FWIW, I don't read any of your comments as wanting preferential treatment from moderators.

Edit (sorry, got interrupted while writing this) - and I particularly appreciate the even keel of your comments in this thread, when it would be so easy to get thrown off balance by the sharp elbows of others. It's clear that you've worked at developing a reflective rather than reflexive style [1]. I wish we could convince/teach more users to do this.

I also agree that there is an issue with this place coming across as unwelcoming in a number of important respects, including (the topic of this thread) to women. My sense is that it has been changing, but slowly. If you have any ideas about how to encourage that, I'd love to hear them.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

@tptacek and I discussed this a bit downthread. I’m not an expert in community moderation and I’ve seen a lot of them go from decent to terrible very quick, so I know roughly how much effort it takes to prevent that. I do think it’s improving, and I think slow is the only way it ever improves.

I think a lot of women see terrible stuff come up here either in comments or on the front page and assume (wrongly) that the community as a whole is ok with it, before it ends up flagkilled by everyone else and often you will come into the thread and warn them if it’s particularly bad. I know I’ve had a good few “why the FUCK is this garbage on the front page” reactions over the years, but those submissions inevitably end up flagged too.

I do recall being warned by you for responding in kind to somebody writing inflammatory stuff or acting in bad faith, and this is a reaction I have had to learn to control as a result. That doesn’t feel great, because in the moment it feels like being scolded for hitting back from a position of less power, and this happens a lot to minorities in tech. However, over time I’ve learned that there’s a discursive norm against flamey stuff in general, and that this norm prevents the conversation from being drowned in pile-ons about one person’s bad behavior, which of course ends up Streisanding bad comments too. HN seems like one of the few places where “don’t feed the troll” is actually sensible advice, because there is sufficient enforcement against trolls (community based and explicit moderation) that they aren’t allowed to fester and multiply.

I think a lot of women are jaded and burnt out from having to deal with ugly comments and bad actors in less-well-moderated areas of the web where the community sentiment is actually against us participating. I know it was really difficult for me to learn to set aside my gut reaction and ignore the ugly bits, but I did it because I believed it would be ultimately worth it. It’s a question of trust, right? People have to trust that this space is actually different, that misogynistic pot-stirring and verbal abuse aren’t actually welcome, and that they will be treated as equals. These are depressingly common and even quotidian almost everywhere else, which is I think what builds the reputation.

Yes to all this. I am a woman who has been online since 1989. For me, what has to happen is not so much moderation difference but about the inner work. Understanding that categories gender and race are always at play, and putting things in that context. That is what we as women or bipoc _have_ to do. My bad experiences are not rages and threats to rape me (that I can place in the category of ridiculous) but these get all the focus. For me it is the 1000s of times I have something to add but when I do, because it is from my gendered perspective, it is considered outside the field of the conversation. The technical term for this is the differend.

> That's easy: I don't want to participate in spaces where religious white nationalists feel safe,

As a white, religious person, - but not a nationalist: I always felt safe on HN and I hope most HNers are OK with that as long as I play by the rules?

Why shouldn't everyone feel safe as long as they play by the rules?

Edit: I'm not hurt. I'm hoping to get a better worded explanation from you :-)

Edit 2: The reason why I ask is because sentence is quite absurd and cannot be what you mean. Just try to imagine someone saying: "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe," here on HN.

You are arguing in bad faith. Obviously one should be made welcome no matter whether they're white, a nationalist, religious, or all of these, but it should be easy enough to infer from context that this is not what the parent comment was about. It is about making clear that this welcome does not extend toward making other groups feel unwelcome, that is, toward prioritizing that welcome over others.

> You are arguing in bad faith.

I'm not. I also read and re-read it too.

One possible explanation could be that I'm not a native speaker.

However if anyone wrote: "I don't want to participate in spaces where atheistic colored globalists feel safe," I'd flag it instantly as I originally did with this before I unflagged it and asked instead because while I think some kind of nazi crap could write that I don't think that is what she means.

