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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.