> The more contrarian the view—the further it falls outside the community's tolerance—the more responsibility that commenter has for not triggering degenerative effects like flamewars.
This sounds similar to the “yelling fire” censorship test
it’s not that we censor discussing combustion methods, there would be no effect if everyone else was also yelling fire
But people were watching a movie and now the community’s experience has been ruined (with potential for harm), in exchange for nothing of value
Just wanted to say that it's great to have you posting your thoughts/experience on this topic. I've run a forum for almost 19 years as a near-lone moderator and so have a lot of thoughts, experience and interest in the topic. It's been frustrating when Yishan's posted (IMO, solid) thoughts on social networks and moderation and the bulk of HN's discussion can be too simple to be useful ("Reddit is trash", etc).
I particularly liked his tweet about how site/network owners just wish everyone would be friendly and have great discussions.
People always reach immediately for the conclusion that their controversial-opinion comments are getting moderated because people dislike their controversial opinion—either because of groupthink in the community or because the admins are hostile to their views. Most of the time, though, they've larded their comments pre-emptively with some sort of hostility, snark, name-calling, or other aggression—no doubt because they expect to be opposed and want to make it clear they already know that, don't care what the sheeple think, and so on.
Much of the response to those comments is actually a product of those secondary mixins. Forgive the gross analogy, but it's as if someone serves a shit milkshake and when it's rejected, say, "you just hate dairy products" or "this community is so biased against milkshakes".
If you start instead from the principle that the value of a comment is the expected value of the subthread it forms the root of [1], then a commenter is responsible for the effects of their comments [2] – or at least the predictable effects. From that it follows that there's a greater burden on the commenter who's expressing a contrarian view [3]. The more contrarian the view—the further it falls outside the community's tolerance—the more responsibility that commenter has for not triggering degenerative effects like flamewars.
This may be counterintuitive, because we're used to thinking in terms of atomic individual responsibility, but it's a model that actually works. Threads are molecules, not atoms—they're a cocreation, like one of those drawing games where each person fills in part of a shared picture [4], or like a dance—people respond to the other's movements. A good dancer takes the other(s) into account.
It may also seem unfair that the one with the more contrarian view is more responsible for what happens—especially because they're already under greater pressure than the one whose views agree with the surround. But fair or not, this is the way that communication works. If you're trying to deliver challenging information to someone, you have to take the listener into account—you have to regulate what you say by what that person is capable to hear and to tolerate. Otherwise you're predictably going to dysregulate them and ruin the conversation.
[editing...]
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[4[ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226