It's an invitation to (very politely) call these things out when you see them.
I can see that causing friction and offense. If you are a moderator, why don't you just private message a user who is regularly doing those things and give her/him a warning?
Dismissing something such as an article or comment (in the classic HN/Reddit style) has a very low barrier of entry. I'm talking about the "pick a trope - any trope!" that is turned into a one-liner zinger. Corporations bad, rich people evil, republicans dumb, etc and play on that.
It's easy to do, and easy to get people to agree, because it's a trope, thus obvious.
All it serves, though, is to add to people's anger and despair. It does not help the situation if the dismissal is right; and if it's wrong, it is actively harmful.
Fictional example: Let's say there's a post about a new drug that cures cancer, and the top comments are "It will never work" and "This only exists because rich people get cancer too". These dismissals don't bring data, just an unprovable hypothesis, that is only here to make people sad.
OTOH something like "I don't trust a drug that comes from ThisCompany because of X, Y, Z" would be an informed dismissal and actually useful.
What I'm saying is, if you're going to make people sad, don't do it for no reason.
One person's signal is another person's noise. I find that policing others' behavior is rarely effective and often more annoying than the offense itself.
I feel like this is an uphill battle that needs constant attention, so thank you for making this post.
I also have a question: What happens when I label a comment as noise, joke, offtopic or malice? I've seen plenty of comments labeled as exemplary. Do the other labels work in the same way and I've just not seen comments labeled as noise? Does the user whose comment is labeled get a notification?
I don't necessarily want the noise tags to be visible (either publicly or to the owner of the comment), but I do kind of wish that there was a way to know that your comments were being tagged as noise. Having it as a way to hide unhelpful comments is great, but you're really not likely to know when you're doing it so there's not really a great way to know it's happening and I can see that leading to more noisy comments being posted.
Shallow dismissals / dismissals based on zero evidence.
I'd go a little further. If someone posts an article suggesting "What if X?" and your immediate inclination is to draft a comment suggesting "What if not X?", you should ask yourself to what extent you're conveying an ernest belief versus being a contrarian (do note that this is a sliding scale). Naturally there are some ideas that are abhorrent and deserve to be ridiculed. But if I were, for example, to take Hacker News at face value, I'd conclude that everybody's wrong about everything.
To this end, when you critique an article, it's worth bearing in mind:
all models are wrong, so there will always be flaws with some proposal; and
the author is not available to respond to your criticism, so you should generally frame your argument as charitably as possible.
To recurring themes that maybe we can avoid, I will add: dismissing an article because it's by an author you don't like or it's from a publication you don't like.
We all make gut decisions like this. There are popular authors and publications commonly shared here that I dislike too. It's an easy way to decide to ignore an article.
However, whoever posted the article probably didn't do it because they wanted to start a "contempt trial" discussion about the author, other things they wrote, and other things they've done in their lives. A criticism that goes beyond "I liked their other articles better" and is more like "the person who wrote this is a terrible person" is in danger of turning into a discussion that isn't about the article itself and isn't fun for anyone.
This isn't to say that adding context for people who are unaware never makes sense, but when done quickly it's in danger of being a shallow dismissal, and when done with serious intent it's often not any better. Character assassination isn't fun.
I'm potentially guilty of this in the sense that I am/was an active Redditor and use my Redditisms when posting here, even though Tildes is probably the most anti-Reddit alternative platform here - most of the Reddit crowd flocked to Lemmy instances.
I also kinda feel like I've recently seen Exemplary used a lot as a reddit-gold equivalent used to just shout louder than others in an argument, whether or not the comment is very informative and helpful.
Speaking as an old-timer here, prior to our recent big influx, I almost never used the Noise label. It's not an exaggeration to say that weeks or months went by without me labeling anything negatively. Pretty much the only one I used was Exemplary.
This is not a criticism of anyone who joined. I'm happy y'all are here. It's been great to see things more active on Tildes, and it actually acted as a good stress test of our labeling system. Before this, things were kept in check mostly via social norms (i.e. people choosing not to post noisy comments in the first place), and the influx forced us to switch over to our structural measures. I think the past two months have shown that those work decently well.
One thing I have noticed is that I now am labeling a lot more than I ever used to in the past, even as our activity has slowed back down a bit. It would be nice if we could get back to where we were, when noise was hardly posted in the first place. Is our current noise just people acclimating to Tildes' norms, or have some of our norms fundamentally shifted and the noise is here to stay?
I'm not sure, but one of the things I've always loved about Tildes is that I've always felt the people here are earnestly, honestly, trying to be better over time. We've never been content to just sit and accept things -- both in ourselves and in our wider community -- and have always pointed ourselves in the direction of improvement. Speaking to the new people here, it's hard to convey just how much this was a latent, unspoken part of the site. At its best moments, it inspired positive change across the board. At its worst moments, it was almost an itchiness under our skin that we couldn't shake as we tried to theorycraft an unattainable social perfection and enforce (to our own detriment) it in others.
