Re:Chrome Is Bad
by dang on Sunday December 13, 2020 @04:21PM
(#25410404)
There are several points here—happy to respond.
> violation of the HN guidelines is the norm on HN
It happens much more than we'd prefer, but to say "the norm" is a huge exaggeration.
I understand how it can feel like the norm—it's common enough to run into frequently, and painful experiences leave a stronger imprint than pleasant ones [1]. But these false feelings of generality are dangerous because they lead to an attitude of why-bother. Current toxin levels, though bad enough to produce symptoms, at least aren't fatal. Why-bother would kill the community if it spread.
> selective, arbitrary enforcement of rules
HN moderation is inconsistent in one way but consistent in another—call them strong and weak consistency. Strong consistency would be "every post that breaks the guidelines gets moderated in the same way". That would require moderators to read all the posts, and there are far too many for that to be feasible. Weak consistency would be "when a post does get moderated, the mods do it consistently and even-handedly". That's at least possible, and what we're shooting for. We don't get everything right but we're open to hearing about and fixing our mistakes.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it [2]. (You can help by flagging it or emailing us at [email protected].)
> why was my reply flagged, but the comment I replied to, which you also cited as violating the guidelines, was not flagged?
Users flagged one more than the other. Your post violated the guidelines worse, so I don't think that was unfair.
> this whole submission seems to be a strange time to be pedantic about enforcing the guidelines
That's not how moderation works. When users break the guidelines and we see it, we ask them not to. Keep in mind that we don't necessarily read the threads in order—sometimes we do, but other times we're looking in via more random-access views. The guidelines don't change relative to the submission, so I don't see why moderation should.
> violation of the HN guidelines is the norm on HN
It happens much more than we'd prefer, but to say "the norm" is a huge exaggeration. I understand how it can feel like the norm—it's common enough to run into frequently, and painful experiences leave a stronger imprint than pleasant ones [1]. But these false feelings of generality are dangerous because they lead to an attitude of why-bother. Current toxin levels, though bad enough to produce symptoms, at least aren't fatal. Why-bother would kill the community if it spread.
> selective, arbitrary enforcement of rules
HN moderation is inconsistent in one way but consistent in another—call them strong and weak consistency. Strong consistency would be "every post that breaks the guidelines gets moderated in the same way". That would require moderators to read all the posts, and there are far too many for that to be feasible. Weak consistency would be "when a post does get moderated, the mods do it consistently and even-handedly". That's at least possible, and what we're shooting for. We don't get everything right but we're open to hearing about and fixing our mistakes.
If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it [2]. (You can help by flagging it or emailing us at [email protected].)
> why was my reply flagged, but the comment I replied to, which you also cited as violating the guidelines, was not flagged?
Users flagged one more than the other. Your post violated the guidelines worse, so I don't think that was unfair.
> this whole submission seems to be a strange time to be pedantic about enforcing the guidelines
That's not how moderation works. When users break the guidelines and we see it, we ask them not to. Keep in mind that we don't necessarily read the threads in order—sometimes we do, but other times we're looking in via more random-access views. The guidelines don't change relative to the submission, so I don't see why moderation should.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...