[operatingthetan]

>For people who are saying "thankfully HN is different!", it really isn't.

Yes it is. HN's moderation is run by HN. The rules are applied consistently because there are are no third party mods or rules. People know what to expect and that builds community better.

You don't have to wonder if some edgelord mod is going to get home from school and delete your post based on their mood.

[jedberg]

I think you missed my entire point then.

> HN's moderation is run by HN

No, it's run by a few humans.

> The rules are applied consistently

Yes, because those humans are awesome and consistent.

> because there are are no third party mods or rules.

That's not why reddit is different. It's because a lot of the humans that run the subreddits are inconsistent.

But some run their subreddits just like HN.

If you think of HN as a well run subreddit it makes more sense.

[operatingthetan]

>No, it's run by a few humans.

Dang is employed by HN.

>That's not why reddit is different. It's because a lot of the humans that run the subreddits are inconsistent.

You're disagreeing and then saying something that isn't appreciably different.

[tptacek]

Dan is HN. The analogy to a subreddit is good; Dan has in fact much more control over HN than a moderator does of a subreddit.

[operatingthetan]

YC has a vested interest in keeping the HN moderation a certain way, it bring a certain quality to the discourse but it's different than the structure of any sub.

Dang has a direct relationship with the owners of the site and responsibility to them, that relationship doesn't exist in any way on reddit. The mods run amok.

Suggesting HN is effectively just another subreddit dismisses several important differences.

[tptacek]

No, I don't think that's how HN works at all. Dan can in fact run amok on HN. I don't believe there are significant pressures from YC on how Dan structures moderation here.

People unfamiliar with the setup here tend to think about YC first when they think about its management, but they should think about Dan first. My understanding is that things are pretty hands-off; even the perks that YC companies get here are, I believe, pretty much things Dan decided to give them.

[operatingthetan]

>Dan can in fact run amok on HN. I don't believe there are significant pressures from YC on how Dan structures moderation here.

I'm sorry but this is absurd. If dang had a mental break and decided only cat picture posts were allowed going forward, there would definitely be a conversation. It being hands-off so far means that YC and dang have current consensus and trust exists.

[lmm]

The fact of being an HN employee means that Dan has a sword of Damocles above his head the whole time. Whether or not YC are actually calling him up day-to-day and telling him to do X or Y is irrelevant; he's smart enough to figure out what X and Y are and do them pre-emptively, and he knows his livelihood depends on it.

[numpad0]

Dang might be well-intended kind dictator, but he’s no machine. He’s just a very thoughtful and kind person with human limits and capacities.

[tough]

DanGPT won't have those limitations

[goatlover]

What about when DanGPT hallucinates a violation?

[TeMPOraL]

Email [e-mail] to report DanGPT is having a trip.

[OrvalWintermute]

Dang is a member of a specific community. Consequently, even if well intentioned, he is likely to share their cognitive biases and perspectives.

I think this is why we won't have great transparency around banning, shadowbanning, or a check on the censorious power of flagging.

[NotPractical]

I imagine that (thoughtfully) moderating a site as large as HN is no easy task, and though I'm all for more transparency, I think logs like that have the potential to open a whole can of worms and add much more burden on Dan. All of a sudden you get a bunch of HN posts that solely exist to criticize Dan's decisions which clog up the feed. If a rule is added against this it looks like even more censorship.

Lobsters [1] has mod logs, but it also has a much smaller community, and it's invite-only so there's less need for moderation in the first place.

[1] https://lobste.rs/moderations

[ilyt]

I don't think logs are needed in community moderated by single person, don't need logs to know who did what.

But for something like Reddit when there is more mods the anonymity basically means impunity to any judgement; nobody but mods themselves can say whether a certain bias in actions can be attributed to few mods or to everyone in the mod team.

And frankly if you can't handle a critique of your actions you shouldn't be moderating actions of others in the first place

[ecf]

> No, it's run by a few humans.

And those humans work for HN. Hence, content moderation is run by HN.

[waboremo]

You are still incorrectly comparing. The equivalent to HN in Reddit world is a single subreddit. When you compare a single subreddit to HN, you see there aren't many differences at all, a single set of rules being applied as the mods intend.

[operatingthetan]

>a single set of rules being applied as the mods intend.

Perhaps you haven't had as much moderator interaction as I have, but this is not the case whatsoever. Some subs will have 30-100 mods and each will apply the rules differently per their own interests or pet peeves.

[TeMPOraL]

Well, then let's qualify HN as a mid-sized subreddit with a mostly well-behaved subscriber group and bunch of tricks (such as non-trendy UI) that reduce moderation load, making it possible for a single person to handle it.

Point being, comparing HN to Reddit is a category error; HN is in the same class as subreddits. This is less about HN and more about Reddit itself: Reddit is not a community, it's a network of communities on a common platform. Each subreddit is its own reality.

[bartread]

Sure, except that's not actually the case at all.

I don't know if dang is the only HN moderator, but even if he's not I've never seen any evidence of anyone in that role here just capriciously remove or lock discussions in a way that's absolutely commonplace on Reddit.

There are subs on Reddit that I simply no longer engage with because I'm sick of dimwit edgelord mods locking discussions whilst I'm typing out a contribution even though there's nothing wrong with either the original post or the discussion. There's no sense of consistency in the way the sub rules are applied in each of those subs.

A few weeks ago on the CasualUK subreddit one of the mods went off the deep end and started hurling insults left, right, and centre, and banning people simply for politely calling out their poor behaviour. That mod's conduct absolutely violated the rules of both the sub and Reddit as a whole. It's not OK and, again, it wouldn't happen here.

[strken]

It would be interesting if a subreddit actually paid its frontline moderation staff, and hired them via a board that didn't have mod responsibilities itself. I wonder if any of them have tried?

[Sebb767]

Most importantly: HN is moderated by payed moderators, which are hired and selected to do a good job here. They are still humans and fallible, obviously, but it's a far cry from "random dude that started a community in his free time".

[riffic]

paid

there's a great reddit bot that explains that "payed" is a sort of nautical term.

[favaq]

That's not correct. Users can "moderate" by flagging comments, which hides them. dang rarely undoes a flag.

[operatingthetan]

Sure, but that further bolsters my point that HN is in fact different.