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If you don't get an answer here, write a short email to "hn@ycombinator.com" and ask. That's the "officially correct" approach. I've asked some similar quest
by nkurz 11y ago
If you don't get an answer here, write a short email to "hn@ycombinator.com" and ask. That's the "officially correct" approach. I've asked some similar questions myself, and feel I've always gotten honest (and reasonable) answers.
The other big variable (that is sometimes the answer to my questions) is the "flamewar detector". I don't know the algorithm, but stories that are receiving more comments than upvotes are sometimes penalized in a way that is hard to distinguish from the outside from user flagging.
For this story, user flagging does seem like a likely explanation. I think it would be good to have some more discussion on whether the current system works, whether it will continue to work in the future, and how it might be modified to do so better.
- rquantz 11y agoAnd now I see that on dang's profile. Thanks for the info.
- nkurz 11y agoPlease post the answer here if you get one.
- kspaans 11y agoAhhh interesting, I had noticed a comment thread being "throttled": I could post new replies until about a 15 minute delay. I guess it was "flamewar": more comments than upvotes. :) Thanks!
- rquantz 11y agoThe official response is that it was flagged heavily. dang notes that climate change submissions have tended to lead to flame wars in the past, so those posts tend to get a lot of flags now. It's a shame, because I thought the discussion on the post was fairly constructive, and it was an interesting angle. I suppose there are other places to discuss the many many issues surrounding climate change, but I don't know of anywhere with as knowledgeable a user base. I'd like to see HN find a way to keep the topic available for discussion while keeping the discussion civil.
- brudgers 11y agoTo a first approximation, the conversation was fairly constructive compared to the rest of the internet and compared to the rest of HN fairly non-constructive. There's a lot of undesirable behavior for HN by my reckoning. My take is that certain topics attract people who are hell bent on exhibiting a set of undesirable behaviors. It's unfortunate, but HN's smart people are still people. On the bright side there are many amazingly good conversations here.