HN has plenty of misinformation posted on it constantly. Countless posts that are objectively wrong, and in many cases it is done intentionally. I have seen lies supporting eugenics, lies about how quantum computing is a fake conspiracy, etc etc. And yet the mods only jump in when you're impolite by referring to OP with "you" and "you're" because it is a "personal attack". They are optimizing on the wrong problem, IMO. I would rather discuss with people who are snide rather than with liars who have an agenda.
HN has its own "fake news" problems. And this is the society we are living in; you can say anything as long as it doesn't offend or hurt someone's feelings. Even if it is objectively fake horse shit.
In your example if someone pointed out that quantum computers required some equations to hold with far greater precision than anything measured, so there is small but non-zero probability that it will turn out quantum computers can not work, would it be a lie that moderators should delete?
I believe it's not moderators job to decide what is a lie and what is not, if you see a lie, write a truthful comment refuting it, that way you can convince people instead of trying to silence.
> I believe it's not moderators job to decide what is a lie and what is not
codesushi42 didn't say it was. It said the system you describe still allows lies, myths, and misinformation to spread. The only mention of moderators was in the context of chastising the poster who calls the misinformation out.
> if you see a lie, write a truthful comment refuting it, that way you can convince people instead of trying to silence
The tools you referred to are tools to silence, so you are "trying to silence" every time you flag or downvote a post. As for refuting the misinformation, I regularly see posts doing this downvoted while the misinformation is upvoted[1]. This is particularly true in discussions on contentious topics. Thus, I'm not nearly as certain as you are that these tools would protect HN from a sufficiently dedicated group.
[1] At least once, because I downvote it and the comment remains black.
> The only mention of moderators was in the context of chastising the poster who calls the misinformation out.
Obviously we don't chastise users for correcting misinformation. We chastise them for breaking the site guidelines. How could we do otherwise?
There's an important insight here. Correcting misinformation is when it's most critical to follow the site guidelines. That's not so easy, because misinformation can be irritating and even triggering. But if you react to it with name-calling, flamewar, personal attack or things like that, then you discredit your comment and—if your position is correct—you discredit the truth. Then you're not only making HN worse, you're making the world worse.
The thing to try to remember is that while you may not owe the other commenter any better, you owe the community better, and you owe the truth better. The one who knows more has more responsibility.
Exactly this. HN is a cesspool of misinformation. Whether it comes from people pushing an agenda, or just plain ignorance. I take everything said here with a grain of salt, and fact check everything. Because I have seen some very creative and convincing misinformation here, that when researched doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
My point is that people casually browsing this place are going to be infected by the misinformation and spread it to others. All while the mods overfit on whether someone's response wasn't polite enough, which in a lot of cases is biased to begin with.
Stack Exchange is a much, MUCH more reliable source of information than the horse shit I see pranced around here on a daily basis. Their moderation system actually works because it empowers knowledgeable users.
I don't find this to be the case. Usually, when someone is wrong, they are quickly corrected. So when reading a thread, I rarely come away with an incorrect belief.
Maybe some example would help me understand what you mean. Could you link to some clear misinformation on HN that wasn't convincingly refuted elsewhere in the thread?
Look up some accounts (jlawson) and you will find they consistently post right wing BS here.
Or just search HN for eugenics and see all the crazy claims made...
Plenty other examples, but due to ignorance, like someone giving a long convincing explanation of the thermodynamics behind the efficiency of steam engines which sounded entirely convincing. But was complete utter horse shit once researched, and no one refuted it. But it was upvoted plenty.
I looked in the places you suggested but none of them seem like cesspools of misinformation.
Political opinions from across the right-left spectrum, if presented in a civil and substantive way and without fake facts, are not against the rules here. Extreme opinions tend to get downvoted pretty quickly, though.
I guess you didn't look hard enough. Because the top comment is a lie:
If you outlaw this, people like me (who think inflicting stupidly and ill-health on their children by withholding these technologies is morally wrong) will just fly to Singapore. Even if you could enforce this, not every country will. 5+ standard deviation increases in many traits is on the table
You might disapprove of the sentiment, but that does not appear to be a lie. A lie has to be factually incorrect. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
I think pointing to evidence that many traits are susceptible to +5 SD increases by genetic screening is reasonable in the context a discussion about intelligence, even though +5 SD change in intelligence hasn't been demonstrated.
+5 SD change in intelligence (ie, average IQ of 175) would be amazing, but it's not obviously impossible. So it's "on the table" in the sense that cities on Mars are "on the table". It's not prohibited by any known laws of nature, and some experts are working on it.
There are lots of actual lies in circulation, so I encourage you to reserve the use of the word for things that are demonstrably false, not just ambitious claims that one might be skeptical of.
That was never shown, it is you who are stretching what can reasonably be claimed with basically no evidence supporting such nonsense. None of what you said was in the original source.
Stretching the truth like this is lying, whether you like it or not.
You seem to have some kind of misconception about eugenics, the thing that everyone agrees to be unacceptable is "improving" mankind by forcing some people to not marry or to not have children. The thing talked about in that thread is voluntary modification of ones own dna. Deleting comments simply supporting this would be crazy.
HN is not a crowdsourced knowledge base like stackexchange or wikipedia, to expect high percentage of accuracy on all posts, it is place of conversations and having people with different viewpoints makes it more interesting. For the thermodynamics example did you post the correct version after researching? Or maybe you found it too late when conversation have already moved on? Unfortunately that's the way all conversations work in real world too, best arguments come after it.
