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Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

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Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#221

Post by dang »

ihuman wrote: post #217
dang wrote: post #149

The story the OP is complaining about was flagged by users. Moderators never saw it (edit: wrong, we put 2010 on the title by mistake, see downthread [1]). Had we seen it, we would have turned off the flags. There's a long tradition of people looking at HN data and posting about it. Edit #2: since the 2010 thing was our mistake (an accident of sleep deprivation by the looks of it!) I've invited foob to repost the ori…

This might be slightly off-topic, but is flagging supposed to be more like downvoting or reporting a post? The guidelines say it is for when a, "story is spam or off-topic," but that doesn't say what flagging means, just when to use it.

It's both. It's like a downvote in that it affects rank, and like reporting a post in that we monitor the flagged articles and take action based on flags. Sometimes the action is to turn the flags off.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#222

Post by turc1656 »

qznc wrote: post #44

Afaik there is a mechanism to remove flame bait articles. If a link gets too many comments too quickly, it gets removed.

If that's true, that seems like the sort of thing that would lead to a ton of false positives getting flagged for removal. I'm sure big news events like the Wikileaks Vault7 release would generate lots of comments. Doing a quick search on HN, I see the top posts related to Vault7 have I find this worrisome. Vault7 is the type of thing that I would expect to generate significant discussion here.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#223

Post by david927 »

minimaxir wrote: post #204
david927 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just change it to be less effective as it becomes more popular. There's no reason to have a 'flag' link once a story hits the main page, for example.

Then people would just submit clickbait titles such that their submission gets quick upvotes for flag immunity.

Good point -- but certainly you can agree that after a certain point threshold flagging is increasingly less valuable and should be more to simply let the mods know to take a look.

Anything is preferable, at this point, to the methods used. Perfectly good articles are getting dropped and it comes across as censorship.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#224

Post by dang »

evo_9 wrote: post #197
dang wrote: post #149

The story the OP is complaining about was flagged by users. Moderators never saw it (edit: wrong, we put 2010 on the title by mistake, see downthread [1]). Had we seen it, we would have turned off the flags. There's a long tradition of people looking at HN data and posting about it. Edit #2: since the 2010 thing was our mistake (an accident of sleep deprivation by the looks of it!) I've invited foob to repost the ori…

Isn't there another factor on rank based on ones Karma or is that a per account thing? Aka, I've noticed that most of my stories I submit never reach the front page, but a nearly identical, or sometimes the exact link will make it to the front-page. I can only speculate that there is some high karma aspect to the ranking algorithm that works against high karma HN users. Kind of seems opposite of how it should be but…

Not based on karma per se but there are various ways for an account to get penalized. People who are worried about whether that's the case are welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com. We'll either tell you there's no penalty or offer to take it off in exchange for following the site guidelines a bit better.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#225

Post by brudgers »

TuringNYC wrote: post #203
dang wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experience wouldn't exist without flagging in the first place. They're an integral part of HN's system, without which it would be overrun with spam, sensationalism, and other kinds of posts that don't belong here. It's true that the effect of flags isn't perfect in every way, but we have to evaluate this on a whole-system level. I'm not aware of any way to make the whole system work significantly better (otherwis…

Suggestion: Make anonymized graph data available on submissions and flaggers so we can spot flag/upvote cartels. This would make for a great final project for some college course.

I suspect that the software does that automatically on the server. Given that 'cartels' are likely to be automated and hence at web rather than human scale, at least some of the counter measures probably should be as well.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#226

Post by tinus_hn »

lightedman wrote: post #124
hardwaresofton wrote: post #6

The site is being crushed by traffic right now -- but without reading the article, I've also found that some stories that I thought were important that were scrubbed from HN's front page just about as soon as I saw it (when I doubled back to read the comments)... While I realize I'm not entitled to explanations, some transparency would be appreciated. Maybe it could even be automatic, whenever a mod removed something…

"While I realize I'm not entitled to explanations, some transparency would be appreciated." No, as a community we are all owed a public explanation. And if stcb and dang can't provide it, they need to step down and make room for someone who can.

The internet is big enough for you or anyone else to start their own clone. They don't have to step down for that.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#227

Post by tokenizerrr »

kordless wrote: post #207
dang wrote: post #149

The story the OP is complaining about was flagged by users. Moderators never saw it (edit: wrong, we put 2010 on the title by mistake, see downthread [1]). Had we seen it, we would have turned off the flags. There's a long tradition of people looking at HN data and posting about it. Edit #2: since the 2010 thing was our mistake (an accident of sleep deprivation by the looks of it!) I've invited foob to repost the ori…

> I want to illustrate the point that we intervene less, not more, when judgments about ourselves are involved. Given "ourselves" is all of us here, a way to illustrate that in a trustworthy way would be to expose the meta data around the story. Which articles were flagged and removed, who flagged, how much it mattered, etc. If not in real time, due to possible exploitation for ranking tweaks, then perhaps in an acce…

As a regular user, I have no interest in being witch hunted because I flagged a story. Votes and flags should be anonymous as far as other users are concerned.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#228

Post by throwaway743824 »

david927 wrote: post #200
dang wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experience wouldn't exist without flagging in the first place. They're an integral part of HN's system, without which it would be overrun with spam, sensationalism, and other kinds of posts that don't belong here. It's true that the effect of flags isn't perfect in every way, but we have to evaluate this on a whole-system level. I'm not aware of any way to make the whole system work significantly better (otherwis…

Just change it to be less effective as it becomes more popular. There's no reason to have a 'flag' link once a story hits the main page, for example.

Or just monitor the stories that get flagged off the front page (~25 over several weeks according to the post) and take appropriate measures (e.g. restoring with relative time and penalize flaggers). Of course they first have to decide whether they want users who cares about the stories they submit and therefor think that non bad things getting flagged off the front page is a problem.

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#229

Post by tokenizerrr »

dang wrote: post #221
ihuman wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be slightly off-topic, but is flagging supposed to be more like downvoting or reporting a post? The guidelines say it is for when a, "story is spam or off-topic," but that doesn't say what flagging means, just when to use it.

It's both. It's like a downvote in that it affects rank, and like reporting a post in that we monitor the flagged articles and take action based on flags. Sometimes the action is to turn the flags off.

Is there a threshold to the amount of flags you look at? If I am the only person to flag your comment here, would a moderator wind up looking at that flag?

Re: Stories that Hacker News removes from the front page

#230

Post by gist »

dang wrote: post #155
minimaxir wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...so what's happening to this submission now, since it dropped from #1? :P

You're so quick! I'm busy adding to my comment to explain.

Have asked this before but any reason you don't have in your profile that you are the moderator? Seems very clubby and exclusionary to only have experienced or frequent users know who you are on this site and what role you play. Ditto I used to say this about PG and others (paul and other partners).

Is the secret handshake that important to the success of HN? Why throw newbies for a loop or make them have to think about this?

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