Edit: also I think it is bad for the conversation to state as fact that I argue in bad faith. If you'd be kind enough to rewrite that I'll also try to remove this edit.

It's possible you interpreted this differently than it was intended as a non-native speaker. In case that's true, I'll note that rather than referring to people who are "religious", "white", or "nationalist", the OP was likely referring to people who are "religious" and "white nationalist". White nationalists are people who want to establish a white ethnostate, and typically this label is adopted by white supremacists who want to leave behind the "white supremacist" label but maintain the same ideology.

What I meant was that white nationalists feeling safe in a space (particularly them feeling safe expressing white nationalist views) is a decent heuristic for that space being poorly moderated or of poor quality overall. At the very least I’m not interested in the content of that space and I find white nationalists repugnant.

Just for clarity's sake: I spent a year monitoring HN (somewhat primitively, but with automation) for white nationalist content, and I stopped because it's become increasingly clear that the site itself finds white nationalism repugnant.

Though it's not explicitly stated in the guidelines (the guidelines would be long indeed if they had to state every pathology that emerges on an Internet message board), it's abundantly clear from the "informal moderation log" (the feed of comments from 'dang) that overt appeals to racial, national, or religious superiority are against the site rules. People are routinely banned for this stuff.

It's also just pretty clear that the community on the site has much less patience for racism and misogyny than the rap it gets on Twitter (which is an objectively worse site, for whatever that's worth). The real reason monitoring for white nationalism got boring is that practically every comment I'd catch would get modded down and flagged. I used to report things to Dan when I saw them, but I was batting less than .200 on reporting things that weren't flagged by the time Dan saw them.

What's problematic about evaluating the site --- and you don't have this problem, because you're a regular, but lots of other people do --- is it can be extraordinarily bad if you snapshot it at the wrong time. Anyone can join! Without a credit card or a phone number! They can post whatever nonsense they want! You have to watch the site in action over the course of hours to see what the community actually thinks about something. That's plenty of time to make an effective Orange Site Dunk on Twitter.

I don't believe the status quo is really acceptable, and there must be room to improve it. But it's better than a lot of people think it is.

> I don't believe the status quo is really acceptable, and there must be room to improve it. But it's better than a lot of people think it is.

This is basically my position. I have a hard time convincing others of it because of the reputation, though. It’s been an invaluable space for me in learning from people like you posting and I have no doubt that I have gained a significant amount of social savvy and also technological sophistication in using the site. I have trouble thinking of specific ways that it could be improved, specifically because of what you mention.

It's hard! Like, I don't think it's reasonable to say "the site needs 6 more Dans" because it's hard enough to find one Dan that no other site like HN has managed to accomplish it.

I appreciate you sticking through it, though. I know this place can get hard to take.

Part of it is a flip side of hiding comment scores. I think it's helped, but it also means that horrible comments that are too young to have been modded down yet are just as prominent as comments that the community agrees with. (If not more, due to the comment-order-semi-randomizer.)

One thing I have noticed in that vein is that it's impossible to tell whether a particular thread of comments is representative of a commonly held viewpoint, or if it's one commenter with an axe to grind. And if it's one commenter, they may have an entirely valid axe to grind! And then, even if it is valid, that axe may be totally off-topic for the post and dominate the conversation, retreading tired old ground and sucking up all the air in the room for interesting, relevant, new conversation. (Collapsable threading helps a lot though.)

Check the post time. If it's only a few minutes old, it's likely it just hasn't been seen by other people yet.

You'd be a good hitter batting .200 in the majors. I don't think reporting an additional 2 egregious comments for every 8 that have that have already been flagged, downvoted, and / or otherwise dealt with is a loss. Unless it's just a matter of "if I wait a little longer, these will get taken care of, too," then I would say continuing your efforts is worthwhile.

You mean, like, compared to a random person picked off the street, right.

