Talk:Hacker News

Downvote

The article says that there's no downvote option, which is no longer the case. Once users obtain a certain amount of karma (an unpublished number that tends to get increased over time), they acquire the ability to downvote (http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). Dsrguru (talk) 08:44, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

The intro section reflects this now, although not in your stated level of detail. Wingman4l7 (talk) 04:19, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Sources

I posit that Techcrunch is a reliable source, both as a mainstream news organization and as an established expert on the field at hand. The New Atlantis is also a source of academic scholarship. Kevin143 (talk) 03:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree on Techcrunch depending on the context. If they have a general review of HN then it should go in the bottom references. Anythign specificaly referenced in the article obv goes there. But random reports about HN are not particularly relevant (there is such a thing as over sourcing) :) Regarding the New Atlantis: the link I removed was to the HN category which held 2 articles of rough relevance - that is not how sourcing works... but one of the articles was relevant to PG's comments about Eternal September so I bumped that to there as a reference and removed the general link. I think that works better. (errantx@HN) --Errant Tmorton166^(Talk) 09:51, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Website address

Does this website have an address too? Maybe it wouldn't hurt to note it - I'm no going to Google typing 'hacker news' to get to that site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.217.141.156 (talk) 19:52, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

http://www.google.de/search?hl=en&q=hacker+news&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=&aq=f&oq= first result - really hard, wasn't it --217.229.110.57 (talk) 13:19, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Empty section

The section "External links" is empty. --Mortense (talk) 21:36, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Not anymore! Wingman4l7 (talk) 04:19, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Moderation controversy

The section "Moderation controversy" appears to be entirely self-published sources, and generally not adhering to WP:SOURCES - blog posts, and links to HN discussions (which fall under forums). The entire section also seems to be against WP:SOAPBOX. According to my understanding of Wikipedia guidelines, it does not belong on Wikipedia. Does anyone have any good arguments against removing it? --Vladimir (talk) 10:49, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Since I didn't get any objections, I removed the said section. --Vladimir (talk) 17:39, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia guidelines regarding sources state that they are not strictly necessary when information is either plausible or uncontroversial. The moderation policy at Hacker News is well known, well cited and has a huge impact upon those individuals who are not aware of the policy. In addition, you can verify the instances by turning on the option 'Show Dead' in the Hacker News profile control panel to see how many users have been passively-aggressively banned with no notification.

Removing the moderation controversy additions favours Hacker News as a platform and can easily be misconstrued as partisan support or censoring evidence of wider criticism of the platform. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.249.50.22 (talk • contribs) 17:57, July 20, 2014 UTC (UTC)

Wikipedia guidelines regarding sources state that they are not strictly necessary when information is either plausible or uncontroversial. - Whether the bans are deserved or not is absolutely controversial, and the quality of sources is of high importance. There is no NPOV research on this topic. First-hand accounts do not make good sources.

The moderation policy at Hacker News is well known, well cited and has a huge impact upon those individuals who are not aware of the policy. In addition, you can verify the instances by turning on the option 'Show Dead' in the Hacker News profile control panel to see how many users have been passively-aggressively banned with no notification. - I should note that your tone betrays a conflict of interest. To add a contrasting point of personal experience, I browse HN with show-dead on, and it's a rare occurrence when I see a [dead] poster who does not have something obvious in their posting history to deserve the ban - so I disagree that the statements in the paragraph are easily verifiable.

Taking your arguments into account, I still do not believe that the section, as it currently stands, belongs in Wikipedia. The content and tone is inflammatory, and it strays far from the neutral tone and encyclopedic content that Wikipedia seeks. IMO it creates the impression that it is written by someone with a bone to pick with HN's moderation policy. Also see: Avoid sections and articles focusing on criticisms or controversies.

