> I see a totally fair comment below this has been flagged
Which comment is that? I tried but couldn't find it.
> Same as the thread on 'decline of nude sunbathing' where my comment
If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32672721, users flagged that comment—correctly, because it broke the rules of the site: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We're trying to have a particular type of internet forum here—one oriented around intellectual curiosity, not snarky flamewar or ideological battle. Since the latter end-states are what the internet seems to default to, it takes energy and work to try to avoid them. We do what we can as mods, but above all we need commenters to participate in the intended spirit.
Direct lived experience is certainly compatible with curiosity, and therefore highly welcome here. It needs to come without snarky attacks, ideological talking points and the like, because those things destroy curiosity and set a thread into flamewar mode. They're also the opposite of direct lived experience.
> Someone please give me the wink wink defactos here, is the hackernews enforced narrative the same as
I can give you the defactos wink-free! The answer is definitely not, and there is no enforced narrative. What we want is a space where people have respectful, curious conversation across differences, and above all learn from each other. Trying to enforce any one narrative would destroy that possibility, so we need multiple narratives, multiple voices, multiple views. The trick is to have them without bursting into flames. On divisive topics, that is not so easy.
I vouched for quite a number of comments yesterday that I felt were constructive and respectful, but were nonetheless flagged. I didn't keep track of the comments and don't know if they got flagged again; I don't know if you can see what I "vouched" for in some sort of admin UI? From what I recall this wasn't isolated to one particular viewpoint or "side" by the way, there are, ehm, strong emotions all around.
Yes, we can track vouches in admin software. I took a quick look. Most of the comments you vouched for seem not to have ended up in a flagged state; a few did. I'd probably have left a few more of them [flagged], but I didn't see anything too egregious, other than one comment were a user pointedly included someone's personal details.
> other than one comment were a user pointedly included someone's personal details
I must've missed that, sorry. I was a tad annoyed and maybe I got a bit carried away. At any rate, at least some people, IMHO, misused the [flag] feature. I've seen it on a few other occasions too (and happened to a story from my blog, which was entirely unflagworthy but got flagged due to sour grapes) which is why I have showdead on in the first place.
Which comment is that? I tried but couldn't find it.
> Same as the thread on 'decline of nude sunbathing' where my comment
If you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32672721, users flagged that comment—correctly, because it broke the rules of the site: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We're trying to have a particular type of internet forum here—one oriented around intellectual curiosity, not snarky flamewar or ideological battle. Since the latter end-states are what the internet seems to default to, it takes energy and work to try to avoid them. We do what we can as mods, but above all we need commenters to participate in the intended spirit.
Direct lived experience is certainly compatible with curiosity, and therefore highly welcome here. It needs to come without snarky attacks, ideological talking points and the like, because those things destroy curiosity and set a thread into flamewar mode. They're also the opposite of direct lived experience.
> Someone please give me the wink wink defactos here, is the hackernews enforced narrative the same as
I can give you the defactos wink-free! The answer is definitely not, and there is no enforced narrative. What we want is a space where people have respectful, curious conversation across differences, and above all learn from each other. Trying to enforce any one narrative would destroy that possibility, so we need multiple narratives, multiple voices, multiple views. The trick is to have them without bursting into flames. On divisive topics, that is not so easy.