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

#211

Post by elpocko »

bitcharmer wrote: post #204
elpocko wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things you see on HN are not purely decided by the community. Mods can and do "freeze" the vote count on comments and posts, and do other non-obvious things too. You will notice the effect after participating for a while.

Exactly, the front page is heavily moderated. Almost every day you'll see posts with 50+ upvotes falling of the front page within an hour or two when some article about LISP with It's disingenuous to blame it on the users when there are clearly other "forces" at play here.

The "force" is actually one or two people. It's hard to prove and impossible to change. No one will believe you, either.

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

#212

Post by steveklabnik »

smaudet wrote: post #157
nonethewiser wrote: post #50

This is an interesting dataset. I suspect the main things that get removed are A) politics B) duplicates.

I'm echoing others, but the article on rust async/await seems good. You may or may not agree with the conclusions of the post, but its a technical topic with at least some specific exploration of the (performance/code writing) issues, that links to quite a few further topics for exploration. https://blog.hugpoint.tech/avoid_async_rust.html That said, I noted more than a few typos in the article, so I wonder if there…

> but the article on rust async/await seems good.

It is really not. It is a rant that produced no good discussion anywhere else on the internet. It has no novel insight and is dressed up in a really ugly way. I'm not saying HN should have removed it, but I don't mind that it got flagged.

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

#213

Post by unethical_ban »

karaterobot wrote: post #190
goles wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone that is concerned about over flagging, please consider turning on showdead and vouching responsibly! If as many people thoughtfully vouched as maliciously flagged it may be less of an issue.

Wait, how do you vouch for something that has been flagged? I don't see that option, even with showdead turned on.

You may have to click into the comment directly.

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

#214

Post by nullindividual »

23B1 wrote: post #151
lolinder wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stor…

I think you're probably generally correct, but "blaming the algorithm" sure smells to me like a whole lot of camouflage for censorship, which we ought to know by now has as much to do with 'quality' as it does 'shaping the narrative' Generally speaking HN is a good site and a case study in successful community moderation, but you have to wonder 'who's watching the watchers' these days as the Overton window on free sp…

[flagged]

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

#215

Post by tptacek »

ggdG wrote: post #197
tptacek wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It takes very little effort at all to flag stories that I'm convinced are both colorably off-topic, or duplicative of other marginally topical stories that have run within the last year, and that I'm convinced will create nightmare threads. That's the purpose of the flagging system. That system is also monitored, so that people who abuse it as a super-downvote for stories they just don't like quietly lose flagging powers. So: I plan to keep on doing it.

Remember though: we're not having this conversation so you can persuade me to change how I use the site. I'm just one doofus here. Wha ye need tae worry about are the t'ousand doofuses standing behind me. (_The Devil's Own_, 1997, starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford).

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

#216

Post by ziml77 »

IshKebab wrote: post #110
jjackson5324 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I fully expect AI to be huge in the future, and only get bigger. Doesn't mean I want 50% of HN to be about AI.

Especially when none of it brings anything new. A lot of the AI announcements are from companies who are basically saying "we can send what you typed through GPT-4 with maybe a slightly specialized system prompt". And when it comes to blogs, there's only so many times one can tolerate reading the same exact arguments for or against AI.

I don't know why this has happened with both AI and cryptocurrency that people feel personally attacked when others just don't want to be bombarded with it 24/7.

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

#217

Post by _kst_ »

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.

Or include the URL rather than just the HN ID so readers can follow the links.

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

#218

Post by nullindividual »

throwaway665544 wrote: post #179
23B1 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're probably generally correct, but "blaming the algorithm" sure smells to me like a whole lot of camouflage for censorship, which we ought to know by now has as much to do with 'quality' as it does 'shaping the narrative' Generally speaking HN is a good site and a case study in successful community moderation, but you have to wonder 'who's watching the watchers' these days as the Overton window on free sp…

The simple solution would be to display a log of all removed/flagged/shadowbanned posts and comments, like Wikipedia does.

Enable showdead in your profile if you want to see dead posts. You can't see deleted posts as the author deaded or asked HN to delete the post. See the HN FAQ [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

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

#219

Post by coffeebeqn »

lolinder wrote: post #137
wolverine876 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stor…

I think generally it works well- when there are actual major events like early COVID or Ukraine - HN managed to inform we way ahead of mass media with various interesting sources. But I’m happy to have a “news” thing pop up only a few times a year. You’re gonna have someone be mad about every instance when you moderate

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

#220

Post by coffeebeqn »

bitcharmer wrote: post #204
elpocko wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The things you see on HN are not purely decided by the community. Mods can and do "freeze" the vote count on comments and posts, and do other non-obvious things too. You will notice the effect after participating for a while.

Exactly, the front page is heavily moderated. Almost every day you'll see posts with 50+ upvotes falling of the front page within an hour or two when some article about LISP with It's disingenuous to blame it on the users when there are clearly other "forces" at play here.

I’m sure the HN codebase has some secret creed to make lisp more popular
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