Re:Analyzing HN moderation and censorship
by dang on Friday October 20, 2017 @02:02PM
(#15517852)
I took a look at that along with the reply we detached, which was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15086980, and it seems to me a fair place to draw the line. The original comment was predominantly thoughtful while the detached comment was predominantly flamey.
These calls are somewhat arbitrary because when a thread degenerates, you can always trace the root of the degeneration further upthread. But moderation is more like pruning a tree than excising a tumor. The goal isn't to get rid of all malignancy—that would be too draconian and is impossible anyway. It's to detach the bulk of unwanted growth.
People can reasonably differ about individual cases, but the principle here ought to be pretty solid for anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and wants to use the site as intended.
These calls are somewhat arbitrary because when a thread degenerates, you can always trace the root of the degeneration further upthread. But moderation is more like pruning a tree than excising a tumor. The goal isn't to get rid of all malignancy—that would be too draconian and is impossible anyway. It's to detach the bulk of unwanted growth.
People can reasonably differ about individual cases, but the principle here ought to be pretty solid for anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and wants to use the site as intended.