This paradigm of improvement carried a lot of good weight though -- far more good than bad, I believe. It's part of what I think has allowed the site to exist for as long as it has without fizzling out. There was a core group of users here who all knew each other. We undoubtedly had our frictions, but one of the things that saw us through that was the idea that we and they could all be better. It allowed for forgiveness and growth. Some of my favorite users on the site are people who I initially disliked. Some I even got into arguments with! In our time on the site, I've changed and they've changed, and even if we still don't see eye-to-eye on everything, one of the things I know is that we're all trying for a similar ideal of being better over time, both individually and together.
I hope I'm not putting @Adys too much on the spot here, but he's a great example of this. The two of us have had our moments of friction in the past, and I'm sure we have some continuing misalignments between us, but mostly I just have a lot of fondness and esteem for him. In our time on the site, I've come to learn that he's someone who unquestionably points himself in the direction of "better" -- for himself, sure, but far moreso for others. This very topic is a good example. If you don't know him, it might be easy to read his words as simple nagging or bellyaching. As someone who feels like he "knows" Adys though (as well as two internet strangers can), I can assure you his words are coming from a good, positive, supportive place. He wants us and this place to be better, and he knows we can be.
This direction was always an implicit cultural norm of the site, and it's one that I hope doesn't get lost, because it's not necessarily easy to see or pick up on. It can easily get drowned out -- especially on a wider internet that loves to push cynicism and hopelessness. We also don't really have any structural things in place to support it because, well, I don't know if you can even begin to systematize it in the slightest. It's an attitude, not an outcome.
Nevertheless, I think it's there in the pulse of the site. It looks like a lot of different things, but for this particular topic, it looks like us striving to be a place where we avoid posting noise in the first place, rather than just adequately labeling it after it's happened. If you're wanting to comment on something, push yourself just a little bit: what can I say to make this comment of mine better? It doesn't mean you can't complain or express negativity -- it just means that, if you do, give it some legs and something to stand on.
Noise is noise because anyone can write it, easily. What, instead, can you say if you give a little extra effort?
One thing I like about the moderation on Hacker News is that certain topics get flagged in the belief that certain topics always end up with bad discussions.
If, for instance, many participants think there is just one way to think about a topic and that anybody who thinks differently is by definition a bad person the best thing to do may be to let people talk about that somewhere else.
I can see that causing friction and offense. If you are a moderator, why don't you just private message a user who is regularly doing those things and give her/him a warning?
Opinion -- why this matters.
Dismissing something such as an article or comment (in the classic HN/Reddit style) has a very low barrier of entry. I'm talking about the "pick a trope - any trope!" that is turned into a one-liner zinger. Corporations bad, rich people evil, republicans dumb, etc and play on that.
It's easy to do, and easy to get people to agree, because it's a trope, thus obvious.
All it serves, though, is to add to people's anger and despair. It does not help the situation if the dismissal is right; and if it's wrong, it is actively harmful.
Fictional example: Let's say there's a post about a new drug that cures cancer, and the top comments are "It will never work" and "This only exists because rich people get cancer too". These dismissals don't bring data, just an unprovable hypothesis, that is only here to make people sad.
OTOH something like "I don't trust a drug that comes from ThisCompany because of X, Y, Z" would be an informed dismissal and actually useful.
What I'm saying is, if you're going to make people sad, don't do it for no reason.
One person's signal is another person's noise. I find that policing others' behavior is rarely effective and often more annoying than the offense itself.
Just vote for what you want to see.
I feel like this is an uphill battle that needs constant attention, so thank you for making this post.
I also have a question: What happens when I label a comment as noise, joke, offtopic or malice? I've seen plenty of comments labeled as exemplary. Do the other labels work in the same way and I've just not seen comments labeled as noise? Does the user whose comment is labeled get a notification?
I don't necessarily want the noise tags to be visible (either publicly or to the owner of the comment), but I do kind of wish that there was a way to know that your comments were being tagged as noise. Having it as a way to hide unhelpful comments is great, but you're really not likely to know when you're doing it so there's not really a great way to know it's happening and I can see that leading to more noisy comments being posted.
I'd go a little further. If someone posts an article suggesting "What if X?" and your immediate inclination is to draft a comment suggesting "What if not X?", you should ask yourself to what extent you're conveying an ernest belief versus being a contrarian (do note that this is a sliding scale). Naturally there are some ideas that are abhorrent and deserve to be ridiculed. But if I were, for example, to take Hacker News at face value, I'd conclude that everybody's wrong about everything.
To this end, when you critique an article, it's worth bearing in mind:
all models are wrong, so there will always be flaws with some proposal; and
the author is not available to respond to your criticism, so you should generally frame your argument as charitably as possible.
