Response to dang: I disagree with the no-delete policy (our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them), but more importantly I refuse to leave a comment up when my ability to reply has been disabled.
>our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them
I strongly disagree with this. When you're part of a conversation your comments are critical to understanding the conversation. By having a conversation in a public space, you're allowing anyone who wants to listen in, and your comments are necessary for that. I can't tell you how frustrated I've been searching through old reddit threads in particular where the user has completely nuked their account, and the only trace of what they said is in replies. (Worst is when it's a technical issue and their comments are the only relevant search results: xkcd.com/979 where the answer has been actively removed.)
If you want to have a private conversation, please use a private medium. Otherwise you're gaining the benefit of public spaces (you can view anyone's conversation, their ideas and wisdom, and watch the development of discussions and understanding) while preventing others from gaining those same benefits.
Not only do I find it somewhat rude[1], I also think the ability to delete comments is offering a false promise to the user - if you've publicly posted something on a notable site for any length of time, there's a good chance there's a copy of it somewhere else (as has happened with this post).
[1] subject to obvious exceptions like accidentally revealing personal/private information, it being spam/off-topic, or a misunderstanding (editing with a correction is my preference though)
There’s an uncanny sameness to the point you’re making and the cartoon even without the deletion modification. Ultimately your point is about missing context (albeit through deletion). Here the missing context is when the cartoon was published. (Google tells me 2011, but there isn’t anything on the page that I can see that says so and certainly nothing in the cartoon itself.) Although the joke still works, I feel there is a subtle difference reading it in 2021 compared to if I had read it in 2011 (which I probably did).
How was it before? It would be constructive if you could point out some differences. I understand that they can be subtle and hard to discern but I would appreciate any pointers to satiate my curiosity.
I'm curious about the potential for comment bots that specifically aim to gain upvotes. Not with long comments, but with shorter more supportive "me too" comments. Target the "I can't be bothered to reply but I agree with this comment so I'll just upvote it" reader.
Edited: Nevermind, I guess HN users prefer to remain unaware of certain undocumented behavior.
To dang: I disagree with the no-delete policy (our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them), but more importantly I refuse to leave a comment up when my ability to reply has been disabled.
HN is an extremely authoritarian web forum, maintained this way solely to prop up the reputation of YC as an organization. You're not allowed to have certain opinions because it will make the platform look bad, but of course censorship goes against the core beliefs of the western world so they can't exactly be transparent about it.
The more experience I have with this site, the more I've found myself hating it. And the smugness of the users here who believe HN is the one-true-forum is the turd on top of the shitcake for me.
Oh boy - I have been here for 12 years or so, and I don't really agree with this take at all. Maybe I am biased, but I think the conversations here are more open and more frank than most (or any) other places on the internet.
The parent comment made some bold assertions with no facts (anecdotal or otherwise) to back them up. I'm not surprised that some people feel that the argument is in bad faith.
Yes, it appears that way because of the way the moderation works. Comments that HN wants to be hidden just get sent to the bottom of the comment stack, then grayed out, then hidden. You probably believe that only comments that users downvote get sent to the bottom, but no, there is a secret rating system controlled by the mods that causes certain comments to behave as if they were already downvoted. It's an opaque system that is selectively applied so as to conceal its nature.
If the system were honest and fair, the mods would have no reason to hide their behavior.
Now I have to be careful, I've posted 3 comments in the last hour and I'm running up against my rate limit since the mods have highlighted me as a troublemaker. Can't say too much exposing the secret system of moderation here, they don't like that.
This sounds like conspiracy theory stuff. There's this secret bad stuff that I know about, but you don't because "they" hide the evidence.
So, how do you know? What is your objectively verifiable evidence that this secret system exists?
Or are you just referring to the editors' ability to kill a post that they deem to be against the site guidelines? They have that power, but it's not a secret.