I am not saying that hn voting is the perfect system, but it is way better than the system where moderators check if comments are true or "right wing BS" because then instead of discussions you'd get echo chamber of everyone agreeing with moderator, and it's not guaranteed that it will be left wing echo chamber you wish for.
We post thousands of moderation comments about things other personal attacks—though of course personal attacks are not ok on HN. I don't understand this reasoning where, if X is not ok, X must be the only thing moderators care about. Surely it is not so hard to understand that we have more than one rule.
It's not against the rules to be wrong, though. How could this be otherwise? We don't have a truth meter.
I don't understand this reasoning where, if X is not ok, X must be the only thing moderators care about.
That is your reasoning, not mine.
It's not against the rules to be wrong, though. How could this be otherwise? Do you think we have a truth detector?
This smacks of the same kind of arrogant obliviousness that is insidious at Facebook and Twitter. Do you really think misinformation is not a problem there either?
You counter the problem with a reputation system that actually works. See Stack Exchange. Also with better moderation on your effort.
Maybe you should try searching HN for eugenics and see which gems you come across.
It's what you seemed to be saying with "And yet the mods only jump in when".
While I have you: you have a long history of breaking the HN guidelines by arguing in the flamewar style, directing acerbic swipes and personal insults at people, and so on. We've asked you many times to stop:
If you keep ignoring our requests instead of fixing this, we're going to ban you, just as we would any user who persisted in abusing HN this way. Other people posting bad things does not make it ok, and there's zero conflict between correcting misinformation—if that's what you're trying to do—and following the guidelines.
This whole post repeats everything I've been saying while also threatening me with the ban hammer. I am saying that you are missing the big picture. There are much bigger problems here than school yard insults that go unaddressed here, as mentioned multiple times.
I would take impoliteness over toxic ideology backed by fake news any time. Listen to George Carlin much?
This whole line of thinking exemplifies why tech bros at places like Facebook and Twitter are so tone deaf to this whole problem.
You draw the line at "LMAO" but allow pro eugenics posts through?
Here's one in 2018:
Eugenics has a bad name, but it is scientifically valid. We now know that genetics play a huge role in life outcomes (e.g. adult IQ appears to be 70-80% heritable) and, for better or for worse, the eugenicists were right, even if their methods were morally wrong.
We don't focus enough on positive eugenics: getting smart, non-violent and conscientious people to have large families. Right now we do the opposite: smart folks feel all sorts of pressures to have a small or no family due to careers, the expense of elite schooling, the environment, etc. The opening scene of Idiocracy nailed it.
You're assuming that we read everything that gets posted here. That's far from the case—there's far too much—so it's a non sequitur to conclude that if a bad comment shows up unmoderated, moderators are somehow allowing it. The likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. Software can do some things, but I don't know how to write software that determines whether comments are right or wrong and kills the wrong ones. Do you?
On a large, open internet forum like HN, any banned user can create a new account and walk back in through the front door in 30 seconds—and many do. There will always be plenty of bad stuff getting posted. We do as much as we can, but we rely on users to flag comments and/or email us in egregious cases. As far as I can tell, you've never done either of those things, so I'm not really feeling your good faith here.
If the game is to find one shitty unflagged comment and pass it around as proof of moderator malfeasance, that's not a very interesting game. What's more interesting is that you had to go back over a year to find it. If anything, that rather suggests that your example is evidence of how little of that there is on HN, relative to other large open forums.
Meanwhile there are numerous cases of you treating others aggressively and being, frankly, an asshole on this site. You euphemize that as "impoliteness", but it's worse than mere impoliteness. It is community-poisoning. "I would take impoliteness over toxic ideology" is a non-argument—there is no good reason to have either. Using one to justify the other is bogus, and using it to justify your own mistreatment of others is cheap.
If you sincerely want to participate in the community here and do what you can to make it better—by following the guidelines, treating fellow community members respectfully, flagging egregious comments, and so on—that's great. You are welcome. But if you really don't want to do that, please don't post here. In particular, please don't take wrong comments by others—or comments that you feel are wrong—as an excuse to vent aggression.
Your whole post is one long and droning denial. I didn't have to go back a year to find an example. That's just what HN gave me the fastest. There are plenty of examples. Maybe you should try looking harder yourself.
HN has a problem with fake news. So does Facebook. And Twitter, and so forth.
Instead of saying "we can do better", you've taken the route of complete and utter denial. And in a kind of off the cuff, blame shifting way.
Just like so many other tech bros in SV. Completely unprofessional and unhinged when faced with real issues. You're enjoying the club, I guess.
HN has plenty of misinformation posted on it constantly. Countless posts that are objectively wrong, and in many cases it is done intentionally. I have seen lies supporting eugenics, lies about how quantum computing is a fake conspiracy, etc etc. And yet the mods only jump in when you're impolite by referring to OP with "you" and "you're" because it is a "personal attack". They are optimizing on the wrong problem, IMO. I would rather discuss with people who are snide rather than with liars who have an agenda.
HN has its own "fake news" problems. And this is the society we are living in; you can say anything as long as it doesn't offend or hurt someone's feelings. Even if it is objectively fake horse shit.