zlacker

>>oceans+(OP)
@dang Why is this flagged and removed from the front page in seconds.

>>arunab+Z2
Tagging users like that is not a site function. If you want to get in touch with the moderators, send email with the contact link in the page footer.

"flagged" always means that users flagged it, not moderator action.

And there are a lot of readers who will flag all submissions about US politics, no matter the polarity of the article.

>>jsnell+p7
> "flagged" always means that users flagged it, not moderator action. And there are a lot of readers who will flag all submissions about US politics, no matter the polarity of the article.

The thing is that dang has generally not unflagged any posts about topics like these in the past, so there's little reason to think the flagging is only a result of temporary inaction by the moderation team. Rather it is a consistent pattern permitted to exist by said team.

>>i_cann+B9
If you're really curious, something more effective and productive than hypothesizing into the void is emailing hn@ycombinator.com. Dang et. al. have always replied and been helpful and forthcoming in answering my questions and concerns.

>>metada+ae
I have sent an email linking to this discussion, but I think it would be more constructive if the helpful and forthcoming answers happened in public rather than in sent in private email threads to everyone wondering.

Calling discussing something on HN "hypothesizing into the void" is a strange choice of words, either meant to be patronizing toward me specifically or toward all HN users.

>>i_cann+Ef
> I think it would be more constructive if the helpful and forthcoming answers happened in public

You're in luck, because there are thousands of public answers and you can search them easily: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang&type=comment&dateRange... (by dang), https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (by tomhow). The answers we give by email are no different from the ones we give in public.

Whether they are helpful or forthcoming you'll have to decide. They are repetitive (and are even more tedious to write than they are to read) but here are some places to start:

stories with political overlap - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

not a current affairs site - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

consistency in moderation is impossible - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

flags and turning off flags - https://hn.algolia.com/?query=flags%20off%20turn%20by%3Adang...

repetitiveness makes a story and a discussion less interesting in HN's sense - >>42787306 - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

If you take a look at some of those answers and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. But it would be good to familiarize yourself with the standard explanations, because they're nearly always adequate to explain what you're seeing, although they will probably leave you frustrated if you feel strongly about the politics of a story.

FWIW, here's a short version: users flag things for various reasons; we turn off flags on a few such stories, but not more; that's because HN isn't a political or current affairs site; which stories get flags turned off is never going to satisfy anyone's political priorities, because the community is in deep disagreement with itself and because moderation consistency is impossible.

People dislike it when a story whose politics they agree with doesn't get to stay on the frontpage, but since it's impossible for all such stories to be on HN's frontpage, this frustration is unavoidable.

>>dang+Xk
With the direction we're headed, there's a non-zero chance that some day soon I'll click on over to https://news.ycombinator.com/active and see "[flagged][dead] US Erupts in Civil War" and I'll click on the comments to see a copied and pasted comment from dang with a link to a dozen other comments explaining why this political story doesn't belong on HN.

"Politics" doesn't care about your apolitical spaces. It's coming for everything and you'll have to draw the line somewhere.

>>slg+ys
People have been making a version of this argument for as long as I've been doing this job. There is always a feeling of this-time-is-different, how-can-you-not urgency. I'm not saying that's wrong, but there's a counterargument. The counterargument is that political flames have a way of consuming everything they touch and that if we had listened to this argument in the past, HN would have ceased to exist years ago.

I believe that the bulk of this community favors the counterargument, and that it would be a big mistake to let political passions dominate how the site is operated, since that would be the end of HN qua HN. We think a website that's not overwhelmed by politics and political battle—that clears space for other things that gratify curiosity—has a right to exist. I believe most HN readers agree with that and are grateful that we haven't pulled the plug at moments of pressure.

I'm not saying anything radical here - this is the standard way that HN has always operated, and I'm repeating what I've always said:

>>26253103 (Feb 2021)

>>25785791 (Jan 2021)

>>23380817 (June 2020)

>>20453883 (July 2019)

>>16968668 (May 2018)

>>16581518 (March 2018)

>>16402648 (Feb 2018)

>>15948011 (Dec 2017)

>>dang+LB
But reading all those old threads, I got three interpretations of "on topic":

1. Trivial intellectual trinkets,

2. Important topics that happen to overlap with intellectual interest,

3. Important topics that we somehow manage to have a thoughtful discussion about.

Is "off-topic" really about the standard of discussion and not about the topic?

There's a lot of mysterious influences in the dynamics between topic type, community culture, and standard of discussion. I mean to say that allowing thoughtful discussions of controversial topics is not a pipe dream, but it only happens occasionally and we're not really capable of sustained flight, so to speak. It seems like the interesting (worthy, important) adventures into inflammatory topics are parasitic on the comfortable trivial intellectual fluff, which keeps the forum-wide inflammation level down.