It's not that hard to notice, there's just no official documentation or explanation of what these mechanics are and that's the extent of how "secret" it is. I think if you search dang's comment history he mentions it a few times, and obviously if you look for anecdotes you'll find plenty of users on this platform that have been rate limited, and deprioritized on other ways to have their opinions filtered out of the conversation.
Selective moderation is also a big problem on this platform. Rules only apply to certain groups of people, basically at dang's discretion.
The biggest problem with this platform is that there is no moderation log. The mod team works in an opaque manner, making it hard to prove or disprove the claims I was making. If we could just see a list of all comments dang had deleted, and the true vote count of each comment, we could all see exactly what the mod team was doing and be confident in its fairness.
That's obviously not the case though, and HN keeps this information from us to protect their image.
Authoritarian is a bit harsh. That implies the moderators delete and ban anything that goes against a particular set of narratives. I have not seen that to be the case. There are topics and opinions that the user-base will downvote and some topics that are likely to start flame wars. In the case of down-voting, it helps to know your audience. In such cases one could just create their own forum that caters to topics that don't resonate here. I've done that for several topics and kept it entirely separated from HN. It would be unfair of me to assume I can change the acceptable use policies of a site or the reaction of its audience based on my preferences.
If I may, allow me give you one unsolicited advice I've been slowly learning through the years:
Most things in life have their downsides and shortcomings. We should strive to minimize the impact of those and instead capitalize on their strengths. Take what good you can from HN and run with it. HN is great in many ways.
I disagree. I think HN is good in some ways, but awful in many other ways so much so that it overshadows the good. Unfortunately the good can trick honest people like yourself into thinking the platform as a whole is good, but hey, you're entitled to your opinion.
Neither dang nor hu3 went over to your place, pointed a gun at your head, and forced to to hang out on a website you hate. If you think HN is awful in so many ways, vote with your feet. Go somewhere you like better. Why hang out here to complain about here?
Because I have bad impulse control, and dang won't let me delete my account :)
Apparently once you sign up for HN they have the right to keep your soul locked up here forever.
I've asked for them to delete my account or permaban me for over a year, but users just don't have rights here and that's just the mentality that dang has always had.
> Even if you send them an email, apparently they're "too backed up" to handle account deletion requests
I've searched and found no record of you emailing us. Did you mention the account name? We process these requests literally every day, so I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve with these claims.
I think it's pretty clear what I'm trying to achieve. I'm trying to get you guys to implement an account deletion button in user settings like you should have. I should not have to expose my personal email by contacting you in order to do so. How would you even know the request was legit? I have no email associated with my account.
There are many other ways to establish that someone owns an account.
"Trying to get you guys" to do something that we've explained in the FAQ that we don't do and why, is off topic, and repeatedly posting the same complaints and false claims in the threads is trolling. Please knock it off. If you don't like how HN works, you needn't use it. It's just an internet forum.
It's not off topic, this article is about HN's features and I'm discussing HN's features.
Just because you have something in your FAQ doesn't mean it's off-limits for discussion. You can post whatever you want there, and I can choose to disagree with it. It's one of many reasons why my disdain for this site grows with each passing day.
And they're not false claims. You guys absolutely do not have an account delete button, and you guys absolutely do deprioritize accounts and comments in an opaque manner to limit their exposure.
If you want me to stop complaining, stop using subterfuge to accomplish nefarious objectives. Be transparent about the moderation on this platform.
> “[Investigators] are 100-percent certain that no one was in the driver seat driving that vehicle at the time of impact,” Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman said. “They are positive.”
This would only be possible if they were using the autopilot feature.
> the fire service did not know how to deal with the fire.
Tesla's advice is "let it burn":
> Tesla’s guidance suggests it’s better to let the fire burn out than continuing to try to put it out.
> This would only be possible if they were using the autopilot feature.
I thought autopilot had a safety feature to prevent no-driver operation, though there is a “SmartSummon” feature intended for parking lots which does not (but requires continuous press of a fob button.) So, there’s no way this should be possible, absent a major malfunction to even allow self-driving in the reported condition.
