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

#231

Post by kortilla »

nathanyz wrote: post #207
dang wrote: post #133

> 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 down…

How do you keep user flags from being used as a way to squash articles on a particular topic before they have had the chance to be exposed to the wider HN community? Meaning if someone were to theoretically get a real time feed of HN submissions, and flagged articles that they didn't want seen as well as messaging a group of friends to do the same thing. Do you have protections for this type of behavior that would pr…

What you’re asking about is referred to as “voting ring detection” and it’s something social networks keep very secret.

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

#232

Post by rhaksw »

bnralt wrote: post #225
rhaksw wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Robin89, can you please fix the text? know that was just a mistaken good-faith assumption but it's super wrong. How can he/we verify it's wrong? The down-weighting you describe is not visible to users. Even OP won't know. You can say that down-weighting happens, but we're asking to see where down-weighting happens.

Additionally, just because it’s possible that this could happen doesn’t really give us an idea of how likely it is. Is it one of those theoretically possible, but it never actually happens events? there’s a huge difference between it impacting half of the stories that fall off that quickly, and it impacting 1 in 10,000 stories that fall off that quickly.

Communities would get a good sense for the frequency if forums would simply disclose content moderation to the submitting users. Offending users would learn what's not allowed and share that with the community.

But today's forums frequently do not disclose moderation to submitting users, and that is why we are now seeing major court cases over 230, government-led censorship, etc.

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

#233

Post by caymanjim »

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.

How can users downrank headlines? I only have an option to upvote them. While it's not too frequent, there are things that make it to the front page that I'd like to express my disapproval of.

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

#234

Post by krapp »

throwaway665544 wrote: post #174
dang wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have nothing to hide, why not make all story and comment removal history publicly visible, like Wikipedia edits.

That would create one more thing for people here to complain about. People here would just accuse the mods of faking the mod log to hide their "real agenda" whatever that is.

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

#235

Post by dang »

_kst_ wrote: post #217
dang wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yes! good point. Edit: I changed my GP comment to say "link" instead of "ID".

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

#236

Post by [deleted] »

_kst_ wrote: post #217
dang wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#237

Post by felixgallo »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #168
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.

Personally, I thought it was already pretty well established that the six-foot rule was based on poor science. I remember hearing about that years ago.

The thing is, you're not even wrong. The six foot rule was based on what the best understanding of the experts was at the time, and probably saved thousands of lives. Just like forced masking up probably saved tens of thousands of lives. Both were great examples of science, which readily admits to tuning when new evidence comes into play.

However, because there's a right wing cult around Donald Trump, whose fortunes were hurt by the pandemic, the six foot rule and masking and vaccines are set up as straw men and attacked by a gigantic and well funded and organized horde of proxies, including the #1 media network in the US. It goes something like this: because a particular individual got COVID, that's proof that vaccines are not 100% effective and so They Lied To Us For Nefarious Purposes. Or because this particular individual stood 6 feet away and still got COVID, that's evidence that Fauci Is In A Conspiracy With The Chinese. Or because this particular individual survived COVID, it's just a cold. Or because masks are not 100% effective when not worn securely, they are not effective. And on and on.

So it's not unreasonable or unlikely that you heard a thing about bad science and six feet of social distance or whatever. But hearing a thing, and the thing being true from foundational motivations of actual science, are very different right now.

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

#238

Post by alwa »

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…

Whether or not we’re able to discuss controversial subjects, a topic’s controversy doesn’t imply importance or relevance.

It seems to me that the quality of any public discussion tends to increase when it’s relevant to the expertise in the room, and decrease when it involves people’s casual reads of complicated stuff about which they have vague but emotionally-charged impressions. HN folks have great, nuanced discussions about a wide range of technical questions, but we’re much less likely to collectively know what we’re talking about in questions of the latest hot-button political mudslinging.

There are communities that are good for that kind of discussion, but that’s not what we come here to do. And for this place to stay good at what it does do, it can’t afford to drown out the signal with the noise of emotive bickering.

The site guidelines do, I think, an incredible job of articulating what sustains the tenor here.

But at the end of the day, how best to capture “the vibes” about whether we collectively think a topic is tired or doesn’t fit here? It seems like HN does it just like a good dinner party host would: Change the subject when your guests—that is, the people with a strong track record of positive contributions—indicate that they’re weary of it. After all, we’ve got plenty of things to talk about that we do agree would be fruitful.

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

#239

Post by ziml77 »

top_sigrid wrote: post #45
Bobaso wrote: post #16

this post in now at the top, I wonder wether it will be removed ;)

Is there any reason why you would assume this in such a snarky conspiracy-esque tone? Like someone above pointed out, a rule of moderation on HN literally is, that stories about HN or ycombinator companies itself are moderated less [0]. [0] - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Probably because if they bring that tone to enough topics, eventually they will be right. Though also probably not for the reasons they think (e.g. they say a post will be removed because it discusses a controversial topic when in reality it was removed because it was just plain garbage content).

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

#240

Post by fuzztester »

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…

>LLM stories

Does that mean stories about LLMs or by LLMs?

Serious question.

I am one of the (few? many?) people (devs) who haven't look into LLMs or even tried out ChatGPT yet :), except to make jokes about it here once in a while.

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