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Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

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Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#131

Post by tptacek »

ggdG wrote: post #89

> In fact, I don't see a single story that I personally feel should not have been removed. I don't understand why this story was removed: "It turns out the six-feet social-distancing rule had no scientific basis", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39200511 On a forum with an overwhelmingly science-minded audience, it bothers me that an important topic like that is deemed untouchable.

Stories about COVID controversies are almost certainly getting flagged off the front page by users, not touched by mods. People look at the titles of these stories and think that's all flaggers are going by, but lots of people flag stories based on their experience of what the threads are like, and the threads on COVID controversies are fucking dreadful. I didn't flag (or see) that story, but I would have.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#132

Post by maxbond »

dang wrote: post #104
lars_francke wrote: post #10

> While I have no reason to doubt Daniel's good faith, it's hard to believe that HN users would be tired of LLM-related news. I am, so you can believe it. But: I don't flag things that I'm tired of.

> it's hard to believe that HN users would be tired of LLM-related news For sure many are. This happens with every Major Ongoing Topic (MOT) and LLMs are way beyond a MOT [1]. The hivemind tires of repetition extremely quickly [2]. The trick is to try to separate wheat from chaff, where 'wheat' means the stories that bring Significant New Information (SNI) [3] and 'chaff' means the follow-up and copycat stories, whic…

Have you ever considered writing a book about what you've learned about moderation and community?

You seem to have developed these concepts pretty extensively. Seeing you break down this terminology whets my appetite to hear from you in long form.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#133

Post by dang »

> The assumption is that a Story cannot go from the top 30 to a position higher than 90 in a single minute, without having been explicitly removed.

That's wrong. Both the flamewar detector (a.k.a. the overheated discussion detector) and user flags do that, and there are other software mechanisms that do it too. For example, if a story has been on the front page for more than (IIRC) 18 hours, it gets an automatic downweight unless we manually override it.

Also, keep in mind that user flags affect a submission's rank long before the [flagged] marker appears.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#134

Post by dang »

matt_heimer wrote: post #92

> The assumption is that a Story cannot go from the top 30 to a position higher than 90 in a single minute, without having been explicitly removed. I'm not sure this is a valid assumption. https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39094387 looks to be a story that dropped to the thirties pretty quickly. Maybe due to other suddenly popular content? Looking at the 13 stories listed for Monday, January 22, 2024 only 3…

It's not a valid assumption. I'd better post about this at the top level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39231537.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#135

Post by tptacek »

next_xibalba wrote: post #76
hk__2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are a lot of comments in this thread thanking “the mods” and I didn’t realize there was a mod team cultivating the front page. Can anyone attest to this? https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

I don’t get the impression from that article that Daniel and Scott are curating the front page in the way the thanks in this thread suggest. I am still of the impression that the front page composition is decided by upvotes, downvotes, and flags. Contrary to the implication in this repos’ text.

Scott hasn't been a mod for years.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#136

Post by dang »

wolverine876 wrote: post #52

> Using the official HN API, the service fetches 90 Top Stories every minute and makes a comparison with the first 30 Top Stories (i.e. the Front Page) fetched the previous minute. It logs all missing Stories here. The assumption is that a Story cannot go from the top 30 to a position higher than 90 in a single minute, without having been explicitly removed. The OP's hypothesis is that, if rank drops from top-30 to b…

It's definitely not true, as lolinder has pointed out. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39231537 for more.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#137

Post by lolinder »

wolverine876 wrote: post #84
TheCoreh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a quick glance, I found several that don't match that criteria you mention, here are a few: Open Source Doesn't Require Providing Builds https://codeengineered.com/blog/2024/open-source-not-builds/ Sam Altman Says AI Using Too Much Energy Will Require Breakthrough Energy Source https://futurism.com/sam-altman-energy-breakthrough Avoid Async Rust at All Cost https://blog.hugpoint.tech/avoid_async_rust.html (Perhaps…

I don't agree with the GP at all. Most seem normal for the front page or the intellectual curiosity standard (I mean, personally I'd like a much higher standard, but I'm basing it on what HN already has). All from only one day: * Ford's new 48-inch digital dashboard is a lot of Android for one car: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/22/24045932/ford-android-scr... * Secret Plan Against Germany (a very big story in Germa…

What these are is evidence of your parent comment's point that this isn't direct moderator action, rather a combination of algorithms and user flags.

Most likely, people flagged the Germany story because it has a sensational title and they likely aren't from Germany and so wouldn't have context to know whether it's overblown.

I'm confident that Vx.dev got flagged by a bunch of people because they're tired of LLM stories (as repeatedly attested in this thread).

Based on the ratio of comments to upvotes, I suspect the Open Source Builds and Ford discussions ran afoul of the overheated discussion detector. Usually when the ratio gets too lopsided the software automatically drops the post off the front page, because that's an indicator that a lot of people are arguing in the thread without actually reading or enjoying the article.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#138

Post by jjackson5324 »

nottorp wrote: post #81
jjackson5324 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The corpse of blockchain would like to have a word with you :)

Um, have you seen the price of bitcoin? Or the Bitcoin ETF?

What are you talking about lol.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#139

Post by dang »

I don't have a problem with users building things like this because the principles by which HN works are all easy enough to explain and defend—just remember that anything this complex is inevitably a mess, so you need to have high tolerance for messiness if you want to understand it accurately.

However, it's important to correct inaccuracies like the one mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39231537. Robin89, can you please fix the text? I know it was just a mistaken good-faith assumption but it's super wrong.

Also, it would make it easier for me to respond to the questions here if you'd link the HN IDs on your page to the actual HN threads. Currently they link to social-protocols.org. Obviously you can link to whatever you want but I'm having trouble tracing the questions here. Everyone has their own list of "what happened to story X, Y, Z, and what about W and V and J too" and while I'm happy to answer all those in principle, there are physical limits on how many I can work through.

I'm going to be in meetings for most of the next few hours but I'll try to answer questions in this thread later, assuming I don't drown in it.

Re: Stories removed from the Hacker News Front Page, updated in real time

#140

Post by tptacek »

arcastroe wrote: post #15
fire_ball wrote: post #4

Imagine this itself getting removed... :)

> "literally the first rule of HN moderation is that we moderate less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is involved" source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39172045

That rule does not generally apply to HN meta debates, which this is, so it's a bit of a corner case. If there was a duplicate of this story on the front page tomorrow, I'd expect HN to honor the user flags on it.
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