mass on its own. Helping it with a pin could be perceived as moving the needle for gain.

A simple "pin" icon (or emoji, or however you feel is best) may not resolve whether this is a "proper" use of moderation tools, but it will at least make it transparent when it happens, which adds credibility to the HN platform.

[sp332]

Denominator: 638 comments https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[eganist]

root-level?

[dang]

Looks like 102 root level comments.

[eganist]

interesting, that's better than 40% assuming that the 41 figure represents root level comments as well.

Thanks for digging into it; you didn't have to.

[toyg]

> A simple "pin" icon

That would be theatre - they can then add a new secret-pinning feature, afaik HN code is not open anyway.

Trust is hard to achieve and very easy to lose.

[choppaface]

This is a great example of HN moderation fanning a flamewar.

[bovermyer]

It objectively is not. I'm baffled at how you arrive at that conclusion.

[choppaface]

It objectively is fanning the flames. dang is clearly entrenched in the pro-YC side of the argument and is continuing conversation in that vein. Real moderation is just shutting down the flamewar. Like for instance they could have moved the story off the front page as quickly as they do for everything else.

[Aeolun]

Chances are these founders are just permanently behind their computers and have an alert set up for whenever someone mentions the company/domain on HN.

That allows you to get in first on an awful amount of threads.

[dataflow]

Are you talking about posts, or comments? Do HN celebs get comment boosted by virtue of that fact too? I would've thought it's only for posts.

[dang]

They're talking about comments. I'm not sure what you mean by HN celebs but no, they don't get comment boosted.

[neom]

Technically, you're a HN celeb who gets their comments boosted Daniel!

[dang]

I downweight them sometimes too.

[vasco]

It's common to assume the masses are dumb and hiding moderation can make people do the right thing without being influenced by it. For example I imagine if the pin icon was visible there would be comments about it on every story it'd be used in, which you may want to avoid to focus on the topics at hand. With that put I think transparency beats this and a transparent system is more trustworthy and better understood by the users. Just 2c but keep doing the good work.

[onion2k]

I'm not sure what you mean by HN celebs

I hope he means me.