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Thank you to dang and sctb

950 points sama | 10 comments | 22 Nov 18 20:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom

Dan and Scott do an incredible amount of work behind the scenes to make Hacker News what it is. I have never met two more thoughtful community stewards. They usually get more hate than thanks, which they deal with cheerfully. This community means a lot to a lot of people.

So today I wanted to say thanks, on behalf of the HN community.

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sudosteph ◴[22 Nov 18 21:47 UTC] No.18512782[source]▶
dang really is a great moderator. He's got a good eye for spotting problematic behavior, and a level head for dealing with it. He's set me straight in the past, and I'm glad he did. The way he remains both professional and empathetic, even when dealing with sensitive users and topics, really exudes the best of hacker news ethos. Here's to you, dang!
replies(1): >>18513530 #
chris_wot[dead post] ◴[23 Nov 18 00:32 UTC] No.18513530[source]▶
Can't say I've experienced this, he treated me pretty badly in the past. Most times he is OK though.

By all means downvote me, btw. This backslapping post on the front page only wants to hear about how amazing the mods are, so the bias is pretty evident.

1. danso ◴[23 Nov 18 01:41 UTC] No.18513785{3}[source]▶
I didn't downvote but I think others might have because you leveled an allegation so vague as to be irrefutable. I think dang has been a great mod and have only seen the interactions that involve me, or have been upvoted. Doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in seeing substantive criticism from those who've experienced differently.
replies(2): >>18513973 #>>18515284 #
2. chris_wot ◴[23 Nov 18 02:37 UTC] No.18513973[source]▶
It’s kind of hard to do. Almost certainly dang or another mod would rate limit or shadow ban me.

It’s their site to do as they will, but it strikes me as interesting that they are held up as saints when they are anything but. Note that I’m not saying they are monsters either, but as someone on the receiving end of dang’s conduct I personally cannot agree with this post. It’s not like they are really accountable for their actions.

replies(3): >>18514125 #>>18514499 #>>18514612 #
3. bhengaij ◴[23 Nov 18 03:24 UTC] No.18514125[source]▶
They're just regular mods. On a toxic one-up community. I'd like then to at least have a courtesy of mentioning when someone is (shadow) banned.
replies(2): >>18514599 #>>18514745 #
4. girvo ◴[23 Nov 18 05:13 UTC] No.18514499[source]▶
> Almost certainly dang or another mod would rate limit or shadow ban me.

See that's where you lose me, I'm afraid. This is why it's vague to the point of being irrefutable.

5. ◴[23 Nov 18 05:42 UTC] No.18514599{3}[source]▶
6. ◴[23 Nov 18 05:45 UTC] No.18514612[source]▶
7. reitanqild ◴[23 Nov 18 06:27 UTC] No.18514745{3}[source]▶
I think they don't shadow ban people anymore since sometime after pg left.

I am somewhat rate limited it seems for reasons but I won't complain. I'm possibly more annoying than them.

replies(1): >>18515421 #
8. waterhouse ◴[23 Nov 18 09:05 UTC] No.18515284[source]▶
If there were a search engine that, say, turned up comment-pairs where dang replied to chris_wot, then it would be easy to get a sampling of their (public) interactions. I doubt any normal search engines (or even hn.algolia.com) do it. (And both posters are active enough that going through history is impractical. BTW, as one data point, 14 of dang's last 36 comments contain the word "please".) Perhaps someone has a database of HN comments that could be queried in such a way. But yeah, in the absence of links or a pointer to such a database, it's not substantiated and so the reader's evaluation is going to depend primarily on their prior opinions.
replies(1): >>18517042 #
9. choot ◴[23 Nov 18 09:40 UTC] No.18515421{4}[source]▶
> I think they don't shadow ban people anymore since sometime after pg left.

That's false. They also take away your individual ability to post a thread or upvote. They do this silently.

replies(1): >>18520491 #
10. danso ◴[23 Nov 18 15:44 UTC] No.18517042[source]▶
It wouldn't cover situations where the mods took action or retaliated without publicly commenting. But to your question about a queryable database, such a thing exists on BigQuery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17471117

edit: apparently it's updated daily, with 18,507,035 comments as of now: https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/bigquery-public-data...