After a little research, it seems that "good" is a bit of a stretch. But, the current median batting average in MLB is .248, so you're not really that far off. And, I think it's fair to say that given your other contributions to HN, .200 is enough to be above the "Mendoza line." ;)

Maybe HN is anti-white-nationalism, but there's definitely a lot of ignorance about how the people here are impacting the system. For example look at the comments on this article that talked about paying for the news:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23372570

This kind of ignorance is going to end up making society a worse place. It's not white nationalism, but it's not a lot better either.

Being wrong about journalism is in fact a lot better than being a white nationalist.

Totally agreed.

Perhaps because you are not a native speaker you might not know, but "white nationalist" is basically the polite term for Nazis(and other groups with similar beliefs).

Thanks a lot.

I think if that's what people mean they should just say nazi.

Most of us (and I am definitely in that group) can agree on disliking/hating nazis.

In my opinion there's no reason to mix skin color or religion into this.

Again, thanks. Certain American cultural norms aren't obvious to me.

It's not an American cultural norm. It's just English grammar.

Things which are written as compounds in other languages often have a space in English, and English does not distinguish between word classes so that Noun-Noun compounds and Adjective-Noun phrases are ambiguous.

But if you hear “white nationalism” five times, when you hear “white nationalist” you don't hear it compositionally as “(white) (nationalist)” but as “(white nation)alist” - someone who advocates for a white nation.

“White nationalism” is a word. It has a different meaning than Nazism in my experience, so calling for substitution would be wrong. For instance, a person could support a multi-party white nationalist pseudo-democracy like the US during slavery. But nazism is going to be a form of dictatorship.

Based on this (actually enlightening, thanks) I have a new idea of what it meant had it been written in a more Germam way:

(religious whitenation-alism)[0]

That's kind of unfortunate because I read it as just the opposite of:

non-religious colored globalists

In hindsight it is possible to see, but right there and then it seemed obvious, and I guess we should come up with a better term.

Also, for what it is worth: I might have been able to catch that if "religious" hadn't been thrown in there.

> “White nationalism” is a word. It has a different meaning than Nazism in my experience, so calling for substitution would be wrong.

Good point.

We could need some clear words and definitions for this as I'm fairly convinced I'm not the only one to misunderstand the wording, kind of like a DSL for discussing bad ideas.

A positive side effect of this whole thing is that I am fairly certain I actually got to feel in my body what it feels like to be triggered :-D

If I should ask certain other people here to learn something from this thing it would be to be precise, and to not alienate people for no good reason, because I am fairly certain a number of people here would say I was dog-whisteling or something to that effect while I was legitimately confused.

[0]: Although when white-nation-alism (to be very clear) becomes religious about itself I think it is some form of nazism.

>However, in my years of being here, I had never read this piece before, and I frequently feel pretty alone as a woman when there are comments that make me uncomfortable. It is just nice to know that there are other women in the space who share my experience, and I wish there was something like a women HNers social group or something, I guess.

i would like to point out that there are some men that are made uncomfortable by comments that echo masculinity here as well and criticisms from such men never get much traction either. so it'd be nice if there were space (a space or just space) on HN for someone that wishes question the culture and all of the "high-minded" structure. r/twox is a good model - predominantly patronized by women but welcoming of good faith discussion from other genders as well.

I didn’t realize r/twox allowed trans women; the name has always made me a bit skeptical because rhetoric about chromosomes is so common amongst transphobes.

i guess you're right it isn't completely transparent but i think they are welcome

https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/fe6y66/im_...

Yeah, I noticed. Unfortunate early choice of name.

>You've just unintentionally identified the exact problem. You think my response was somehow "sexist" or hostile. I don't. I do think it mostly contains critical thought. If you think my comment should be censored, you've lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned.

You'll notice I didn't say any of the things of which you accuse me, nor do I think them (yet).

> If you care enough about karma to brag about it, you probably are a terrible contributor to HN anyway.

I'm confident about what this situation says about me and my contributions here and feel no need to defend myself further.