3 ms·

1. Since hackers are upvoting this article and leaving meaningful comments, yes, this article really is 'of interest to hackers'. 2. I believe that anything th

1. Since hackers are upvoting this article and leaving meaningful comments, yes, this article really is 'of interest to hackers'. 2. I believe that anything that's wrong with the educational system should be 'of interest to hackers'. 3. Oh, and probably this sort of meta-commentary isn't 'of interest to hackers' at all.

davidw 17y ago
There's no guarantee that people voting stuff up are anything more than registered users of this site. That doesn't necessarily even meet whatever nebulous definition of 'hacker' one might use. Lots of things are 'of interest to hackers'. Most of us would be more than capable of flooding the 'new' page with various links about politics, economics, or other things that interest us. But if you want that, perhaps another site (reddit, for instance) would be better. If you are going to use the "it's ok if people vote for it" metric, then my own comment is ok too. Also, I can't flag articles, as PG removed that ability from me in a fit of divine wrath for having mentioned that I flag pretty much everything I consider off topic (I would have preferred he simply ask me to politely desist, as I would have happily complied, but such are the vagaries of deities).
- rms 17y ago
  I think the metric used by pg for judging flagging availability for users is the percentage of stories you flag that are actually killed. It's bad to have a really low percentage of that. HN does seem to be collecting more and more secret rules... If you email pg and ask nicely, he'd probably let you flag again, he's a benevolent deity compared to most of the ones that are regularly worshiped.
  - davidw 17y ago
    It's probably best to spend my time doing more productive things than flagging junk here in any case, so I haven't bothered. This article pushed me into irk-overload though.

3 ms·

1. Since hackers are upvoting this article and leaving meaningful comments, yes, this article really is 'of interest to hackers'. 2. I believe that anything th

by georgecmu 17y ago

davidw 17y ago
There's no guarantee that people voting stuff up are anything more than registered users of this site. That doesn't necessarily even meet whatever nebulous definition of 'hacker' one might use. Lots of things are 'of interest to hackers'. Most of us would be more than capable of flooding the 'new' page with various links about politics, economics, or other things that interest us. But if you want that, perhaps another site (reddit, for instance) would be better. If you are going to use the "it's ok if people vote for it" metric, then my own comment is ok too. Also, I can't flag articles, as PG removed that ability from me in a fit of divine wrath for having mentioned that I flag pretty much everything I consider off topic (I would have preferred he simply ask me to politely desist, as I would have happily complied, but such are the vagaries of deities).
- rms 17y ago
  I think the metric used by pg for judging flagging availability for users is the percentage of stories you flag that are actually killed. It's bad to have a really low percentage of that. HN does seem to be collecting more and more secret rules... If you email pg and ask nicely, he'd probably let you flag again, he's a benevolent deity compared to most of the ones that are regularly worshiped.
  - davidw 17y ago
    It's probably best to spend my time doing more productive things than flagging junk here in any case, so I haven't bothered. This article pushed me into irk-overload though.