zlacker

>>Robin8+(OP)
> In fact, I don't see a single story that I personally feel should not have been removed.

I don't understand why this story was removed: "It turns out the six-feet social-distancing rule had no scientific basis", >>39200511

On a forum with an overwhelmingly science-minded audience, it bothers me that an important topic like that is deemed untouchable.

>>ggdG+ib
Stories about COVID controversies are almost certainly getting flagged off the front page by users, not touched by mods. People look at the titles of these stories and think that's all flaggers are going by, but lots of people flag stories based on their experience of what the threads are like, and the threads on COVID controversies are fucking dreadful. I didn't flag (or see) that story, but I would have.

>>tptace+ug
But why must they be dreadful? Genuine question, I am not being obtuse. We should be able as a community to discuss conterversial subjects somehow.

I also think this sort of thing invites flag brigades. Or better yet, a small batch of bad actor can easily start brigading and forcefully associate such flamewar expectations with any subject they don't like to drive it off HN.

Maybe worth reconsidering how you flag? You might be getting played. Or not, I really don't know. No obvious answers.

>>vertic+6j
Whether or not we’re able to discuss controversial subjects, a topic’s controversy doesn’t imply importance or relevance.

It seems to me that the quality of any public discussion tends to increase when it’s relevant to the expertise in the room, and decrease when it involves people’s casual reads of complicated stuff about which they have vague but emotionally-charged impressions. HN folks have great, nuanced discussions about a wide range of technical questions, but we’re much less likely to collectively know what we’re talking about in questions of the latest hot-button political mudslinging.

There are communities that are good for that kind of discussion, but that’s not what we come here to do. And for this place to stay good at what it does do, it can’t afford to drown out the signal with the noise of emotive bickering.

The site guidelines do, I think, an incredible job of articulating what sustains the tenor here.

But at the end of the day, how best to capture “the vibes” about whether we collectively think a topic is tired or doesn’t fit here? It seems like HN does it just like a good dinner party host would: Change the subject when your guests—that is, the people with a strong track record of positive contributions—indicate that they’re weary of it. After all, we’ve got plenty of things to talk about that we do agree would be fruitful.

>>alwa+dB
> It seems to me that the quality of any public discussion tends to increase when it’s relevant to the expertise in the room, and decrease when it involves people’s casual reads of complicated stuff about which they have vague but emotionally-charged impressions. HN folks have great, nuanced discussions about a wide range of technical questions, but we’re much less likely to collectively know what we’re talking about in questions of the latest hot-button political mudslinging.

The expertise on HN is indeed unrivaled.

If I want to learn about the quirks of a variational autoencoder in some neural network, I read the discussion between experts here on HN [1].

If I want to learn about protein folding, I can find relevant domain experts answering questions here on HN [2].

But why do you and so many others think that there is a covid-shaped hole in the expertise on HN? Do you really believe that out of all domain experts, the covid ones decided to stay away from here?

[1] >>39215242

[2] >>32262856

>>ggdG+MU
There's a lot of expertise about COVID here! The problem is, in a variational autoencoder discussion, that's mostly all there is, and in COVID threads there is lots of energy from non-COVID experts.

This isn't complicated. You can just look at any COVID thread and see what a shitshow it is. That's not for lack of COVID expertise, though most of that expertise is probably Homer-melding-backwards-into-the-hedges when they see the thread.

>>tptace+JY
>This isn't complicated. You can just look at any COVID thread and see what a shitshow it is.

I hardly see any covid threads here. I happened to see the one of this week. It got 8 comments before being flagged into oblivion.

>That's not for lack of COVID expertise, though most of that expertise is probably Homer-melding-backwards-into-the-hedges when they see the thread.

You cannot have it both ways. Either you flag covid threads preemptively [1] along with a bunch of other users [2], or you try to learn from domain experts in these threads.

But making assumptions about what these experts would have thought of these threads, had they not been flagged down prematurely, is a weird leap of reasoning.

[1] >>39231535

[2] >>39232084