Tell HN: Political Detox Week – No politics on HN for one week

This is one of those unintended consequences that gobsmack me any time we try out some new idea here. I'm sure anyone who deals with large internet communities has the same experience. The funny thing is that it's always obvious that it was bound to come up, in retrospect—just never beforehand. It's like the unveiling of the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel: hidden in plain view every time.

I don't know if I can respond in a way that satisfies you, but let me try. First, Clinton and Trump stories are equally penalized on HN. Second, it always seems like HN is biased against whatever views you personally hold, not because it is, but because the community is divided and we're biased to notice the things we dislike, and that offend us, more than the ones that don't. Your use of the word "flagrantly" is an instance of this. Why do the things you listed seem flagrant while others do not? Because they're mirroring your own preferences. (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13083111 and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=... for more on this if you want.)

I guarantee you that the people who feel oppositely to you about X, Y, Z issues feel like their side is flagrantly the underdog in the same fights. This is one of the dynamics behind why political fights are so toxic to begin with.

> Either way, this is a site full of people skilled at reading between the lines

Read my lines, please! Just don't imagine lines, then imagine subtexts between them, and then read the imaginary subtext. Instead, ask. We're happy to explain what's going on—what's actually, really going on, as best we understand it.

Say if this were announced the day before the election, regardless of the outcome, with a hold period of say a month.

No matter who you favor right now, political discussion helps nobody. The outgoing President can't do anything much, and the incoming President can't do anything much either. Nothing you read in the next two months is realistically going to lead to you having a meaningful impact on anything, more than likely.

I meant stating prior to the outcome of the election that after the election, regardless of the outcome, there would be an N-day moratorium on political discussions to allow the community to decompress. Maybe even start it a day after the election as obviously it'd be the news of the day on election day + 1.

I'm of the opinion that, had HN banned political threads for a month after Prop 8, Eich would've still been in charge of the Mozilla Corporation. Which, I guess, means I view HN as a kingmaker.

EDIT: Modified post to be less flamebaity. I was genuinely interested in discussing HN's role in previous political stories.

Can't help you there. We don't have anything like that degree of finesse in planning.

The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay that much attention to other stuff, and when we think something is a good idea and finally get around to it, we do it. About the only thought that went into political timing was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13098321.

> The way it works is, we do our job and think about it a lot, and don't pay that much attention to other stuff, and when we think something is a good idea and finally get around to it, we do it.

I do sincerely believe the italicized last part.

I also suspect that nobody on the HN mod team thought that Trump would actually win. It was such a far off concept that planning for it and the ensuing gloating / division / trolling would have been laughable. If they did, they would have put more thought into stating this type of thing in advance as I'm pretty sure it's been suggested more than once over the past few months.

I was going to send this in an email to you ages ago, but this is as good a place as any, I guess.

I'm sure you've seen this account many times, but I intentionally post unpopular opinions here, often to actively game upvotes/downvotes. Sometimes, I post the exact opposite opinion that I hold in meatspace. Occassionally I accidentially stumble on something new (who knew wal-mart was so popular on HN?[0]), and proceed to extend a conversation to see how much karma I will actively lose. I liken it to game testing, where one is encouraged to play incorrectly in order to identify bugs in a program.

I have a pretty good understanding of the political pulse of HN as a result. The HN of 2016 overwhelmingly skews California Liberal, and often includes much of the identity politics. If you even hint at opposing gay rights (which, as an LGBTQ* is obviously not my position), you will be downvote-bombed. In this thread I have been downvoted for making a pro-Eich post. Sometimes, the retaliation for an opinion extends to downvoting my post history.

The system is incredibly easy to game for karma; just post something that largely supports the majority opinion, and contributes just enough that it isn't flagged for not providing anything to the conversation. Keep this up until you have enough karma to downvote, then work on another account. If you're judicious in keeping to the hivemind's platform, you can get a 650 karma account in less than a month (I've done it twice, though I deleted the accounts afterward). in six months, you can downvote a post you don't like to light grey in a matter of seconds.

I'm sure you've made efforts to penalize stories. Largely, you've been really good on that. However, comments are where the hivemind lives, and it can be measured in upvotes and downvotes. If a post isn't incendiary, but ends up with more downvotes than upvotes, it's safe to say this is an account of maybe not the entire site, but at least who is regularly active at the time of posting.

I completely agree with you about the toxicity of political fights, even though I hypocritically partake in them for research. I also agree that everyone believes their side is the underdog. I just don't agree that HN is "equally-biased", and I have the post history to prove it.

(yes, kissing the ass of the mods is part of the game, as it effectively stops the flow of downvotes once you intervene; However, I do mean it when I compliment how you've run the site. You've made HN worth using throughout this Eternal Septembering of redditors)

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13106730

Whereas as another participant, I see your approach as more akin to a 'griefer' than play tester. I think there is a difference between testing a pre-release game, and disrupting others who are trying to find a community in which to communally understand the world. There are some good parts that would be sad to lose, and even without deliberate misrepresentation the situation is fragile. Please be gentle with your research, and don't take for granted the resilience of the community here.

I just don't agree that HN is "equally-biased", and I have the post history to prove it.

Perhaps those of different biases are more or less likely to flag or vote? That is, could there be many here who believe more strongly in the positives of free speech, and thus are reluctant to flag comments they disagree with, such that a small number of flaggers who do not share this view have a disproportionate voice? I don't know what the vote-to-view ratio is for HN, but I'd presume it's very small, with the flag-to-view being miniscule in almost all cases.

HN is like a "release early, release often" sort of software project, which would require active testers on live code. I sincerely doubt that my sole efforts to study/game the system really made much effect overall to moderation. However, I definitely try to take your advice, and will continue to do so.

What I've found about voting/flagging is it's largely laziness, and those who take the opportunity to downvote first. Most of my posts are either downvoted within 5 minutes, or upvoted to +2 or 3, then actively downvoted to -3. There is usually a bottom on meta-moderation, though; once a post gets to -3, a post is rarely seen enough to be flagged. This goes triple for older submissions; if you make a new post on a day-old thread, even the most vitriolic and offensive post possible, you may get a 0 karma for the post. if you're unlucky. Either way your post will be near the bottom, even if +1.

I've had this account for 3 years now, and I had my first two flagged posts today, which tells you how little they are flagged.

If you're 45 minutes late to a topic, you'll likely read for a few minutes before you get to the bottom grey area. Most readers of comments flake out of a thread before they get that far. The ones that stick around usually notice the grey text, and don't downvote or flag, even if they disagree heavily with the comment. This is why it gets interesting when I experience late downvote-bombings, or someone that was so offended by what I said, that they downvote my post history; it means that someone went looking for me to retaliate. These anomalies provide a lot of information about the mean moderation activity, I think.

I'm seeing that all sides of a debate seem to have equal amounts of apathy when it comes to downvoting or flagging, and I attempt to account for that when playing.

I'm tempted to try and see how long a "Trump Supporters for Systemd" post would last in a linux thread this week, but I probably won't.

I was thinking more of the effect on me, and other users. I try to engage with people and understand why they hold the views they do. The greater the tolerance for users who are faking their viewpoints, the easier it is to fall into the habit of treating someone holding a genuine minority opinion as a troll or shill.

Other than being worried about the gaming approach, I agree with most of the rest of what you are saying.