"Popular things go to the top" is a pretty good first approximation of the algorithm. You have things getting flagged to death for generating bad conversation/flamewars (kinda like parents telling kids to stop playing rough since people are getting hurt). There's the hiring posts. At least to me, it's always felt like moderation is happening at the margins.
Votes are a powerful signal here because they're the easiest signal to automate. That leads people to believe their HN votes are more sacred than they are. There has never been a point in the history of the site where it's ever been unclear that the site is ultimately run by the mods.
People complaining now should find someone who's been on here for a long time and ask what it was like under Paul Graham. Hint: not better.
I've given the mods here some grief and I think there's a lot of room to improve, but Thomas is one hundred percent right here. Graham's I-don't-have-time-for-this moderation was a much, much worse thing for the community.
Purpose of HN is ultimately agitprop for YC. It makes sense that curation of posts occurs--this only confuses people that buy too much into the "hacker" ethos.
I wrote a longer comment, originally, but cut it back to the single sentence when I realized that by dignifying the argument I was only lending your tossed-off slur more credibility. HN is not moderated so as to be agitprop for YC. Nobody who's talked to Dan for more than a couple minutes, or watched this site discuss the SFBA tech industry, could believe that.
The difference between the site post-Dan and pre-Dan --- you know, the "old" HN vs. today --- is that you can repeatedly write unfounded accusations like that today and not have your account shadowbanned and all your comments rank-penalized, like they were when Paul Graham ran the site. We all accepted those arbitrary moderation decisions back then, when there was no pretense of fairness or equity in moderation. Now that we have it, we attack the people who spend their time assuring it by making preposterous comparisons to the "good old days".
Rank penalization is alive and well in the dang era, I assure you. It's variously applied to my entire account, and I was penalized so heavily at one point that I appeared below every gray comment. Lately, it seems to oscillate with no rhyme or reason.
> Yes, your account has a penalty that accounts get when they post too many low-quality comments--specifically ones that are uncivil and/or unsubstantive and/or tediously argumentative.
That's how it was explained to me, by Dan. He didn't stop the practice, and I'd contend he's probably doubled down on it.
I don't know why you're using my comment as a venue to litigate penalties applied to your account. The point here isn't "people like 'jsmthrowaway get penalized". They do. The point is "moderation is far more coherent and transparent now than it was in some supposed 'good old days'", when you could be shadowbanned simply for irritating Paul Graham.
And your point is wrong. You seemed to claim that in the dang era rank penalization is a thing of the past. You seem to claim that unsubstantive comments will no longer get you penalized. You are claiming that these decisions are more transparent and less arbitrary than under pg. All three are completely false, but you're just not subjected to them. I was not informed that I had been quietly penalized in any way until I noticed something was amiss, because the fact that that facility even exists is not common knowledge. Sir_Cmpwn didn't even list it in his moderator tools.
The entire second paragraph of the comment to which I replied is wrong. Your followup (which ascribes motive to me, something I note you've gone after others for doing in this thread) is also wrong. I'm not litigating anything. I'm pointing out that you're wrong. You're also forgiven for not being aware of this, given your typical comment quality and status.
It's like you didn't read my comment and instead just decided to litigate further whether your penalties are legitimate. I'm the wrong person to have this conversation with, because --- just to be direct about this --- I do not care.
No. Again, I’m refuting your claims, which I repeated back to you, with personal experience and am attempting to do so civilly. If I misunderstood your claims, I’m not the only one; sibling points out the same point I’m making back to you. (You’re also not addressing that misunderstanding at all, if so, and are instead throwing malice around and assuming people aren’t reading even when they repeat the exact claims you seem to have made.)
I care much less than you do whether they’re “legitimate,” I assure you. You’re projecting not reading on me, to be perfectly honest. Why on earth would I litigate my account status with you, of all people? It’s amusing you think I need to be reminded that you’re the wrong person for that, because I already know that. To me, just to be direct about this, you represent among the worst of HN’s qualities as evidenced all over this thread.
You’re just wrong about HN changing. It hasn’t. Yeah, dang and sctb announce bans now. There’s more to it, and in my experience, many of those decisions are just as arbitrary as they were when pg ran this place.
Everything else is an uncivil sideshow you’re dragging me into. Endgame: you’ll remain you, I’m probably stacking up further penalization rising to it, and life will go on. How about sticking to the fact that you’re wrong instead of exploiting your status to be as uncivil as you are with no fear of the exact repercussions you claim have softened because you’re not exposed to them?
Comments are still rank-penalized and detached, so that's not exactly a thing of the past.
I am not arguing dang is doing a bad job--I'm arguing that their job is done with an eye more towards keeping a community in line with YC interests than promoting pure free-speech or hacker culture.
That includes things like killing off certain contentious posts, removing grossly off-topic material, and a lot of other frankly decent moderation.
Yes, likely >90% of the site is done through voting, but a significant amount of pruning and bumping clearly also occurs.