4 ms·

Ask HN: Why have been articles about terrorism attack in Nice been flagged?

14 points by gonvaled 10y ago

Similarly off-topic articles are never flagged (see for example [1]) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11917265

greenyoda 10y ago
As per HN Guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html As for your example [1], I remember that there were dozens of articles about the same topic that were killed by flagging, because they were off-topic for the same reasons as the current story (TV news/politics/crime). You just happened to find one that slipped through the cracks.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  All (7 / 8 ?) articles about the France terrorism attacks have been flagged. I have been able to find 5 non-flagged articles about Jo Cox: [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11917265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11917265 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11916826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11916826 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11919151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11919151 [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11942191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11942191 [5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945171 And one flagged: [6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11923941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11923941
  - nl 10y ago
    Only one of them made the front page, and it only had 3 comments. Generally things that aren't complete spam don't get flagged until they make the front page and someone with flag privileges at the time sees it.
    - gonvaled 10y ago
      How do you know they didn't make the front page? I would like to verify your explanation.
      - nl 10y ago
        You can't easily AFAIK, but they have so few points that it looks pretty unlikely. The one with comments has 20 points and the next best is 6 points. You'll note that the flagged on at 10 points, so it might have made it? Why do you think it is?
        gonvaled 10y ago
        Frankly, I have the impression that even though HN is supposed to be apolitical and cosmopolitan (since technology and science, central topics to HN are so), in reality HN is extremely anglophile (British + American centric, with some Israeli vestiges) I can not fathom a terrorist attack killing 100 people in Los Angeles being flagged out of existence in HN; I can imagine that if 20 articles appear about a specific incident, some will be indeed flagged, but surely not all. Flagging is probably right according to HN guidelines, so that is what should happen for all off-topic articles, but this is not what HN is doing. I think the guidelines should be updated to reflect this fact: "flag off-topic news unless they are relevant to the Anglo community"
        nl 10y ago
        I think you might want to reconsider. I'd note that the Orlando nightclub shootings were flagged[1]. This of course wasn't as bad as in Nice in terms of fatalities, but is somewhat comparable (insofar as that is possible. What a horrible thing to have to compare). Comments there seemed to try to imply it was some kind of conspiracy, but I think the behaviour there was exactly the same as with this attack. I think we are seeing fatigue over terror attacks - people are just numb to the tragedies and feel like discussing it is useless. I'm not sure if you are French or lost people in Nice, but if you are you have my sympathy. I was in France only a few months back, and this event made me both sad and angry. HN is certainly Silicon Valley centric, but that is expected given its origins and audience. However, my impression is that coverage of EU tech issues gets more coverage than most places. There is certainly more coverage of US politics than other places, but the majority of that is related to tech issues. (I'm not from the US, Canada or UK, nor do I live in any of those places) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11888228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11888228
- celticninja 10y ago
  Sometimes non tech stories need to be shared, many times the comments from a decent community can be worth more than the story.
  - gonvaled 10y ago
    I am not sure whether I agree or not with your comment, but what interests me more at this moment is "why the different treatment in HN?"
    - dozzie 10y ago
      Because HN doesn't expect general news. There are other outlets for those. You don't see news about astronomers finding a new planet in a finance newspaper, do you? HN is a technical news aggregator, so crime and war and politics are out of the scope -- unless it's the technological aspect that was highlighted.
      - gonvaled 10y ago
        I know. You misunderstand: “why the different treatment in HN ... of off-topic news?“. Some are flagged, some are not.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        There's no crisp boundaries for off-topic, just lose guidelines. For general news, it's quite easy for slight variations in the details of the article or its presentation, timing, and context -- even if they are in a superficially similar category -- to have significant impacts on opinions as to whether they offer a hook for HN style discussions, a particular nexus to the interest-focus of HN distinct from just general news, etc. Also, timing can affect what subset of the userbase is voting/flagging.
- J_Darnley 10y ago
  As one who spend several hours last night flagging all the stories about Nice, this is exactly why. You will hear about it on every TV news broadcast. Two national evening news broadcasts here were two-thirds and one-half about Nice. As for the Jo Cox stories, I wasn't bored enough to do this then. Sorry about that, OP.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 10y ago
As someone who flagged one, because they were articles that clearly were simple direct breaking news articles of general interest with no hook for discussion beyond people's prejudices. They are important news articles, but not something that people are going to miss without HN and not something well suited to the kind of discussion HN exists to foster. This is, of course, subjective, and people can disagree, but HN replies on subjective and largely community-driven moderation to maintain its character.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  I understand why they have been flagged, but I think flagging is used inconsistently, and wanted to hear opinions on why that could be.
  - krapp 10y ago
    Flagging can't be expected to be consistent, because what gets flagged depends on who happens to be online when a story they happen to want to flag gets posted, and what mood they happen to be in. Sometimes stories which probably should be flagged (in my opinion, far more than are flagged) quickly gain traction, which seems to negate attempts to flag them later. This may be a good time to remind people that they can hide stories as well as flag them now.

