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Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

sangaline.com

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Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#3
Posting on a social news site is a privilege, not a right. I've had stuff removed from Reddit and a few from Hacker News that got flagged after going on the front page...I've had stories on Reddit that got many upvotes and still removed just as it was going viral because the mods didn't like it...it's just the way it goes. It def. can seem unfair at times. No question about it.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#4
post #2

I find this sort of conspiratorial meta complaint boring and (IMHO) off topic. I didn't flag it, but I'd understand if others did.

It seems to me that it's healthy if we as a community are able to discuss issues with how the community is policed. Some may find it boring, but I'd argue that it's useful.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#6
The site is being crushed by traffic right now -- but without reading the article, I've also found that some stories that I thought were important that were scrubbed from HN's front page just about as soon as I saw it (when I doubled back to read the comments)...

While I realize I'm not entitled to explanations, some transparency would be appreciated. Maybe it could even be automatic, whenever a mod removed something forcibly from front, they could leave a comment and it'd show up on some page?

[EDIT] - After reading the article, if a mod did indeed take down the post because it discussed reverse engineering the rank algorithm, I think that's pretty naive. Security through obscurity isn't a thing, and the better response is just to make a better algorithm, not try and suppress knowledge about it.

I say this naively myself, as I've never had to maintain a ranking algorithm with these many users who depend on it (or any at all for that matter), but surely the problem isn't intractable?

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#7

Posting on a social news site is a privilege, not a right. I've had stuff removed from Reddit and a few from Hacker News that got flagged after going on the front page...I've had stories on Reddit that got many upvotes and still removed just as it was going viral because the mods didn't like it...it's just the way it goes. It def. can seem unfair at times. No question about it.

That may be so, but it's useful for us to know whether/and what kind of things get removed.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#8

The site is being crushed by traffic right now -- but without reading the article, I've also found that some stories that I thought were important that were scrubbed from HN's front page just about as soon as I saw it (when I doubled back to read the comments)... While I realize I'm not entitled to explanations, some transparency would be appreciated. Maybe it could even be automatic, whenever a mod removed something…

> whenever a mod removed something forcibly from front

Mods (as far as I know, I'm not one) never forcibly remove things from the front page. These are almost always the result of user flagging.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#9

Posting on a social news site is a privilege, not a right. I've had stuff removed from Reddit and a few from Hacker News that got flagged after going on the front page...I've had stories on Reddit that got many upvotes and still removed just as it was going viral because the mods didn't like it...it's just the way it goes. It def. can seem unfair at times. No question about it.

What's this got to do with anything in the OP? Did the OP say anything to the contrary?

It is appropriate that we readers/"consumers" have an interest in how our sources of information are controlled.

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