Hacker News Guidelines

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

This is one of the more serious pain points I notice (thankfully only occasionally).

Obviously getting some visibility is important for people launching new projects. Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be motivated by commercial rather than technical reasons.

A shallow article written in bad faith only deserves a shallow dismissal.

Don't force me to fight an asymmetric warfare battle against malicious authors to participate.

The issue isn't justice, it's thread quality.

I'm coming to appreciate this view increasingly, why HN chooses to align itself this way, and the difficulty and precariousness with which that balance is attained.

I'll still say that the instances of HN moderation with which I have the greatest reservations tend to resemble what antisthenes describes above: poorly-conceived articles which would themselves be legitimately flagged and admonished if posted as HN comments to which the rather understandably heated or snippy response instead draws moderator action.

And yes, HN mods can't read everything or be everywhere,[1] so moderation is inconsistent, though I know what it strives toward.

And I can often identify how a response might have been improved or what elements run aground on HN's policies. I'm not convinced that the occasional exception or leniency would utterly wreck the ship (though having seen what, in dang's words things that strongly encourage that a "thread will lose its mind"[2] there's some reason for caution). But in a world where, to borrow from Tim Minchin, there's frequently a contingent which "keeps firing off clichés with startling precision like a sniper using bollocks for ammunition", diplomacy dikes do on occasion break.[3]

And tone-policing that, particularly unilaterally, strikes me as a greater wrong.

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Notes:

1. Which you've noted, 2 days ago <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37225175> and eight years ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9979719>. Another HN perennial...

2. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176686> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17689715>.

3. Tim Minchin, "Storm" (2009), <https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Tim-Minchin/Storm>. Animated video: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U> and live performance: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=KtYkyB35zkk>.

I've come around to the view that the randomness of enforcement (of any law or norm) can itself be a quite effective force multiplier at causing people to be on better behavior. It's the part that always seems unjust to someone; but then, if justice isn't the primary issue, it's a fair play. At least it's not selective enforcement.

There is that.

And though I suspect dang would respond that everyone sees bias against their own specific viewpoint, this particular pattern seems persistent, plays into well-established truth-to-power dynamics (where truth is disadvantaged), and specifically as concerns policy, has been repeatedly defended by dang.

Put another way, HN's alignment is to curiosity and discussion rather than truth or fairness. I've already touched on many of the considerations that factor into this above, and why I remain unconvinced by those arguments.

FWIW, the things I've been warned, banned, and hell-banned for on this site have never struck me as consistent enough in their application that I could discern a pattern other than the fact that I'm usually drunk and belligerent when I write them. The fact that they happen to be railing against powers that be isn't too unusual; I would have quit the site if I thought I couldn't speak my mind, as long as I speak it in ways that contribute to the conversation and aren't just throwing grenades. Don't get me wrong, I love intelligent flame wars. But on reflection, I actually more appreciate the components of a good flame war that fall into the discussion category rather than the truth paradigm. At least, y'know, there's a time and place, and there are well-defined rules. If a site says it's interested in X and you're interested in Y, at least they've made their preferences clear. In a free market they survive or they don't. I think that imagining that it's lesser to seek curiosity/discussion (which are fairly concrete, defined parameters) than to seek truth/fairness (and here we get into a kind of Romantic vs Enlightenment argument as to whether these words align with particular actions) is to try to stake a higher ground on vague claims of higher "morality" which some might agree with, others not so much, but which don't ultimately aid in the day-to-day function of moderation unless someone decides what "truth" is. Personally I'd rather take the beating of being banned for saying something rude or unhelpful than I would take a beating on a site where someone gets to decide what's true or fair.