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Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#31

Post by justinzollars »

TomAnthony wrote: post #10
justinzollars wrote: post #9

Does anyone see the bot attack on Trumps Twitter account? That is interesting. They are posting Satanist images with captions in the Aramaic language. If you work at Twitter you might want to get to work and stop this state sanctioned attack on his account.

Yeah, I saw that. I wanted to ask about it in one of the threads, but they are all being Flagged as off-topic, which is a shame given the magnitude of the story.

It's an abuse of flagging. The biggest story in the world. We can't even talk about it as a community.

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#32

Post by onecommentman »

howlgarnish wrote: post #27
troydavis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime Apple does so. Consider that HN is all about intellectual curiosity. Imagine that the hostname is intellectualcuriosity.ycombinator.com rather than news. Debating product design is more likely to yield interesting thoughts/comments and much…

There are two sides to intellectual curiosity at HN: the article itself, and the opinions of the HN commentariat. In this case, I agree that the news itself isn't particularly intellectually gratifying, but this is seismically important news with many potential non-obvious ramifications, and I would be quite interesting in seeing those HN opinions that aren't just "lol die pumpkin". For comparison, the HN story annou…

Currently the subreddit Coronavirus for general COVID news has a post with the information and over 3000 comments. The subreddit COVID-19, dedicated to the science and medicine side of things with tight moderation, has no posting. There is current precedent for keeping it out. Personally, I choose to visit the COVID-19 subreddit for the same reasons I visit HN.

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#33

Post by detaro »

justinzollars wrote: post #31
TomAnthony wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I saw that. I wanted to ask about it in one of the threads, but they are all being Flagged as off-topic, which is a shame given the magnitude of the story.

It's an abuse of flagging. The biggest story in the world. We can't even talk about it as a community.

In case you didn't see, there is an open thread, its just not on the frontpage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24659207

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#34

Post by implements »

bdcravens wrote: post #16
detaro wrote: post #4

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Articles about Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning would also be subject to those rules.

I was puzzled that we had daily front page Assange Hearing discussions given the exhaustive global coverage the issue has had over the last ten years. Surely this was an instance of using HNs as a soap-box?

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#35

Post by nobody9999 »

kart23 wrote: post #23
justinzollars wrote: post #9

Does anyone see the bot attack on Trumps Twitter account? That is interesting. They are posting Satanist images with captions in the Aramaic language. If you work at Twitter you might want to get to work and stop this state sanctioned attack on his account.

Did you get a screenshot? This sounds really weird and I'm curious.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24659207

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#36

Post by iso1210 »

bdcravens wrote: post #16
detaro wrote: post #4

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Articles about Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning would also be subject to those rules.

Very little coverage of Assange on TV News to be fair

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#38

Post by 3131s »

detaro wrote: post #22
plessthanpt05 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question wasn't about flagged status, it was about why this story was not on the frontpage (even though several posts about it at the time had tons of up votes and weren't flagged). I'm assuming the mods were preventing those posts from hitting the frontpage.

flagging impacts the ranking, even before a [flagged] tag is shown, so when you complain that the discussion about this is not on the front page but somewhere deep down the ranking, you are complaining about user flags. (And after a discussion got enough comments, which it did, all further submissions are duplicates in addition)

Of course we don't actually know that, but from what little the HN mods have indicated that appears to be at least part of the algorithm.

But moderators do sometimes manually save a thread from being flagged dead, which apparently they chose not to do in this case.

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#39

Post by 3131s »

troydavis wrote: post #11
plessthanpt05 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump saying him and Melania testing positive for the Coronavirus four weeks out from the presidential election is huge news. This story is not about politics (i.e. about a political issue), it is about a political/world leader and his wife. Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime…

> Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime Apple does so. Consider that HN is all about intellectual curiosity. Imagine that the hostname is intellectualcuriosity.ycombinator.com rather than news. Debating product design is more likely to yield interesting thoughts/comments and much…

You will see how much longer your bubble will last if the next few months play out wrong.

Re: Ask HN: How is Trump testing positive for Coronavirus not on the frontpage?

#40

Post by troydavis »

3131s wrote: post #39
troydavis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: So "TV news" covering the newest iPhone release would probably be off-topic too then based on this reasoning, but this seems to reliably hit the front page of HN everytime Apple does so. Consider that HN is all about intellectual curiosity. Imagine that the hostname is intellectualcuriosity.ycombinator.com rather than news. Debating product design is more likely to yield interesting thoughts/comments and much…

You will see how much longer your bubble will last if the next few months play out wrong.

I'd appreciate if you could skim https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The things that let HN work at this scale are "Be kind. Don't be snarky." and "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

While it's always possible that HN, or some HN readers, or just yours truly are in a bubble, it's not a good-faith interpretation of my comment. Heck, I don't think it's even a neutral interpretation :-) And bubble or not, a one-line "zinger" regresses the conversation.

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