Vladimir (talk) 19:21, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

To add a contrasting point of personal experience, I browse HN with show-dead on, and it's a rare occurrence when I see a [dead] poster who does not have something obvious in their posting history to deserve the ban. It is not your place to decide whether bans were or were not justified. Your own bias is beginning to surface. Furthermore; I have not discussed the reasoning for a ban or criticised Hacker News in that regard. They may be entirely justified. Primary sources are entirely justified in this regard. A Hacker News discussion which discusses and confirms the nature of Hellbanning is a perfectly reasonable source however if you require an external source then you can read this Techcrunch article. Do you have evidence to suggest Hellbanning is myth or not in use?

The edits to article centre on the nature of the ban which is of high importance to potential users considering using Hacker News or those seeking further information. All forums have a moderation policy, that is not in question; the controversy at Hacker News is surrounding the nature of Hellbanning - a secret ban which can result in literally years of wasted time for a user who is unaware they are banned.

It falls squarely within the remit of Wikipedia. I suggest we put the edit to external moderation since several Wikipedia editors have attempted to highlight the factual practice and you insist on reverting their changes indicating a strong partisan or biased position. The content is not inflammatory, speculation or factually incorrect. It is a truthful statement which has caused a number of users high inconvenience and emotional harm over the years. Notably; the user Losethos (who suffered from mental illness) was famously allowed to post to Hacker News for years whilst Hellbanned under the impression the community were seeing his contributions.

It is no more inflammatory to highlight the unusual and inconsistent moderation policy at Hacker News than it is to highlight the politically partisan nature of a news channel or the inconsistencies at other organisations. The edits are factual and should stand unless a compelling argument can be made otherwise. Hellbanning itself is also the subject of a Wikipedia article. Can you articulate why we can discuss Hellbanning in general, attribute the practice to certain blogs (Coding Horror) and individuals (Jeff Atwood) but exclude Hacker News? --— Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.203.242.37 (talk • contribs) 07:37, July 21, 2014 (UTC)

First, please sign your comments when editing talk pages. You can do this by adding --~~~~ at the end of your messages. Please also consider creating an account.

It is not your place to decide whether bans were or were not justified. Your own bias is beginning to surface. - You have misinterpreted me. I have only provided a personal datum, not made some statement regarding whether the bans were justified or not. I do not intend to base anything in the article based on personal experience, that would be unencyclopedic.

Do you have evidence to suggest Hellbanning is myth or not in use? - No. You are misunderstanding or distorting my intentions. I am not saying that the claims are false - only that I don't think they belong on Wikipedia. I think that the text: 1) uses a tone that is far from neutral (e.g. I think "notorious passive-aggressive" have no place in a Wikipedia article outside of a direct quote); 2) makes use of primary sources to describe users' experiences; and 3) is too low in encyclopedic value to be even mentioned. The TechCrunch article is the only source I can consider valid, but even that article, which is much longer than this page, only devotes a sentence to the moderation policy. There is no reliable source or evidence that "rankbanning" exists, I don't see how "slowbanning" is a "ban" at all (might as well call it what it is - a throttle), or how is "hellbanning" different from "shadowbanning", making the whole list sound like a non-sense list of scary words.

Can you articulate why we can discuss Hellbanning in general, attribute the practice to certain blogs (Coding Horror) and individuals (Jeff Atwood) but exclude Hacker News? - For the same reason that the practice is not mentioned on Coding Horror, Something Awful, Reddit, Fark or other articles on websites that employ hellbanning.

--Vladimir (talk) 08:56, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

That is not an articulation. Hellbanning is clearly not a nonsense list of scary words since Wikipedia currently has an article titled 'Hellbanning'. Slowbanning is considered a ban despite it being more technologically described as throttling. The community and the moderators refer to the practice as slowbanning which is how it should be addressed (possibly with a description). To summarise thus far;

1. You have denied basing your edits on personal experience despite typing the following sentence "it's a rare occurrence when I see a [dead] poster who does not have something obvious in their posting history to deserve the ban."

2. Since other articles (Wikipedia Reddit etc) do not explicitly refer to Hellbanning as a practice we should discount the factual information from the Hacker News article.

