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Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#3

Post by palmfacehn »

I didn't flag those articles. Discussions of Musk devolve into partisan hyperbole. I'm indifferent on him generally. Many of the discussions become unhinged and absurd. When I attempt to illustrate how extreme some of the hyperbole is, my own comments are generally flagged or downvoted into oblivion. Those who make extreme claims without substance are celebrated. This suggests that a reasonable discussion is not possible on some of these contentious topics.

I also understand that the HN algo has a feature where flamewar-esque threads can trigger flagging of the entire article.

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#4

Post by pvg »

You can mail such questions to hn@ycombinator.com although this one has been addressed in some of the recent mod comments.

The reason such things get flagged has less to do with Musk but with the fact that HN isn't really a current events/news discussion site. It's porous - some things are big and/or interesting enough to get front page coverage but the tick tock of everyday news stories is mostly offtopic and people tend to enforce that with their flags.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901248

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901317

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42896490

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42776410

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#7

Post by mikequinlan »

Hacker News Guidelines

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

Re: Ask HN: What's with flagging articles criticizing Musk?

#8

Post by pvg »

palmfacehn wrote: post #3

I didn't flag those articles. Discussions of Musk devolve into partisan hyperbole. I'm indifferent on him generally. Many of the discussions become unhinged and absurd. When I attempt to illustrate how extreme some of the hyperbole is, my own comments are generally flagged or downvoted into oblivion. Those who make extreme claims without substance are celebrated. This suggests that a reasonable discussion is not poss…

I also understand that the HN algo has a feature where flamewar-esque threads can trigger flagging of the entire article.

It doesn't but there's automatic downweighting which is not flagging. Flagging is something people do.

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