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

#261

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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.

I flagged that article, so I'll clearly explain why:

1. I think for anyone that has been on HN throughout pandemic knows it is extremely unlikely for topics like this to produce any sort of valuable discussion. I almost never see any sort of humility on the topic (to be clear, from many/all sides) that admits that people (individuals, experts, literally everyone) were doing what they thought best with the information they had available at the time. It always devolves into portraying the other side as evil. I'm tired of it, I don't want to see it on HN, there are literally pages and pages and pages of place on the Internet where you can have that debate if you're so inclined.

2. Are you honestly purporting that specific article is well tailored to "an overwhelmingly science-minded audience", as opposed to just having a particular political axe to grind, given the title is "Anthony Fauci Fesses Up"? Honestly, if the article was written with an intent to encourage an actual understanding about where the 6-foot rule came from, and about whether the evidence for it was lacking, I probably wouldn't have flagged it.

> it bothers me that an important topic like that is deemed untouchable.

I think the mistake you are making there is thinking because a particular article is flagged by a lot of users that "an important topic like that is deemed untouchable." I can't speak for others, but for me that is absolutely not what I think, and it's not why I flagged this particular submission.

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

#262

Post by MichaelZuo »

dang wrote: post #242
jader201 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wo…

Absolutely. We review the list of stories that set off that software penalty and restore the ones that are clearly not flamewars. No doubt we miss a few, and also - not everyone interprets these things the same way. But if you (or anyone) notice a case of a good thread plummeting off the front page, you can always get us to take a look by emailing hn@ycombinator.com.

There should be some way of doing language detection to detect the relative quality of 'flaming' going on.

So the highest quality 'flame wars' can remain untouched, but downranking everything else below that bar probably makes sense.

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

#263

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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…

I asked this exact question in an Ask HN post a couple of years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29532676

That thread actually changed my mind on the issue. You say "We should be able as a community to discuss conterversial subjects somehow." Well, guess what, we're not, or at least we're not without a great amount of care. Stories like the submitted one, which may be factually accurate but clearly have a political axe to grind are absolutely not going to lead to anything but a shitstorm of useless discussion.

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

#264

Post by Karrot_Kream »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #254
next_xibalba wrote: post #29

Don’t the vast majority of these get removed via flags from users? Edit: I’m not asking a rhetorical question. 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?

> 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. IMO this happens because fundamentally people have "The reddit mental model" about how moderation works here, as if moderation is some privileged, limited position. It's just wrong. Yes, there is dang, the single admin who posts publicly, and I guess it's possible/probable there are o…

> IMO this happens because fundamentally people have "The reddit mental model" about how moderation works here, as if moderation is some privileged, limited position. It's just wrong.

Partially, but I think these are all symptoms for a more fundamental root cause: HN is just comprised of too many emotional, passionate users with fundamentally differing beliefs.

The usual song and dance with flagging goes something like the following with cryptocurrency:

1. User posts cryptocurrency article

2. People who passionately hate cryptocurrency start adding in emotional comments about how they hate it.

3. People who want to fight this passionate hate respond in kind.

4. The thread turns into a giant argument where nobody is willing to concede anything and everyone is just shouting at each other.

5. Either the flamewar detector kicks in (as it should) or everyone not in the thread tires of the shouting and flags it.

That's fine but regrettable when limited to some topics like crypto. But it's happening with social media company earnings reports, layoff posts, RTO discussions, posts about Musk, autonomous vehicles, and on and on.

dang (and the mod team?) are doing great work, but this is despite the feeling I have that HN is barely being held together into a cohesive community, and I'm struggling to even use the word "community" here. I feel the temperature of discussions has gotten a lot hotter here than it used to be and some basic work I've done with sentiment classifiers on comments here mirrors my perspective.

I just don't think a single community can handle so many passionate, opposed groups. It bubbles up by proxy in these sorts of flagging wars where so many articles get bumped off the page due to the inability of the community to discuss it well. Maybe the solution is to just discuss software as some people really want, but even then you get massive flamewars over things like Rust async. Even with interesting topics like VR posts, the overall temperature of the comments here is high enough that I've stopped bothering to comment as much as I used to.

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

#266

Post by MichaelZuo »

Macha wrote: post #196
LordDragonfang wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even the highest karma users can lose their flagging privileges, temporarily or perhaps even permanently, if they do it enough times within a time window or if abuse is detected. So from what I understand that issue should be taken care of.

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

#267

Post by ProllyInfamous »

jgrahamc wrote: post #244
duck wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't see this before, but that is exactly what I've been wanting more of - thanks for setting that up John! I'm curious, do you feel like lower traffic communities like yours serves up the content mix you were hoping for when you started it?

I have no idea. I created it as an experiment. It's fairly active despite being a few months old. We'll see what happens.

I have bookmarked and will post something if I get my Everdrive64 ordered.

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

#268

Post by boomboomsubban »

mandmandam wrote: post #252
Symbiote wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the is on-topic for HN. The initial invasion was allowed due to the international significance, but to discuss subsequent events head to Reddit. This is in the FAQ linked in the footer. Something novel with drones or new medicine or similar will be on topic.

The ICJ is the world's highest court, and genocide cases are very rare. Their verdict, without any question, has "international significance". It's by far the most significant development in months. From the submission guidelines: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. People here were clearly finding those stories interesting, as measured by upvotes and comments. > If they'd cover it on TV ne…

>ICJ is the world's highest court, and genocide cases are very rare. Their verdict, without any question, has "international significance". It's by far the most significant development in months

The verdict had a thread with over fifteen hundred comments and was on the front page most of the day. Others were presumably down ranked as they were dupes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39143043

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

#269

Post by bell-cot »

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 are important differences between

(1) These stories feel incredibly important to me now!

-and-

(2) Complete strangers, all over the internet, and with no official duties or obligations regarding the subjects of these stories, should be required to pay attention to them!

The first one is fine. The second one suggests a somewhat immature worldview, or limited social skills.

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

#270

Post by verticalscaler »

tptacek wrote: post #258
alwa wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 discuss…

The dinner party analogy is perfect.

Sure. Thanksgiving dinner.
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