To recurring themes that maybe we can avoid, I will add: dismissing an article because it's by an author you don't like or it's from a publication you don't like.
We all make gut decisions like this. There are popular authors and publications commonly shared here that I dislike too. It's an easy way to decide to ignore an article.
However, whoever posted the article probably didn't do it because they wanted to start a "contempt trial" discussion about the author, other things they wrote, and other things they've done in their lives. A criticism that goes beyond "I liked their other articles better" and is more like "the person who wrote this is a terrible person" is in danger of turning into a discussion that isn't about the article itself and isn't fun for anyone.
This isn't to say that adding context for people who are unaware never makes sense, but when done quickly it's in danger of being a shallow dismissal, and when done with serious intent it's often not any better. Character assassination isn't fun.
I'm potentially guilty of this in the sense that I am/was an active Redditor and use my Redditisms when posting here, even though Tildes is probably the most anti-Reddit alternative platform here - most of the Reddit crowd flocked to Lemmy instances.
I also kinda feel like I've recently seen Exemplary used a lot as a reddit-gold equivalent used to just shout louder than others in an argument, whether or not the comment is very informative and helpful.
Nah
Speaking as an old-timer here, prior to our recent big influx, I almost never used the
Noise
label. It's not an exaggeration to say that weeks or months went by without me labeling anything negatively. Pretty much the only one I used wasExemplary
.This is not a criticism of anyone who joined. I'm happy y'all are here. It's been great to see things more active on Tildes, and it actually acted as a good stress test of our labeling system. Before this, things were kept in check mostly via social norms (i.e. people choosing not to post noisy comments in the first place), and the influx forced us to switch over to our structural measures. I think the past two months have shown that those work decently well.
One thing I have noticed is that I now am labeling a lot more than I ever used to in the past, even as our activity has slowed back down a bit. It would be nice if we could get back to where we were, when noise was hardly posted in the first place. Is our current noise just people acclimating to Tildes' norms, or have some of our norms fundamentally shifted and the noise is here to stay?
I'm not sure, but one of the things I've always loved about Tildes is that I've always felt the people here are earnestly, honestly, trying to be better over time. We've never been content to just sit and accept things -- both in ourselves and in our wider community -- and have always pointed ourselves in the direction of improvement. Speaking to the new people here, it's hard to convey just how much this was a latent, unspoken part of the site. At its best moments, it inspired positive change across the board. At its worst moments, it was almost an itchiness under our skin that we couldn't shake as we tried to theorycraft an unattainable social perfection and enforce (to our own detriment) it in others.
This paradigm of improvement carried a lot of good weight though -- far more good than bad, I believe. It's part of what I think has allowed the site to exist for as long as it has without fizzling out. There was a core group of users here who all knew each other. We undoubtedly had our frictions, but one of the things that saw us through that was the idea that we and they could all be better. It allowed for forgiveness and growth. Some of my favorite users on the site are people who I initially disliked. Some I even got into arguments with! In our time on the site, I've changed and they've changed, and even if we still don't see eye-to-eye on everything, one of the things I know is that we're all trying for a similar ideal of being better over time, both individually and together.
I hope I'm not putting @Adys too much on the spot here, but he's a great example of this. The two of us have had our moments of friction in the past, and I'm sure we have some continuing misalignments between us, but mostly I just have a lot of fondness and esteem for him. In our time on the site, I've come to learn that he's someone who unquestionably points himself in the direction of "better" -- for himself, sure, but far moreso for others. This very topic is a good example. If you don't know him, it might be easy to read his words as simple nagging or bellyaching. As someone who feels like he "knows" Adys though (as well as two internet strangers can), I can assure you his words are coming from a good, positive, supportive place. He wants us and this place to be better, and he knows we can be.
This direction was always an implicit cultural norm of the site, and it's one that I hope doesn't get lost, because it's not necessarily easy to see or pick up on. It can easily get drowned out -- especially on a wider internet that loves to push cynicism and hopelessness. We also don't really have any structural things in place to support it because, well, I don't know if you can even begin to systematize it in the slightest. It's an attitude, not an outcome.
Nevertheless, I think it's there in the pulse of the site. It looks like a lot of different things, but for this particular topic, it looks like us striving to be a place where we avoid posting noise in the first place, rather than just adequately labeling it after it's happened. If you're wanting to comment on something, push yourself just a little bit: what can I say to make this comment of mine better? It doesn't mean you can't complain or express negativity -- it just means that, if you do, give it some legs and something to stand on.
Noise is noise because anyone can write it, easily. What, instead, can you say if you give a little extra effort?
One thing I like about the moderation on Hacker News is that certain topics get flagged in the belief that certain topics always end up with bad discussions.
If, for instance, many participants think there is just one way to think about a topic and that anybody who thinks differently is by definition a bad person the best thing to do may be to let people talk about that somewhere else.