[tomhow]

That comment was posted barely a half hour ago and nobody has flagged it yet. What does it have to with "double standard moderation practices that are left unmoderated and even praised?"

We can't act on things that the community doesn't tell us about. Almost always, when people point to comments that are egregious but still live as evidence that the moderators approve of them, the reality is that we didn't see them. And a major reason for that is that political flamewar is now such a big part the activity on HN that our small team can't ever see all the comments that are flagged.

But please don't try to use other people's transgressions as an excuse for your own. That's an age-old trick that doesn't work well here.

If you are sincere about being a positive contributor to this community, you can easily show that by making an effort to observe the guidelines. You could also make good-faith efforts to hold other community members to high standards by flagging comments, and if you see anything that's particularly egregious, emailing us.

Edit: you added to your comment after I submitted mine, so I'll add a further response.

We don't care about what side you're arguing for. Often we don't know; we don't have time to figure out what each commentator in a flamewar is on about. The topic of bias has been hurled at HN for as long as it's existed. Dan has an ever-growing list of the complaints we get from each side characterising us as being biased towards the other side [1].

We have guidelines for a reason, which is that if people fill their comments with inflammatory rhetoric, the emotional energy that triggers is what dominates people's perception of the discussion, rather than the substance of the points people are trying to get across.

If you have points to make that have substance, and I know that you do, you need to find a way to get them across without being inflammatory, otherwise it's a waste of everyone's time.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870

[FirmwareBurner]

>nobody has flagged it yet[..]We can't act on things that the community doesn't tell us about.

Why do you think that is? Is it not a reflection of the userbase bias? Where comments get flagged not based on rules but based on which political side they are targeting?

>You could also make good-faith efforts to hold other community members to high standards by flagging comments

Doesn't help when others vouch for them to support their ideology.

>We don't care about what side you're arguing for.

You don't, but your userbase does. And your moderation is based on what your userbase flags. So you moderation 100% reflects the bias of the community, hence the biased enforcement of your rules.

Answer me why is my comment here is flagged?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44240839

[tomhow]

> Why do you think that is? Is it not a reflection of the userbase bias? Where comments get flagged not based on rules but based on which political side they are targeting?

That comment was a breach of the guidelines but it almost always takes longer than half an hour for a comment to be flagged, and for us to see it, especially on a thread that's over a day old that barely anybody is looking at anymore.

You could flag it yourself. The fact that you didn't makes it seem more like you're trying to prove a point about bias rather than doing your part to support the health of the community.

> Doesn't help when others vouch for them to support their ideology.

People who abuse vouching privileges can have those privileges revoked – if we know about it. Again, when you see this, email us.

The site has all kinds of mechanisms and norms to prevent abuse and dysfunction, but they can only work if people are sincere about making the site better rather than being at war with it.

Edit: Adding this in reply to your addition:

> Answer me why is my comment here is flagged?

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44240839

These parts break the guidelines against assuming bad faith and fulminating:

Bad faith argument.

I've mostly seen change for the sake of change, wrapped in fluffy artsy BS jargon, making it sound like each UI change is the second coming of Christ and fixes world hunger.

They're not especially egregious but when you develop a reputation for breaking the guidelines, your comments are going to attract more flags, and also trigger more complaints made privately to us via email.

We received emails complaining about your comments, including this one, from people who have a good track record of supporting the community and not being politically partisan.

When we receive these kinds of complaints, nobody is complaining about your politics, just about your inflammatory style and guidelines breaches.

[FirmwareBurner]

>The fact that you didn't

Mate, I don't have time to flag all comments that I find inflammatory, especially when I flagged many comments in the past and nothing happened to them, so what's the point? I flagged this one after and the comment was still there. So why are you throwing the blame on me? Why didn't you remove that comment after I pointed it out?

> Again, when you see this, email us.

Mate please, be serious, me and most normal people have better things to do with our time than go full Karen "I want to talk to the manager" mode, and go to such lengths like emailing HN mods about other peoples' comments. Downvotes and flags are enough for me.

The fact that there are people here who have the time to send you emails about my comments that don't break the rules, just because they're butthurt, says something about those users (unemployed, terminally online, mentally unstable on SSRIs, social and politically activists, etc). Normal, employed people with healthy social lives don't send mod emails about comments they don't like on internet. WTH?

>These parts break the guidelines against assuming bad faith

Then by that yardstick, isn't the comment I was replying too also in bad faith, just like I pointed out initially? Since he was using Android 2 to justify that Android 16 is the superior UI. And I replied that's in bad faith since the alternative to Android 16 shitty UI is not going back to Android 2 to make Android 16 look good, but version 10 is a good counter to that of why version 16 is bad. How is my comment in bad faith and that one not?

>fulminating

Why was it fulminating? Was it any more than the rest of comments everyone on HN? That was just criticism of Android's UI evolution. Since when is criticism of something with arguments considered "fulminating"? Please explain, I'm genuinely curious. Because otherwise this so called rule break of mine in this case feels blatantly discriminatory and double standards.

