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Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

guardian.co.uk

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Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#31

Post by palish »

azharcs wrote: post #30
davidw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's happening in Gaza now seems pretty serious. Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead. I think they are given ample coverage on other sites, and there are plenty of other forums to discuss them on the internet. Or, put another way, say this site had some hawkish Israeli users and some Hamas-oriented Palistinian…

Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead. Your argument seems like "This is not my problem, Why do i care" kind of thing. It is very important for smart people to bring out a solution to this serious conflict which has continued for almost 60 years. We can clearly write it off as an conflict which cannot be solved and…

Okay guys, listen up. I think azharcs is on to something.

SwellJoe, you're in charge of making contact with the Palestinian leadership. unalone, you'll be writing excellent-yet-slightly-sensational articles that will shake the belief system of the zealots perpetuating this conflict. stcredzero's job is to apply Buddhist techniques to invoke a general aura of well-being and connectedness. pg, you're going to set up an Arc-powered community for Israelis and Palestinians to have constructive dialogs about the pros and cons of calling a truce. And if you rename Arc to Ark then we can use the tag line "drowning hate, one comment at a time".

By our powers combined, we can end this conflict once and for all! Let's do it, people!

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#32

Post by tlrobinson »

palish wrote: post #29

Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit. "This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not." pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel it's just too important ." And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hy…

Slightly OT, but I'm curious about the criteria for making submissions "dead". This one was briefly dead, but reappeared after a few minutes.

Can posts be made "undead" by additional up votes, or was it explicitly brought back by a moderator?

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#33

Post by knieveltech »

Maktab wrote: post #17

White Phosphorus is not a banned substance, nor is there anything obviously illegal about Israel's use of it in this conflict. It's certainly not a chemical weapon or any other sort of WMD, despite what some of the more breathless reporting would imply. The only international convention which may regulate the use of White Phosphorus is Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, however as WP is d…

You would have an excellent point if the practice of using phosphorus flares was what was being reported. Unfortunately, the issue that's most heavily reported on is use of phosphorus-based artillery. I invite you to explain to me how reports from UN staff that WP-based artillery shells where used on several warehouses of aid supplies in the midst of a UN compound doesn't constitute use of WP as an incendiary against heavy concentrations of civilians. While you're at it feel free to discuss how WP artillery shells can be deployed in an urban environment without affecting "heavy concentrations of civilians".

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#34

Post by ivankirigin »

tlrobinson wrote: post #32
palish wrote: post #29

Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit. "This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not." pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel it's just too important ." And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hy…

Slightly OT, but I'm curious about the criteria for making submissions "dead". This one was briefly dead, but reappeared after a few minutes. Can posts be made "undead" by additional up votes, or was it explicitly brought back by a moderator?

An editor killed it, then an editor unkilled it.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#35

Post by palish »

tlrobinson wrote: post #32
palish wrote: post #29

Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit. "This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not." pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel it's just too important ." And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hy…

Slightly OT, but I'm curious about the criteria for making submissions "dead". This one was briefly dead, but reappeared after a few minutes. Can posts be made "undead" by additional up votes, or was it explicitly brought back by a moderator?

The story was explicitly brought back. You can upvote a dead story, but I'm not sure whether the submitter gains karma for that, and whether that causes the story to move higher up the front page. But the story will remain dead unless necromanced.

This seems like a good time to share some thoughts about killing submissions. The troubling aspects of the current "dead submission" implementation are:

- You can't comment on the submission itself, only reply to existing comments. I understand the motivation for this, but it feels too close to censorship.

- After a submission is killed, there is no way to visit it. It is good that dead stories are no longer clickable, but I wish there were some way to reconstruct its URL for the highly motivated.

- No reason is given for killing a story. Sometimes a reason is posted in comments, but it's not mandatory. Requiring a one-line justification from the executioner would be both educational and personal.