14 points by gonvaled 10y ago

Similarly off-topic articles are never flagged (see for example [1]) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11917265

As per HN Guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html As for your example [1], I remember that there were dozens of articles about the same topic that were killed by flagging, because they were off-topic for the same reasons as the current story (TV news/politics/crime). You just happened to find one that slipped through the cracks.

gonvaled 10y ago
All (7 / 8 ?) articles about the France terrorism attacks have been flagged. I have been able to find 5 non-flagged articles about Jo Cox: [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11917265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11917265 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11916826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11916826 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11919151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11919151 [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11942191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11942191 [5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945171 And one flagged: [6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11923941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11923941
- nl 10y ago
  Only one of them made the front page, and it only had 3 comments. Generally things that aren't complete spam don't get flagged until they make the front page and someone with flag privileges at the time sees it.
  - gonvaled 10y ago
    How do you know they didn't make the front page? I would like to verify your explanation.
    - nl 10y ago
      You can't easily AFAIK, but they have so few points that it looks pretty unlikely. The one with comments has 20 points and the next best is 6 points. You'll note that the flagged on at 10 points, so it might have made it? Why do you think it is?
      - gonvaled 10y ago
        Frankly, I have the impression that even though HN is supposed to be apolitical and cosmopolitan (since technology and science, central topics to HN are so), in reality HN is extremely anglophile (British + American centric, with some Israeli vestiges) I can not fathom a terrorist attack killing 100 people in Los Angeles being flagged out of existence in HN; I can imagine that if 20 articles appear about a specific incident, some will be indeed flagged, but surely not all. Flagging is probably right according to HN guidelines, so that is what should happen for all off-topic articles, but this is not what HN is doing. I think the guidelines should be updated to reflect this fact: "flag off-topic news unless they are relevant to the Anglo community"
        nl 10y ago
        I think you might want to reconsider. I'd note that the Orlando nightclub shootings were flagged[1]. This of course wasn't as bad as in Nice in terms of fatalities, but is somewhat comparable (insofar as that is possible. What a horrible thing to have to compare). Comments there seemed to try to imply it was some kind of conspiracy, but I think the behaviour there was exactly the same as with this attack. I think we are seeing fatigue over terror attacks - people are just numb to the tragedies and feel like discussing it is useless. I'm not sure if you are French or lost people in Nice, but if you are you have my sympathy. I was in France only a few months back, and this event made me both sad and angry. HN is certainly Silicon Valley centric, but that is expected given its origins and audience. However, my impression is that coverage of EU tech issues gets more coverage than most places. There is certainly more coverage of US politics than other places, but the majority of that is related to tech issues. (I'm not from the US, Canada or UK, nor do I live in any of those places) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11888228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11888228
celticninja 10y ago
Sometimes non tech stories need to be shared, many times the comments from a decent community can be worth more than the story.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  I am not sure whether I agree or not with your comment, but what interests me more at this moment is "why the different treatment in HN?"
  - dozzie 10y ago
    Because HN doesn't expect general news. There are other outlets for those. You don't see news about astronomers finding a new planet in a finance newspaper, do you? HN is a technical news aggregator, so crime and war and politics are out of the scope -- unless it's the technological aspect that was highlighted.
    - gonvaled 10y ago
      I know. You misunderstand: “why the different treatment in HN ... of off-topic news?“. Some are flagged, some are not.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        There's no crisp boundaries for off-topic, just lose guidelines. For general news, it's quite easy for slight variations in the details of the article or its presentation, timing, and context -- even if they are in a superficially similar category -- to have significant impacts on opinions as to whether they offer a hook for HN style discussions, a particular nexus to the interest-focus of HN distinct from just general news, etc. Also, timing can affect what subset of the userbase is voting/flagging.
J_Darnley 10y ago
As one who spend several hours last night flagging all the stories about Nice, this is exactly why. You will hear about it on every TV news broadcast. Two national evening news broadcasts here were two-thirds and one-half about Nice. As for the Jo Cox stories, I wasn't bored enough to do this then. Sorry about that, OP.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 10y ago

As someone who flagged one, because they were articles that clearly were simple direct breaking news articles of general interest with no hook for discussion beyond people's prejudices. They are important news articles, but not something that people are going to miss without HN and not something well suited to the kind of discussion HN exists to foster. This is, of course, subjective, and people can disagree, but HN replies on subjective and largely community-driven moderation to maintain its character.

gonvaled 10y ago
I understand why they have been flagged, but I think flagging is used inconsistently, and wanted to hear opinions on why that could be.
- krapp 10y ago
  Flagging can't be expected to be consistent, because what gets flagged depends on who happens to be online when a story they happen to want to flag gets posted, and what mood they happen to be in. Sometimes stories which probably should be flagged (in my opinion, far more than are flagged) quickly gain traction, which seems to negate attempts to flag them later. This may be a good time to remind people that they can hide stories as well as flag them now.