3. You think that listing a moderation controversy is not encyclopedic despite the impact it can have upon the users. Interestingly the Reddit article you have used to support your position has an entire section dedicated to Reddit Controversies including bans and censorship.

4. You believe primary sources should be discounted despite the Wikipedia guidance that primary sources are sufficient when information is plausible (otherwise every word of every line would require a citation).

5. You wish to discount the TechCrunch article since they only devoted a single line to the topic.

6. I concede that the word notorious has negative connotations and should be removed. However; the remainder of the edits should stand. The various types of bans are extremely important to the users and anyone researching the site; in addition they are not communicated to the users of the site and remain vague, opaque and arbitrary in their application. It is absolutely worthy of inclusion on a Wikipedia article.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.203.242.37 (talk • contribs) 10:58, July 21, 2014 UTC (UTC)

First, when you sign your comments, please do not include the <nowiki> tags. The four-tildes sequence will expand into your signature when you save the page - I needed to use <nowiki> tags to prevent the sequence from expanding into my signature.

Hellbanning is clearly not a nonsense list of scary words - I was referring to this part: The site has a notorious passive-aggressive moderation policy incorporating Hellbanning, Slowbanning and Rankbanning.. And I'm going to have to ask for a source regarding Slowbanning is considered a ban.

You have denied basing your edits on personal experience despite typing the following sentence "it's a rare occurrence when I see a [dead] poster who does not have something obvious in their posting history to deserve the ban." - Correct. Just because I have presented an argument does not mean I intend to act upon it while working on Wikipedia. As per above, I agree with you that personal experience should not be a part of any decision process involving an article's content. I stated it because my experience disagreed with something you said on this talk page.

Since other articles (Wikipedia Reddit etc) do not explicitly refer to Hellbanning as a practice we should discount the factual information from the Hacker News article. - This is not direct cause-and-effect reasoning, but I am pointing out that most likely, much of the same reasons would apply when deciding whether to mention moderation practices regardress of the website/article.

You think that listing a moderation controversy is not encyclopedic despite the impact it can have upon the users. - I think "the impact it can have upon the users" is impossible to measure objectively and I don't think it should be a factor of whether something is worth including. If e.g. 0.01% of a website's visitors were banned, it is ultimately of little importance and not worth mentioning. Aside from primary sources (first-hand accounts), there are no other sources to back up whether this is really an issue worth mentioning.

Interestingly the Reddit article you have used to support your position has an entire section dedicated to Reddit Controversies including bans and censorship. - Indeed, and it 1) is well-sourced, 2) uses a neutral tone, and 3) does not mention hell-banning (or banning individual users at all as far as I can tell).

You believe primary sources should be discounted despite the Wikipedia guidance that primary sources are sufficient when information is plausible (otherwise every word of every line would require a citation). - I disagree that this applies here. The topic is controversial and its importance is difficult to quantify. Primary sources might simply lie. The whole thing and its importance is difficult to verify.

You wish to discount the TechCrunch article since they only devoted a single line to the topic. - No, that was not my intention. I only pointed out how much attention did the TechCrunch article devote to this topic: one sentence in the TechCrunch article vs. a third of your proposed Wikipedia article.

It is absolutely worthy of inclusion on a Wikipedia article. - OK, let's try to find common ground: I think it'd be much more acceptable to include one sentence at the end of the summary, such as: Hacker News employs hellbanning when dealing with misbehaving users. - and source the TechCrunch article. I still personally think it is not worthy of being mentioned, however I'd feel much less strongly about this.

--Vladimir (talk) 19:21, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

08 August 2014 Edit to Add

Wikipedia explicitly states that upon a third reversion the parties are too cease reverting edits. You disregarded that guideline by reverting the article for a fourth time. Please cease doing so until we can come to a consensus on which aspects of the Hacker News moderation controversy we agree upon. At present you are the sole user reverting contributions centering on the moderation controversy indicating you are both in the minority and also not impartially monitoring the article.

157.203.242.36 (talk) 09:33, 8 August 2014 (UTC)