In such situations the thing to do is email hn@ycombinator.com.
It’s your choice how to moderate, I don’t have any expectation or illusion of a right to use this platform. But can you understand how this creates ambiguity for people who don’t know what the rules ultimately are, and how it creates huge openings for people to cry foul when there’s nothing unusual?
Wouldn’t it be better to refine the rules and disclosure when gaps arise, so everyone is participating in the same system?
Also: discussing moderation is frowned upon? Where'd you get that idea? I've posted 50,000 comments discussing moderation with HN users (not to mention...checking...24,000 emails, apparently). I'm not saying it's my favorite thing to do, but nobody's frowning upon it. Perhaps you were thinking of the guideline asking people not to go on about getting downvoted?
There's simply no way to avoid judgment calls, interpretation, and general messes, and I'm not into pretending otherwise. The best we can offer is to answer any questions people have, and that I'm pretty diligent about.
I’m not saying it can be reduced to that. I’m saying it’s disappointing that the resolution to that is a side channel where decisions are made privately and have no way to resolve generally. This is especially a problem for you, as you field tens of thousands of things that may be similar but might not be equally convincing in private. It’s also a problem for you as people are understandably going to wonder what those private decisions entail.
> Also: discussing moderation is frowned upon? Where'd you get that idea? I've posted 50,000 comments discussing moderation with HN users (not to mention...checking...24,000 emails, apparently). I'm not saying it's my favorite thing to do, but nobody's frowning upon it. Perhaps you were thinking of the guideline asking people not to go on about getting downvoted?
I’m thinking of several instances seeing people who were concerned about moderation decisions being directed to email rather than the discussion in public.
> There's simply no way to avoid judgment calls, interpretation, and general messes, and I'm not into pretending otherwise. The best we can offer is to answer any questions people have, and that I'm pretty diligent about.
You are! You’re beyond diligent and I don’t know you but sometimes I see your attention to HN threads and hope you’re not burning out. My disappointment isn’t about you making a judgment call. My disappointment is that you made a side channel available for private judgment calls that might not be disclosed, both because that creates separate rules for people who do or don’t have access to it, and because it creates an opportunity for people to imagine things that might be private and create alternative narratives.
I don’t agree with this. I think this idea works in computing systems and thus at least programmers are inclined to think in this fashion, however I don’t believe this is how every other framework functions, e.g., the UK legal system which is largely down to interpretation (and IANAL).
HN already has a reputation for skewed moderation (certain sites are pre-banned, posting them pre-flags subsequent posts). Making it explicitly something exceptional without any way for people to know what the exception is... again creates a separate set of rules and a basis for people to air unfounded objections.
If HN wants to be Fight Club fine but I’m happy to be on record opposing that so long as I can.
Edit so I can hopefully make the spirit of my own complaint more clear: my puppy is defiant and stubborn and clever and a big doofus. Rules are a living document and they get revised all the time. If I communicate them and my expectations we grow together and move on to the next misunderstanding with some grace and patience. If I just decide that the rules change without saying what they are, I’m setting my pup up for failure and myself up for her resentment and an inclination to impose more strictness that she won’t understand.