Also, given that this unabashedly-political article is apparently supported by Management, it seems really hypocritical to disable dantheman's long-standing account without warning, apparently for submitting one off-topic political story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=434666 ... It would be "important" if courts were using evidence despite police errors, right? Then why is Gaza "important enough" to be featured on Hacker News, but the US isn't? I wish I could be certain that there's actually a double-standard in play here, but it's not mandatory to provide a reason for disabling an account (or for killing a story), so there's no way to find out unless I ask. More mysteriously, dantheman's off-topic submission was never killed; his account was simply disabled. So what's going on here? Has he emailed yet?

On a personal note, I'm not looking to pick a fight. I'm just concerned about my fellow users and about the direction of the community. It would be great if dantheman's account wasn't actually disabled for submitting a political story, and all of this was just a misunderstanding.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#36

Post by pg »

tlrobinson wrote: post #32
palish wrote: post #29

Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit. "This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not." pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel it's just too important ." And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hy…

Slightly OT, but I'm curious about the criteria for making submissions "dead". This one was briefly dead, but reappeared after a few minutes. Can posts be made "undead" by additional up votes, or was it explicitly brought back by a moderator?

Are you sure it was dead? I just looked in the kill log, and there is no record of an editor killing it. The kill log is only kept per server invocation, but the server process has been running since yesterday evening, PST.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#37

Post by pg »

palish wrote: post #29

Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit. "This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not." pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel it's just too important ." And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hy…

I don't think this post is a violation of "the rules." HN is not supposed to be just about hacking, but about anything interesting to hackers-- anything interesting to the intellectually curious. There is not necessarily zero overlap between that and Reddit. E.g. Reddit users probably started posting earlier about the present recession, but when the matter became serious enough we started to have some stories about it here too.

As for the claim that this should be killed because it's a crap link, it definitely seems over the threshold for that. It's not just a bunch of random, biased bystanders who are making this accusation, but the UN (http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/yesterday-david.html). So it is at least something that has to be taken seriously.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#38

Post by noor420 »

palish wrote: post #29

Okay, sorry, no. This story is ridiculously Reddit. "This sort of story is important; I don't care if we call this 'Hacker News' or not." pg once linked to a Reddit comment by a passionate Redditor who refused to follow the rules. The gist of the comment was, "I refuse to post this Ron Paul story to the Politics subreddit because I feel it's just too important ." And now here we are about a year later and Ron Paul hy…

Speaking of Israel, here is a video you folks may find interesting:

"Who controls the USA? Bush or Israel" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGroeDe4VYM

(posted earlier) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=436905

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#39

Post by pg »

palish wrote: post #35
tlrobinson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly OT, but I'm curious about the criteria for making submissions "dead". This one was briefly dead, but reappeared after a few minutes. Can posts be made "undead" by additional up votes, or was it explicitly brought back by a moderator?

The story was explicitly brought back. You can upvote a dead story, but I'm not sure whether the submitter gains karma for that, and whether that causes the story to move higher up the front page. But the story will remain dead unless necromanced. This seems like a good time to share some thoughts about killing submissions. The troubling aspects of the current "dead submission" implementation are: - You can't comment…

Dantheman's account wasn't disabled for submitting that comment, but for reinserting editorial remarks in a submission title after I'd reverted it to the original. There's currently no way to lock story titles, so the only way to avoid an endless cycle of reverts was to disable his account for a few hours. I only replied to that comment because there was no other way of contacting him; he had no email addr in his profile. I reinstated his account as soon as he emailed me.

Re: Evidence emerges of Israeli use of phosphorus weapons in Gaza

#40

Post by dag »

azharcs wrote: post #30
davidw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's happening in Gaza now seems pretty serious. Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead. I think they are given ample coverage on other sites, and there are plenty of other forums to discuss them on the internet. Or, put another way, say this site had some hawkish Israeli users and some Hamas-oriented Palistinian…

Serious things have been happening in that part of the world for more than 2000 years, and will continue to happen long after we're all dead. Your argument seems like "This is not my problem, Why do i care" kind of thing. It is very important for smart people to bring out a solution to this serious conflict which has continued for almost 60 years. We can clearly write it off as an conflict which cannot be solved and…

Re: "any news which is serious and impacts lot of people or a region should be discussed here for finding peaceful solutions."

You should read "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman".

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