I don’t know what kind of game is going on when you quote my whole comment like this. That’s not a norm on HN.

We don’t treat them the same because they don’t have the same effects and aren’t the same thing. They’d be the same thing if someone made a bot to write whole articles and post them as submissions. Of course we’d ban that, and indeed we have banned bots like that, or at least banned sites whose contents are mostly LLM-generated, along with the accounts that submitted them.

If a user’s script finds and submits good articles that attract many upvotes and stimulate good discussions, it would be a net loss for HN to ban them.

It's not a game, but many people try to derail the conversation when I bring this up. I want to have a record of what was said when I reply when I think it's worth quoting, so as there is no ambiguity as to what was said or what I was replying to.

> If a user’s script finds and submits good articles that attract many upvotes and stimulate good discussions, it would be a net loss for HN to ban them.

I agree. So why not run that script in-house, so that we have transparency about the account being scripted? Or, the script user could say something to that effect in their bio. Or, they could use a dedicated scripting account. Anything would be better than this, because it's a bad look for HN, and I'm tired of talking about it, but it's an issue with values to allow scripted submissions as long as they're URLs, but not if they're comments. It's a distinction without a difference to my view.

That being said, I can't disagree that they find good content. I am fine with it being a quirk of the rules that scripts and bots are allowed. I don't think it's what's best for HN, and I don't think that it's the status quo, but as you say, you do a lot of manual intervention. If a script user is making posts that are good, that is reducing your workload, so I think you may be close enough to the situation to care much more than I do, and so I take your view to heart and trust your judgement that it's not a problem to you or HN in your view, but I think differently, and I don't know what you know. If I did know what you do know, I'm willing to believe I would think as you do, so I don't mean to accuse or blame, or find fault.

I like the topic because after a certain point, generated comments and posts may be indistinguishable from other HN posts, which would be weird, but I would be okay with that as long as the humans remain and are willing to curiously engage with each other. I'm not really anti-AI at all, I just find the guidelines rather helpful, and yet I hate to be a scold. Please don't interpret this thread as critical of HN, but rather bemused by HN.

The thing is you just don’t seem to be able to convey why it is that it’s such an important issue. Nobody else cares about it. But you take us to task about it again and again with these lengthy comments but not a clear statement of what the fundamental problem is.

For what it’s worth we have systems and methods for finding good new articles, like the second chance pool. We wouldn’t ban other people’s scripts for the same reason there’s always room in the marketplace for different variants of a product; someone else’s variant may be better than ours at least in some ways.

Ultimately there’s just no need for us to spend a whole lot of time thinking about it because it doesn’t cause problems (that we can’t address with routine human oversight).

> The thing is you just don’t seem to be able to convey why it is that it’s such an important issue.

I have conveyed why it's important to me. Whether or not you find my exhortation convincing or not is likely not due to my lack of attempts to convince you why I feel the way I do. Of all the things you could find lacking, I don't think it's unclear. Scripted behavior isn't authentic. Coordinated inauthentic behavior is problematic to me, because I work in security amongst other hats I wear, and I have another name for coordinated inauthentic behavior.

> Nobody else cares about it.

Tomte cares, and posted in this and the other thread? I'm sure other people would care if they saw the thread. Funny how people only care about what they're aware of.

> For what it’s worth we have systems and methods for finding good new articles, like the second chance pool. We wouldn’t ban other people’s scripts for the same reason there’s always room in the marketplace for different variants of a product; someone else’s variant may be better than ours at least in some ways.

> Ultimately there’s just no need for us to spend a whole lot of time thinking about it because it doesn’t cause problems (that we can’t address with routine human oversight).

You don't have to spend any time to ask script users to mention it in their bio! If they don't, they don't. Rule breakers are not an indictment of the concept of making rules, or following ones that already exist, or closing gaps in the rules once identified.

If there was nothing I or anyone else could say to change your mind, perhaps the failure of communication is on your end, and may even be willful. I come to HN to interact with human beings making user-submitted posts and comments. That's what HN is to me, and this announcement is a departure from all prior communications, because you've laid bare what I drew attention to last time this came up, where Tomte also posted. Apparently people are scripting submissions and farming posts on HN. I don't see how that isn't a problem on its face. The fact that you know and do nothing because perfect detection and enforcement is impossible makes me wonder if the reason you allow it is because it is expedient to moderating HN, and not what is necessarily best for HN as determined by HN users.

> But you take us to task about it again and again with these lengthy comments but not a clear statement of what the fundamental problem is.

And yet the problem has been identified, and it remains signposted by me because the problem has been denied to exist in favor of criticisms of the length of my posts. What even is the issue? Should I post fewer, more convincing words? I am honestly at a loss as to how to continue this thread, so I will rest and await any reply from you or anyone else.

Ok, I definitely need to step away from this thread because where I am it’s nearly midnight on a Sunday night and I’m emotionally exhausted after dealing with some family illness this evening. That’s what’s exacerbated my impatience with the topic and duration of the discussion. It’s just not how I expected/hoped to be spending my the last hours of my Sunday night when I just posted a routine mod comment about a url change. Sorry for letting that get the better of me.

That Tomte sees it as a problem is interesting, because I wouldn’t have been surprised to find they also used some kind of scripts to find articles to post; indeed I just casually assumed they did, at least to some extent. I mean that not as an accusation, just an impression I’d picked up from observing their posts over many years.

Ok, point taken about how it makes you feel about HN. I’ll think more about it as we continue to work on ways to improve everything.

Thank you for your efforts. You and the entire mod team make this site worth visiting, so something you're doing must be working, and likely many things I don't need to know about or trouble myself with. Most sites don't even have named mods, so the fact that you post is here is just as important to me as anything else HN and you all have done to make this place what it is.

I trust you know what you're doing, or I wouldn't be here.

I hope you can rest and recharge. Nothing I said today or probably ever on HN is more important than the people in our lives, which is why I think preserving a place for humans is worth it, even if it's not perfect. I appreciate all you do, even if I have a strange way of showing it.