The article itself was a bit disappointing because it focused on political issues. In my opinion the strength of HN in this regard is that it is both a "sjw cesspool" and a "haven for alt-right", as evidenced by the fact that a comment on a controversial topic can easily float near zero points while raking in both upvotes and downvotes. And even those who refer to it as "the orange site" still come back and comment. In other words, HN may be an echo chamber but it is a pretty big one with a lot of voices in it.
I definitely want to give credit to dang and sctb for making it that way. It could have gone differently. In particular, the no-politics argument is basically a fancy way of saying "nothing that challenges the status quo please". [1] I really appreciate them trying to keep the forum in a state where these discussion can at least happen. I would have left long ago if flagging had continued to be used to kill topics.
[1] See, e.g., Prof Ichikawa on how skepticism gets misused to defend the status quo: https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433
Flagging is frequently used to kill topics still. Climate change articles are still flagged mercilessly, before any discussion starts and without regard for the high-quality of the articles.
dang as a moderator has specifically said that articles about Russia hacking elections are penalized prior to any votes or comments starting (edit: I believe this particular issue is done by the 'moderators' themselves manually or through a filter, not through user-flags. they are not just moderating discussion, they are filtering which topics you see in the first place, on their own).
The discussion here is framed by people who do not want to talk about certain interesting Hacker and Startup related issues, like global climate change or the stability of democracy with technology.
Flags are a common tool used by the community here to shape the discussion before it starts, hiding topics entirely from view that the community would otherwise vote and discuss.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story...
Any topic this widespread is going to produce many copycat and follow-up articles that add no significant new information, as well as many sensationalized articles that don't provide a basis for substantive discussion. Users tend to flag those. If they didn't, climate change wouldn't simply be the most-discussed topic—it would be practically the only topic on HN.
There are also cases of bad flagging, where a particularly substantive article didn't get the discussion it deserved, but these are not nearly as common as people jumping to the conclusion that a topic is being suppressed when they run across a flagged submission. Checking HN search is an easy way to vet that logic (though not as easy as not vetting it). Frequently it turns out that the story has already had significant attention. If, after checking that, you see a particularly substantive article getting flagged, you are welcome to let us know at hn@ycombinator.com. We sometimes turn off flagging in such cases.
Everybody feels that the topic they consider most important is under-discussed on HN. Actually, every important topic is under-discussed on HN, because frontpage space is the scarcest resource we have: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... There's no way around this on a site that exists for curiosity, because curiosity withers under repetition.
You replied in depth to every part of my post except that part. Please explain why you have filters on conversation topics but pretend to be impartial moderators.
Does HN have an automatic mechanism to reduce the visibility on stories relating to Russia's physical and digital attacks on American democracy?
No, HN does not "have an automatic mechanism to reduce the visibility on stories relating to Russia's physical and digital attacks on American democracy". Those issues have received tons of discussion on Hacker News, just like climate change has, just not as recently. If you're talking about something I actually said as opposed to simply making things up, I'd like to see a link—whatever I did say, I wouldn't have put it that way.
That doesn't mean we don't have automated penalties, a.k.a. write software to do things on the site. We rely on software because it would be impossible to do this job without it. There's a lot of software; it does a lot of things. One thing it does is downweight classic flamewar topics. That includes nationalistic flamewars (edit: and partisan flamewars), which there were a lot of about Russia in the last couple years, though the storm of that has shifted to China in recent months. If you're alluding to something I actually said, I imagine that's what it related to.
If you're shocked that some submissions are downweighted by HN software, you may need to realize that this site is curated and has never pretended otherwise. Some submissions are even killed by software outright. The downweights I mentioned are mild and have plenty of opportunity to get overridden, whether by software or by moderators; in fact we do that all the time when we see a substantive story being affected by them. That's one reason why all the topics you're complaining about being suppressed have actually received major, regular discussions on Hacker News.
Sure, here you go. I would never "make things up" and lie on HN, that's despicable and I do not appreciate being accused of such trash by the HN mods.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20192283
That is a well researched story on the NYTimes on an underreported topic that is mostly technological in nature. You claim it got a "software penalty" as opposed to being flagged.
I cannot imagine any interpretation other than what I described, that there is an automatic penalty applied to posts that you personally don't like or have personal expectations from outside of the community's voice.
How am I to interpret your comments without assuming that you have software that flags content and penalizes it by topic when you state that the software penalty happened "because this topic is unfortunately more likely to lead nationalistic flamewar"
I do not understand.
Edit: I cannot see these posts without being logged in as me. Have you hidden this particular discussion from public view? Am I shadowbanned? For what purpose?
Your account is being affected by software penalties that it incurred earlier in the day when you went for full-out ideological battle in this thread. HN has software filters based on past activity by trolls, and after looking at how they were operating on your comments, I believe they were operating correctly. What you're trying to do on this site is not what we want, not what the guidelines call for, and most importantly, not what the community wants. That's where we take our cues.