Clearly they should have had a man write this article. It probably would have some solid research behind it beyond just “vibes” and “theory pulled out of my ass”. Quite demonstrative of her points at least.
A big problem is high karma accounts are allowed to constantly politically flamebait But the nobodies get snuffed out pretty quickly, often for much less.
Not surprisingly, various groups often grant those with greater tenure and more connection leniency. I just despise the lies.
I personally have noticed that 'celebrity' users like WalterBright often great technical contributions to the community but that their contributions in social/political discussions are often patronizing in a way that I don't feel would be considered acceptable if a less 'important' user was to make them.
I can spot a few shallow comments that he's made in the last few days alone:
Not sure if you mean 'acceptable' in the sense of community response or moderator response, but FWIW, I don't think any of those comments are over the line where we'd post a moderation reply. (Or, to put it differently, if we drew the line there, we'd have to post a ton more replies than we usually do.)
Well the community response and moderator response are sort of interconnected, aren't they?
Like as I understand it the system here works because the users moderate each other in a way that will trigger automated action and eventually action from yourself or Tom. Shit post and people will flag your comment. Get flagged too much and you get throttled.
But if that first step doesn't happen because the user base has a parasocial relationship with another user and they consider them a celebrity then they're going to hold that user to a different standard than they do other users.
Which means they won't moderate them the same way and then the algorithmic escalation and moderator actions won't be triggered.
I agree that these aren't the kind of comments that would trigger a moderation comment, but then again, I didn't look too deeply at this particular user's comment list before I found some pretty meh ones.
It's not an issue that keeps me up at night either, I just started noticing it after enjoying reading certain comments from this user and finding other kinds of comments to be pretty sub-par and started pondering the strong difference between them.
The dichotomy between comments they'll make regarding something like aircraft linkages and control surfaces or whatever that I recall them making a few months ago which other uses wanted to nominate as a high quality comment and the all caps old man yelling at clouds type comments that I linked to is problematic for a site like HN but I also agree that there isn't an optimal solution for it.
I mean honestly if you're new to most sites and your first instinct is to delve into contentious political issues you should probably be shown the exit pretty quick.
So true. Heavy believer in lurking in any community you join prior to being loud. Understanding the norms of micro cultures and adapting to them is an important step to successfully integrating if you plan to be there for awhile.
