zlacker

Climate change is discussed a great deal on HN these days; probably more than any other topic:

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.

replies(2): >>wpietr+de >>cowabu+qh

>>dang+(OP)
So pretty clearly I have wildly underestimated the amount that flagging is used to suppress stories. Is there some way for me to see which stories are getting flagged and by how much?

replies(1): >>nkurz+sv

>>dang+(OP)
Do you have no comment about the censuring you do of topics like Russian election hacking? To me that is the most violating of your duty, that you preemptively reduce conversation on particular topics.

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?

replies(1): >>dang+Oq

>>cowabu+qh
I focused on climate change because that is the topic that has the most intensity on HN at the moment. This is a matter of triage. It's incredibly costly in time and energy to write detailed answers like this. We can't do that about everything. If we tried, it would peg us at 100% and starve the rest of the site.

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.

replies(2): >>cowabu+Ds >>martin+Zw

>>dang+Oq
> If you're talking about something I actually said as opposed to simply making things up, I'd like to see a link

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?

replies(1): >>dang+it

>>cowabu+Ds
That thread doesn't say anything like what you claimed it did.

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.

replies(1): >>reactn+Vu

>>dang+it
> More importantly, it's not what the community wants. That's where we take our cues.

Your community wants a safe space for Nazis to spread hate. Is that really what you want?

replies(1): >>dang+jv

>>reactn+Vu
That's of course not true, and breaks at least two of the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>>wpietr+de
On the site proper, I think flagged stories that have lots of comments are still shown in the Active list (follow the link to Lists at the bottom). But easier may be to view outside sites such as http://hnrankings.info (look for sharp drops in position and lines that end before the right side of the graph) or http://hckrnews.com (look for DEAD in the title or a blank in the number of comments).

replies(1): >>wpietr+aD

>>dang+Oq
Thanks dang for your thoughtful and detailed replies. I don't know if it will help the user you're replying to, but I've read all your comments here with interest. They help me understand how to be a better commenter.

Thanks again.

>>nkurz+sv
Thanks. In that case, I'd like to suggest to dang, et al, that HN make flagging behavior and its results more visible. If we have to read tea leaves to find out what's being excluded and have no idea who's excluding it, that seems like a dangerous situation. And one where, as we can see in the thread, it allows people to be pretty paranoid.