Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 532 posts

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

#191

Post by wtallis »

verticalscaler wrote: post #146
tptacek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But why must they be dreadful? Genuine question, I am not being obtuse. We should be able as a community to discuss conterversial subjects somehow. I also think this sort of thing invites flag brigades. Or better yet, a small batch of bad actor can easily start brigading and forcefully associate such flamewar expectations with any subject they don't like to drive it off HN. Maybe worth reconsidering how you flag? You…

HN's guidelines have this relevant bit:

> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

An editorial that clearly does not embody that spirit is a poor starting point if you want the discussion to trend towards sanity.

Especially when the title itself violates—and ensures further violations of—this rule:

> Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.

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

#192

Post by tptacek »

verticalscaler wrote: post #183
tptacek wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why they're dreadful, but they empirically are, and that's the end of the matter for me.

I think this sort of thing taken to the limit will cut every which way until eventually we run out of subjects and the overton window shrinks into an overton dot.

We've been running this system for something like a decade now, I think we know how it's going to converge.

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

#193

Post by fragmede »

mandmandam wrote: post #184
lolinder wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is accurate, per dang's comment on the Gary Tan thread the other day: > We didn't flag the post; users did. When it comes to submissions, that's nearly always the case - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html . https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39169622

There are stories on this list that deserved to be seen, were popular, were important, and were not in fact dumpster fires in the comments - but a particular crowd with a particular bias decided to flag them. Example 1: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39142094 Example 2: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39130652 Example 3: https://news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=39214844 Does this crowd think…

There's a certain element that doesn't want to discuss politics at all, so I imagine these ran afoul of that crowd. This is a tech-oriented site, and we're not going to come up with a Middle East peace plan in the comments.

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

#194

Post by jader201 »

dang wrote: post #158
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…

The first two you listed were downranked by the flamewar detector. The last one was downranked by users. Admins didn't touch any of them. Note for everybody: can you guys please include the HN /item link if you're mentioning specific threads? That would be much more efficient and that way I can answer many more of people's questions.

> The first two you listed were downranked by the flamewar detector.

Just some feedback that I've found a number of articles fall off the FP due to the flamewar detector that I've felt were good articles/discussions. In fact, I think some of the more valuable discussions tend to have a lot of back and forth discussions relative to the votes.

But I also recognize that flamewars can also look a lot like that.

So I'm wondering if it may be worth revisiting the algorithm for this, and maybe having it factor in a few other things vs. simply the vote:comment ratio (which is what I'm understanding it currently is, but correct me if I'm wrong).

I don't think it necessarily needs to be a lot more complex, maybe simply add to it some standard deviation of upvotes/downvotes (or just a simple ratio), if that's not already part of it.

But I've seen some discussions fall off that I don't remember seeing a particularly toxic discussion happening (e.g. relatively little to no downvoted comments).

Again, happy to see flamewars fall off, but just hoping to see some more interesting/helpful discussions not get caught in the crossfire.

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

#195

Post by _Algernon_ »

verticalscaler wrote: post #183
tptacek wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why they're dreadful, but they empirically are, and that's the end of the matter for me.

I think this sort of thing taken to the limit will cut every which way until eventually we run out of subjects and the overton window shrinks into an overton dot.

The risk that the quality of discourse on HN falls to Reddit leveles of shitposting seems a greater one to me. Having high volume of popular highly polarized discussions seems a great way to have an Eternal September[2] event, and there is no way to recover what makes a forum unique after that.

HN is a single place on the internet with clear moderation guidelines[1]. It doesn't have to cater to every form of speech. In fact, actively not doing so is probably the reason why HN's level of discourse is comparatively high.

People who want Reddit should go to Reddit, not drag HN with them through the mud.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

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

#196

Post by Macha »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #187
fakedang wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There ought to be a time-based flagging limit, so that people don't abuse the system. I've already raised this earlier. If Company A makes a killer product announcement, rival Company B could simply get its employees to spam down votes on and flag that post. Company A gets less visibility, and dang won't be able to come on time to stop it. This is an easily plausible hypothetical, which may already be happening.

Flagging requires high HN karma. You get that by being a positive member of the community. Most such people, if a company even has one, would find it against their personal ethics to do that. And dang can see the karma ratio and unflag any actually worthwhile announcements.

I think as people have become more and more aware that flag negatively weights items for rankings, and isn't just a "hey have the mods look at this rule breaking thing", more people have started using it as a downvote button. It was my understanding that HN originally didn't have a downvote feature to avoid the kind of issues that the flag usage is now causing.

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

#197

Post by ggdG »

tptacek wrote: post #177
ggdG wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lots of people flag stories based on their experience of what the threads are like IMHO story submissions should be judged based upon their own merits. Toxic commenters can be downvoted/banned but the story submitter shouldn't be punished for the misbehavior of others. > I didn't flag (or see) that story, but I would have. You mean purely based on the expected awfulness of imagined future comments, instead of the a…

It's good to want things! We can just disagree. There's not enough space on the front page for all the good things we want to read. I'm not interested in expending extra effort to rescue marginal stories with a low likelihood of generating a good conversation. The people most invested in these kinds of stories seem to be almost the least invested in HN's rubric of curious conversation. I don't call any of the shots a…

> I'm not interested in expending extra effort to rescue marginal stories with a low likelihood of generating a good conversation.

I didn't ask you to expend effort in rescuing stories. I took issue with the way you expend effort in burying stories, even before the comment section turns out to go sideways:

> 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

#198

Post by mikysco »

TheCoreh wrote: post #36
a12k wrote: post #3

Looking at the list of removed stories makes me really happy with the moderators here. They're all sensationalist, advertising for some company, clickbait, way off topic, or some combination of above. In fact, I don't see a single story that I personally feel should not have been removed. Thanks, mods.

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…

Sam Altman led invests in a nuclear fusion company, Helion. Guessing the potential conflict of interest is why the 2nd article drew vote controversy.

https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/announcing-500-million...

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

#199

Post by Macha »

wolverine876 wrote: post #100
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…

> Does a story about razor wire in Texas belong on hacker news? I'm in Texas so the story is of interest to me but I'd expect to hear about it elsewhere, not on HN. Perhaps in TX you don't realize it, but it's a big national story, implicating the Constitution, federal authority, even the Civil War. It's political, for sure; but it's not local.

HN is present in more than just the US

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

#200

Post by fragmede »

verticalscaler wrote: post #146
tptacek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But why must they be dreadful? Genuine question, I am not being obtuse. We should be able as a community to discuss conterversial subjects somehow. I also think this sort of thing invites flag brigades. Or better yet, a small batch of bad actor can easily start brigading and forcefully associate such flamewar expectations with any subject they don't like to drive it off HN. Maybe worth reconsidering how you flag? You…

They're dreadful because people are coming from opposite places and are unwilling to be convinced otherwise, so the conversations are repetitive and dull, with little new information. We really don't need to hear for the 100th time how Covid was or was not a lab leak when there's no new real evidence one way or the other, but every time Covid comes up, there's gonna be some unresolvable argument in the comments that's just dreadful and not worthy of this site's time. Hence the flag. With a infinitely more heavy handed moderation team (or LLM) to judge comments before they got posted, we might be able to have good discussions on such topics, but until then, you can turn on show dead in your profile to see what kind of low-quality comments certain topics attract.
Post reply on HN