Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
mjg59.dreamwidth.org
Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
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Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
#2Thanks for doing the work of trying to apply data to investigate this. It's too often lacking in discussions like these.
Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
#3> But for now the evidence appears consistent with my innate prejudice - the Hacker News ranking algorithm tends to penalise stories that address social issues.
My innate prejudice says something worse: that many stories that have to do with social justice but are oblivious to their potentially adverse effect (intentionally or not) are not penalized and are rather handsomely rewarded. These are stories that seem to be about "innovation", but are really about a power struggle (e.g. stories about companies providing marketplace services in the "sharing economy"), with the sole exception of privacy (which fits with the techno-libertarian bias).
It is often said that discussion here shouldn't be about politics, but the worst kind of politics is that which you don't even notice (or choose not to notice).
And once something of substance does come up, it's so frustrating to see it quickly drop in rank because it's automatically tagged as controversial. So a story about a company offering cheap food delivery can stay at the top for a while, but a discussion about a workers' strike against Uber quickly disappears from the front page.
Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
#4[deleted]
Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
#5An interesting read. Of course, it criticises HN for actively penalising talk on social issues, which might well mean that this story itself will be penalised. And so the great cycle continues.
Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
#6An interesting read. Of course, it criticises HN for actively penalising talk on social issues, which might well mean that this story itself will be penalised. And so the great cycle continues.
In fact, it was: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/527890332206510080
Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
#7An interesting read. Of course, it criticises HN for actively penalising talk on social issues, which might well mean that this story itself will be penalised. And so the great cycle continues.
Actually, I believe Hacker News stories are penalty words too. (discourages meta discussion which can be toxic)
Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
#8> But for now the evidence appears consistent with my innate prejudice - the Hacker News ranking algorithm tends to penalise stories that address social issues. My innate prejudice says something worse: that many stories that have to do with social justice but are oblivious to their potentially adverse effect (intentionally or not) are not penalized and are rather handsomely rewarded. These are stories that seem to b…
You may be including it in "automatically tagged as controversial", but I have the feeling that there are lots of people that are flagging those topics (which fits under "automatic" if you include reflexive flagging of social issues topics, but doesn't if you limit "automatic" to the software running the site).
I pretty much don't flag anything, but I can see how that flagging could be driven more out of a feeling that those discussions don't accomplish anything than out of a desire to penalize those stories.
Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
#9An interesting read. Of course, it criticises HN for actively penalising talk on social issues, which might well mean that this story itself will be penalised. And so the great cycle continues.
In fact, it was: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/527890332206510080
According to HN's software, this story has been heavily ring-voted. That's what has affected its rank.
Call that "penalized" if you want, but it has nothing to do with the content, so that tweet is misleading—and ironic, too, given what provoked the "penalizing".
(Also, in case anyone's wondering, moderators haven't touched the post.)
Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)
#10The Hacker News ranking algorithm tends to penalize stories that address social issues.
The Hacker News ranking algorithm does not penalize stories that address social issues. It doesn't consider social issues at all, apart from a couple of special cases that we turn off once a major wave subsides [1]. The effects the OP is observing are mostly caused by user flags and the voting ring detector.
1. The intention there is to prevent copycat and follow-up stories from clogging up the front page. For example, NSA stories used to be weakly penalized, but no longer are, and I think there's still a similar penalty on ebola stories.