>you're going to get more flags, and complaints made about you

Bro, you're straight up admitting to biased moderation here. That the community doing the flagging cares more about WHO is saying something rather than WHAT is being said. How can you talk about free speech and fair moderation with a straight face in this case?

Please, answer me these questions.

[tomhow]

When each reply gets longer and longer it's a sign there's less and less chance of finding common ground. I'll try to make this one brief:

- It takes two minutes to write an email pointing out an egregious comment or bad actor.

- People are flagging and complaining about your comments because they are breaking the guidelines, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe you're not aware of it due to a cultural disconnect. If that's the case, I'm sorry you're in that position but I encourage you to take the feedback and work with us to come into alignment with the community. But it's not about your politics, it's all to do with your inflammatory style of commenting.

- I admitted no such bias; I said that your comments have a pattern of breaking the guidelines, including the ones people are complaining about, and when your comments consistently break the guidelines you will inevitably get less patience from everyone than if you lapse occasionally.

Please stop this war. We're not trying to oppress you. We want your point of view to be fairly represented, but that can only happen if you make an effort to play by same rules that everyone else is expected to follow.

[FirmwareBurner]

I wrote a long comment before just to explain you my thought process in detail so you know that I'm here for good faith debates, not to break rules, but OK, I'll make it short for you now: You still haven't explained why my comment on the Android topic I was replying to is in bad faith but the on I replied to isn't, when I explained you in detail why it is, by the same yardstick you used to judge my comment?

You keep saying it's not you who decides what's right and wrong, that it's the users who decide based on the rules by flagging. Then why am I wrong with my assertion that then it's the rule of the mob who decides what is right and what is wrong, and not the rules, since there's obviously no impartial judge here, just the angry mob which is anything but impartial and unbiased, since just like in voting at elections, people don't vote based on facts and logic, but based on feelings and tribalism over a person(see US election results).

So if people want to flag bomb a certain user because of beef and not facts, they will, and instead of giving me an unbiased explanation on why the comment I was replying to was not breaking the rules like you say mine was, you avoid the topic and parrot some boy scout speech on the honesty and integrity of the userbase, when I show you the hypocrisy of that and ask for an exact explanations. If you don't want to explain me why that comment wasn't breaking the rules but somehow mine was, that's fine, just don't have the audacity to piss on me and tell me it's raining.

[tomhow]

If you're asking why this comment [1] wasn't flagged: no users flagged it, because it doesn't break the guidelines. It's not inflammatory. It doesn't set off a flamewar. It doesn't fulminate. It just raises a question, for people to respond to. It got some upvotes and some downvotes and some replies, most of which were fine. Yours was the only one that was inflammatory and broke the guidelines. Not egregiously, but enough, given your recent patterns.

> You keep saying it's not you who decides what's right and wrong, that it's the users who decide based on the rules by flagging

I think this is a misunderstanding. We moderators don't (can't) make judgements about accuracy or truthfulness of comments. All we can do is determine if a comment breaks the guidelines. Comments should only be flagged by users if they break the guidelines. Our enforcement of the guidelines is independent of the accuracy of the comment's content or its ideology.

If a comment of yours is flagged for any reason other than guidelines breaches, you're within your rights to protest. But given your conduct even in this subthread with me, in which your comments continue to be full of guidelines breaches, it seems you're not able to gauge whether your comments are within the guidelines or not.

It's going to keep being a problem if you're not able to correct that.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44240808

[throw10920]

Your comment has a lot of misunderstandings, but here's the biggest one:

> Then by that yardstick, isn't the comment I was replying too also in bad faith, just like I pointed out initially?

No, it isn't. First, it's completely invalid to say "by that yardstick" - you're comparing completely different things that have no bearing on each other. Second, no, there's zero evidence that the comment you replied to was in bad faith.

The definition of a bad faith argument is one that in inauthentic, and that the argument-maker doesn't actually believe in themselves. Factually, there's no evidence to support your accusation that that comment by @butlike was in bad faith - they didn't make any self-contradictory statements in their comment, nor did they post a single other comment in that whole thread, nor did they say that would indicate that they were acting anything but genuinely.

And, factually, you were breaking the guidelines by assuming bad faith about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44240808.

When challenged on it in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44244578, you said:

> I assumed good faith, but then I used critical thinking and decided it's in bad faith then explained why. You don't need to agree with me on this.

This has three falsehoods in it. First, you did not assume good faith - you assumed bad faith, because there was zero evidence to support the idea that it was in bad faith. Second, you didn't use critical thinking - again, because there was no evidence to support that belief. Third, you did not explain why the comment was in bad faith - you explained why you disagreed with it, indicating that you don't understand the difference between disagreeing with someone's statements, and them being in bad faith (which is further reinforced in the above when you say "And I replied that's in bad faith since the alternative to Android 16 shitty UI is not going back to Android 2 to make Android 16 look good" - no, that's literally not what "bad faith" means).

Finally, more generally, beyond the falsehoods and fallacies that you've been making, you're also acting extremely abrasively, in ways that break the guidelines and that antagonize other users.

The theme of HN is intellectual curiosity. The way that you've been acting is the exact opposite of that.