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

#411

Post by smcin »

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.

Here's one from last week:

"Ring will no longer allow police to request users' doorbell camera footage" (npr.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138423

I posted an on-topic supporting quote to explain why this item was newsworthy and got one unhelpful one-word response and my comment got inexplicably flagged (not the commenter) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138481

How did that slip past detection? How do I get the abusive flag on my comment reversed? This behavior seems to have managed to push an important story off the frontpage quickly. (yes there was a badly-worded dupe headline, but that's a separate thing)

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

#412

Post by dang »

threatofrain wrote: post #51
nottorp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV. I don't want to see Altman's fearmongering and hyperbolic statements. At this point he's indistinguishable from a bitcoin advocate or a tv preacher.

It's dubious that HN mods think that way of Altman though.

I like Sam, but "$celebrity says $thing about $common-topic" is almost never a good basis for a frontpage thread on HN.

It's vital to HN that user flags and/or software like the flamewar detector clear most such submissions off the front page. They tend to attract a lot of upvotes because that's what sensational (and especially indignant-sensational) stories do. Without countervailing mechanisms, HN would be completely taken over by those stories.

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

#414

Post by CamperBob2 »

ggdG wrote: post #334
Workaccount2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same with masks: Put a water hose on mist and spray someone with it. Then put a cloth over the nozzle and try to spray them. It's self evident yet people just could not grasp it.

It's "self evident" yet a large Cochrane meta-analysis finds no benificial effect of masks whatsoever: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD...

You can find a meta-analysis to prove anything you want.

It is an extraordinary claim that wearing a mask properly does not reduce transmission of viral particles. You'll need to come up with a physical basis for this unintuitive hypothesis if you want to be taken seriously. Then you can point to studies whose results are explained by that hypothesis.

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

#415

Post by dang »

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.

Besides upvotes, downvotes, and flags, there are software penalties like the flamewar detector and various anti-abuse measures, and moderation downweights. We do a lot of the latter—I don't want to underemphasize this. The HN system is a combination of these three subsystems.

You're right that user flags do more than mods do, just because the numbers work that way: there are many orders of magnitude more users flagging things than there are mods.

Edit: 5 orders of magnitude more, in fact!

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

#416

Post by dang »

reductum wrote: post #329
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.

I witnessed a recent front page link silently get changed to point to a parody video, then silently changed back later, with the top comment that remarked on the change silently removed. That told me all I needed to know about the moderation of this site. Thankfully someone captured a screenshot: https://merveilles.town/@cancel/111834048502040552

> That told me all I needed to know about the moderation of this site.

In that case you drew a general conclusion from a freak accident so rare that I doubt it had happened in the 17 years this site has been around. (Edit: 17 years this month in fact! https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycomb...)

If what you require from an internet forum is that the moderators under no circumstances will ever commit a copy/paste error, HN is definitely below your standards.

Edit: the mods would like to share that they weren't drunk when they made that mistake, just rushed and watching a rather gripping tennis final.

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

#417

Post by dang »

sandworm101 wrote: post #69
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.

https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/nasa-system-pred... Really? A NASA report, on the official .gov site? Maybe the comments were horrible but that seems right in the middle of what HN is interested in.

You're talking about this submission:

NASA System Predicts Impact of a Small Asteroid over Germany - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39126705 - Jan 2024 (18 comments)

It was downweighted because it was a dupe (or quasidupe) of this:

Scientists discover near-Earth asteroid hours before it exploded over Berlin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39103412 - Jan 2024 (46 comments)

That's the system functioning as intended. We work hard to try to prevent repetition from taking over the site, because repetition is the enemy of curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

One thing I've learned today, after 11 hours of posting in this thread, is that it's easy to look at an article in isolation and say "Really? That got moderated?" - when in fact if you know the larger context there's nearly always a straightforward explanation.

One can certainly argue that 86 points and 46 comments is too low a threshold to treat the repost as a dupe, but that's a different question, no?

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

#418

Post by elpocko »

dang wrote: post #404
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.

We don't freeze vote counts. What made you think that we did?

Comments on frontpage posts that go up quickly but then suddenly don't receive any votes in any direction makes me think you do freeze vote counts.

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

#419

Post by defrost »

dang wrote: post #417
sandworm101 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/nasa-system-pred... Really? A NASA report, on the official .gov site? Maybe the comments were horrible but that seems right in the middle of what HN is interested in.

You're talking about this submission: NASA System Predicts Impact of a Small Asteroid over Germany - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39126705 - Jan 2024 (18 comments) It was downweighted because it was a dupe (or quasidupe) of this: Scientists discover near-Earth asteroid hours before it exploded over Berlin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39103412 - Jan 2024 (46 comments) That's the system functioning as…

> after 11 hours of posting in this thread

The effort is appreciated by some if not most.

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

#420

Post by dang »

defrost wrote: post #419
dang wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about this submission: NASA System Predicts Impact of a Small Asteroid over Germany - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39126705 - Jan 2024 (18 comments) It was downweighted because it was a dupe (or quasidupe) of this: Scientists discover near-Earth asteroid hours before it exploded over Berlin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39103412 - Jan 2024 (46 comments) That's the system functioning as…

> after 11 hours of posting in this thread The effort is appreciated by some if not most.

It wasn't 11 hours straight by any means. But thanks! It's nice of you to say that.

When I get tired I start to complain. It's a bad habit.

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