According to multiple Tesla owners in another thread, Autopilot will continue to drive as long as the seatbelt is buckled. There doesn't need to be weight in the driver's seat.
It's still somewhat difficult to find a clear explanation because the admins were banning people who mentioned her by name (despite the fact that she is a public/political figure in the UK). That had an extremely chilling effect on the discussions, but now the Streisand Effect is kicking in.
This all feels very witch hunt like to me. If there's any evidence that she's a danger to children, I feel like people should put up or shut up. All I've seen is people slandering her for the actions of her father (proven) and some comments that might have been made by her partner about his own interests (completely unprovable). It's kind of disgusting what conservatives are trying to turn this into without a shred of proof.
The accused internet accounts are all linked via Keybase. The usernames and content go back as far as 2004. Lots of this information is already common knowledge in the UK because of previous scandals.
At what point do you acknowledge that her partner has been doxxed as a self-confessed paedophile? The alternative would involve an incredibly elaborate plot targetting a random US citizen years before he happened to meet the person involved.
Right she didn't nothing more than reside in a house with a 10 year old girl who was being tortured by her father for 11 days, and the went on to marry another pedophile. What a coincidence!
The guy she married posted a lot of rape fantasies of children on his Twitter. Someone connected all the dots and circled around that it’s possible based on actions of known associations.
Someone also mentioned that she lived in the same house at the time her father locked up and tortured the ten year old. If you’re oblivious to someone being tortured under you’re roof, you’re either really naive or part of the problem.
The NY Times accidentally exposed this whole charade when they attempted to justify McNeil's firing by saying "intent doesn't matter".
People immediately started pointing out all the instances where another NY Times writer (Nikole Hannah-Jones) has used the N-word. Many of those instances are tweets that she has only very recently deleted: https://web.archive.org/web/20210211163617/https://twitter.c...
What's more is that it isn't some sort of ironic twist of circumstances, it's just that there aren't a lot of organizations you can call for that kind of work at scale.
You're changing the subject. This topic is about personality traits, not medical conditions.
This statement is still true: "There's literally no context where attributing qualities to people based on their skin color is OK."
You wanted to be pedantic, so you ignored the context in which that statement was made. If you hadn't ignored the context, you would've known the statement was about personality traits and not medical conditions.
The person I am replying to used the phrase "literally no context" and you're saying I am ignoring the context in order to make an argument. My entire point is that the OP is throwing away context, and in so doing falsifying their own argument. The lack of context is the whole point of contention. You're attributing to me the very thing I'm disagreeing with.
Once again, you are ignoring the context in which the statement was made and then using that to change the subject and justify your pedantry.
The statement was obviously about personality traits, that much was clear based on the context in which the statement was made (this HN thread). You are now ignoring the context in which the statement was made and instead focusing on the use of the word 'context' within the statement itself. To make it easier for you to understand, here is what was implied by the statement given the context in which it was made "There's literally no context where attributing PERSONALITY qualities to people based on their skin color is OK."
Your argument about medical conditions is not only wrong (as pointed out by another commenter), it's completely irrelevant and off-topic. The discussion was only about personality traits until you tried to derail it.
> (1) It was not clear to us, with any level of certainty, whether either tool did anything more useful than filter out people who don't want to take the test / don't trust "AI".
There's at least one way this is beneficial for the employer: Desperate, obsequious job-seekers will be more willing to tolerate the degradation of being judged by a computer. It's perfect for finding employees who will ask "How high?" when you tell them to jump.
I applied to a few jobs at United Healthcare and they kept sending me HireVue interview invitations. Every time I rejected them and when prompted for feedback I said I don't want to be evaluated by a computer. Never heard anything from them (and didn't expect to).
Response to dang: I disagree with the no-delete policy (our comments are ours and we should have the ability to delete them), but more importantly I refuse to leave a comment up when my ability to reply has been disabled.