https://jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.5.0.dos.txt
Login names are often used as nicknames, pronounce[d] if possible and spelled if necessary. My wife and I met at MIT, and she still calls me "Gliss", because my login name was GLS. "Guy" sounds very weird to her.
* as a publisher or a subscriber, and to some extent even as a reader
I've been part of a brief but very positive exchange like this with dang, and it's not an exaggeration. This is part of why I still visit the site; there's a real personal touch that makes this forum what it is.
I felt stupid about a comment I'd left and thought "ugh, I should ask someone to delete this". dang responded saying it was a great comment and that I should consider keeping it as it was the kind of content he felt made HN a constructive and interesting place. I was totally caught off-guard.
Influence campaigns are an older problem, so we have many years' worth of defenses built up, although it's an arms race where the influencers also evolve.
I'm aware that I didn't answer the "how" part of your question—the trouble is that there's no secure way to do it, so everything relies on a stack of ad hoc techniques that would stop working if we published them. It's basically the old "I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you" joke. But the answer to the "if" part is yes.
That said, he has at least one macro at his disposal for expanding past threads about a topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34913653
I think this is outdated, or flat out not true.
I have had particularly sour engagements with dang specifically. I asked him to reach out to me via email and he just kept pushing the matter in public.
Pretty poor handling all around, and completely lacking inclusivity or self-awareness for a "seasoned professional." I'm glad it's daisies and roses for most of you, but some of us have not seen such kindness. Ultimately you have to ask yourself if moderation has fostered an environment of growth and evolution, or an echo chamber. In my experience I have seen more of the latter on HN, and it's concerning.
It is entirely true, as of a couple of weeks ago.
I hear you that you didn't get a satisfying email response, and I'm sorry about that. It's possible that I screwed up. Actually, it's likely that I screwed up, because you're posting this some time later and it's my job not to leave people feeling this way.
Without details, though, it's impossible to say what happened. I probably wouldn't email a user who just said "email me" in a public comment. But if you wrote in to [email protected] and I didn't read or hear you or reply in a way that met your concern, then I'm sorry.
You'd think this small thread you replied to would be enough detail if you were willing to reply in the first place.
Look at my original post. Simply sharing my experience (which is on-topic). It currently sits at -3, while other comments praising moderation here are mostly positive. This is a pattern I am noticing across more than one thread, in more than one day, with more than one user. It's not an anomaly.
Replies to me are from folks lacking self-awareness, who think their experience somehow trumps or invalidates mine. Nobody is directly addressing my concerns. Just brushing them off and piling on.
You should recognize there is a growing majority at HN who perpetuate this "SV" flavor of culture, and you should recognize that your inability to scale efficiently is detrimental to the long term growth of HN. Ironically, against the users most willing to help you do better, you level threats publicly and cite HN rules as if they have any relevance.
Frankly, it seems you are blissfully unaware of how much of an echo chamber exists here, or that you are directly perpetuating it. It's concerning. Flagging comments and downvotes are actively abused for censorship, and you clearly have no idea how to fix it. You think the system is working, what if it has always been horribly broken...?
It's even more concerning that seemingly every other member at HN gets white glove treatment, yet I am still wondering when I will be treated like a human by the staff.
I’m not really active online for the majority of my usage of sites like this.
I’m just here for the content.
Rarely I will submit something interesting I come across but over the years I’ve noticed the cycles of the same sites and the same content.
The “Dead Internet Theory” really does resonate with me. I’ve been browsing HN since ‘06 when Tesla was just the weird roadster maker.
Just look at how popular my original comment is. There's clearly a culture lean here and I'm not going to feed into it.
I'm going to call it out and laugh when I'm proven right.
They're kind enough to respond when time allows if it ain't urgent
only good words from my side for Dan G.
They have mine too. Courtesy goes both ways.
> only good words from my side for Dan G.
I don't give a shit. The more people that say everything is hunky-dory, the more I am validated that the echo chamber often gangs up on minority opinions here.
Specific mention of a custom browser extension: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30374040#30378776
My account was penalized but I don't have any understanding over the nature of penalties or the conditions under which penalized status is lifted, if ever.
You don't often see de-escalation on the internet. Especially between moderator and user when they could just as easily disappear you from the site. It works well.
> The site’s real-life moderators are Daniel Gackle and Scott Bell, two wildly polite old friends. […] Gackle and Bell, by contrast, practice a personal, focussed, and slow approach to moderation, which they see as a conversational act. They treat their community like an encounter group or Esalen workshop; often, they correspond with individual Hacker News readers over e-mail, coaching and encouraging them in long, heartfelt exchanges.