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Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

news.ycombinator.com

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Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#1

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

... on this occasion I'm at a loss. There was an item entitled:

"Unanswerable multiple choice question"

and it was here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1363393

There was a lively discussion, and it got lots of upvotes. That, of course, of itself does not mean it was on-topic, but the guidelines say:

    On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
              That includes more than hacking and startups.  If
              you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might
              be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual
              curiosity.
This particular question was a great example of that last point. Treated carefully it can be used as a starter for paradoxes of all kinds, and self-referential discussions that can lead to correct and appropriate explanations of Goedel's theorems, recursion, formal systems and probability.

I will almost certainly now be using it in my next math club talk, and have already started discussions about it with colleagues in the local university math department.

So why was it killed?

Probably "the judges decision is final" will reign, but I'm annoyed at this one.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#2

Post by tome »

I flagged it. It can barely be described as a paradox, and the question itself didn't contain any useful analysis. It's a shame if insightful comments there didn't get the attention they deserved, but they weren't there at the time I flagged it.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#6

Post by Jun8 »

Wow, this was pretty heavy handed.

I wasn't aware that users could kill posts like this. How many users does it get to do this? On Stack Overflow, it takes 5 users to vote to close a question, and even than the question is still visible.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#8

Post by char »

I scanned the comments for the dead item, and I definitely found the topic interesting. It might not be in the Top Ten Interesting HN Posts Ever, but it was significantly more interesting, for example, than many of the dull, repeat-articles about, say, Facebook or the iPad, that do not provide me with any useful information re: hacking and startups, nor satisfy my intellectual curiosity.

But that's just my opinion.

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#9

Post by Jun8 »

tokenadult wrote: post #7
iamwil wrote: post #3

I can't even see the original multiple choice question. What was it?

Can't all users see deaded threads if they just turn on [showdead] in their user profiles?

Thanks for the tip, just turned it on and now I can see the question. There must be a lot of HNers like me who don't know this, though.

I cannot understand the point of hiding deadened questions while still keeping the comments?

Re: Usually I agree with the moderating, but ...

#10

Post by gaulinmp »

tome wrote: post #2

I flagged it. It can barely be described as a paradox, and the question itself didn't contain any useful analysis. It's a shame if insightful comments there didn't get the attention they deserved, but they weren't there at the time I flagged it.

Barely be described as a paradox? What does this even mean? Is the state of paradox not binary? As was stated it could lead to great discussions, the foremost of which in my mind would pertain to GEB and fans thereof. It was a Socratic approach to initiating discussion, and in your mind this warrants flagging?
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