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Can the mods explain why this was removed from the frontpage? It is clearly of interest to the community.

by room271 10y ago

kefka 10y ago
Hmm.. I've had the same reaction when I modified/hacked/made the python ML code to fix Thalmic Myo's armband so Linux and the rest of us could use it. 1 In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script. Makes sense, to protect their income, but altogether sleezy without some sort of disclosure as to why (would have been nice to see "article not allowed due to YC ownership"). The only thing I can guess is there's some sort of fiduciary something, that caused the mods to dupe-delete. 1 http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-developer-access/ http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-...
- throwanem 10y ago
  Last night's discussion wasn't dupe-flagged. If what you claim here is true, it should have been.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- dang 10y ago
  > In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script. Holy magoly, that is 100% untrue. The truth is the opposite: when there are articles critical of YC companies, we are careful to moderate them less, not more, than we normally would. That's the first principle of HN moderation and was literally the first thing pg said when he was showing me how to moderate the site. I hadn't even had a chance to grab a chair before he blurted it out. We wouldn't dream of doing anything like what you describe—not because it wouldn't work (though it wouldn't), but because as members of the community ourselves, we wouldn't want to be treated that way. It's always possible to get an answer to a question about a specific post. It's better to send such things to hn@ycombinator.com because (a) they're off-topic here, and (b) we might not see them otherwise. Please note that phrase specific post. Without specific links, it's harder to clear things up.
  - kefka 10y ago
    It was this (hn:kefka) account when I posted the data about the Myo. I posted it multiple times, with the word "Thalmic" in there. All were killed instantly on creation. A few minutes could pass, and a user-based flag kill would be understandable. In my experiences, instant decisions like that are results of a script. Obvious assumptions were that it was HN's script, protecting HN's assets. You've got one heck of a community here. I try to positively add... But I know we don't see eye-to-eye on quite many things.
    - dang 10y ago
      I like that you feel that way about the community, and it's fine if we don't always see eye-to-eye. HN wouldn't be as good a community if we all did. The main thing we're trying for is assuming good faith in such cases (which isn't easy. I don't find it easy when criticized, and don't expect anyone else to.) From https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kefka https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kefka, it looks like your account lost story submission privileges in Feb 2014 after having posted a bunch of stories that weren't appropriate for HN. That was at least 9 months before you posted anything about Thalmic/Myo, so I'm sure that the latter had nothing to do with it. (I'm also sure because we'd never take submission privileges away for that reason.) In Dec 2015 we restored story submission privileges to your account, probably because we saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537529, which was a solid submission. If an account is posting the occasional substantive story—especially ones that other users aren't submitting—we err on the side of restoring privileges.
      - kefka 10y ago
        Thank you for clearing that up, dang. It was indeed a script that stopped those stories, but not in the nefarious way I suspected. I'm honestly not sure which stories triggered the "no submission" flag, but it does make sense. I would like if we could personally see flags like that (say on our user page). I've never been a fan of hell-* removal of privileges, only to think of worse cases like this. Thank you for being honest and frank about this. -Josh
throwanem 10y ago
Not a mod, but it's a dupe of a post from last night that linked directly to the Daily Beast article and generated mostly very low-quality discourse. I'm not upset this got flagged; I'd like to hope that worthwhile conversation on this topic is possible, but the evidence is all otherwise, and on the front page it would just be an attractive nuisance.
bryanlarsen 10y ago
It was marked as a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12563192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12563192 Which was flag-killed. No conspiracy, it's just that HN has: - users that will flag anything to do with politics - users that will flag anything that more properly belongs on mainstream media than HN - users that will flag anything disparaging their 'tribe'. And although I think Donald Trump supporters are a minority on Hacker News, they're a significant minority. After all, they're almost 50% of Americans. - users that will flag anything disparaging YC companies, especially if it's controversial - users that will flag anything controversial - users that will flag anything likely to encourage non-productive conversations Some may be good reasons for flagging, some are not. But the flagging happens, and the story got flag-killed very quickly.
- kefka 10y ago
  I would add that there's a list of flags as well, that trigger on creation and happen within a minute. I've ran across a few of those, including Thalmic Myo, Double Robotics, and some early Uber posts (which the blocks now seem to have been removed). Usually, on news sites (like... Hacker News), there is a disclosure when there's fiduciary connections to the news at large. Like "This object was provided gratis by company", or "News company is a subsidiary of parent company"... things like that. It's responsible reporting and news. But yes, things can get user-flag killed. And things can get system-flag killed. And we have no clue which happened. Seems rather slimy and questionably ethical.
  - bryanlarsen 10y ago
    Hacker News definitely weights submissions based on URL, submissions from sites such as hypothetically buzzfeed fall faster than sites from better sources. But I don't think HN also flags based on URL. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
    - kefka 10y ago
      Indeed. I get weights upon quality of domain. But the evidence I have, is when I've posted things about (later find out) as YC funded companies, are killed on the spot. I confirmed my beliefs by posting, and then going to my VPS and checking the page there. The title, content, and everything was stripped out like a sort of inverse hellban (on article, not user). The only cite I can find any sort of corroboration is this https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Which states "Similarly, please don't use HN posts to ask YC-funded companies questions that you could ask by emailing them."

Can the mods explain why this was removed from the frontpage? It is clearly of interest to the community.

by room271 10y ago

Can the mods explain why this was removed from the frontpage? It is clearly of interest to the community.

kefka 10y ago

Hmm.. I've had the same reaction when I modified/hacked/made the python ML code to fix Thalmic Myo's armband so Linux and the rest of us could use it. 1 In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script. Makes sense, to protect their income, but altogether sleezy without some sort of disclosure as to why (would have been nice to see "article not allowed due to YC ownership"). The only thing I can guess is there's some sort of fiduciary something, that caused the mods to dupe-delete. 1 http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-developer-access/ http://hackaday.com/2014/11/18/thalmic-labs-shuts-down-free-...

throwanem 10y ago
Last night's discussion wasn't dupe-flagged. If what you claim here is true, it should have been.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dang 10y ago
> In that case, YC censors all articles about member companies with a script. Holy magoly, that is 100% untrue. The truth is the opposite: when there are articles critical of YC companies, we are careful to moderate them less, not more, than we normally would. That's the first principle of HN moderation and was literally the first thing pg said when he was showing me how to moderate the site. I hadn't even had a chance to grab a chair before he blurted it out. We wouldn't dream of doing anything like what you describe—not because it wouldn't work (though it wouldn't), but because as members of the community ourselves, we wouldn't want to be treated that way. It's always possible to get an answer to a question about a specific post. It's better to send such things to hn@ycombinator.com because (a) they're off-topic here, and (b) we might not see them otherwise. Please note that phrase specific post. Without specific links, it's harder to clear things up.
- kefka 10y ago
  It was this (hn:kefka) account when I posted the data about the Myo. I posted it multiple times, with the word "Thalmic" in there. All were killed instantly on creation. A few minutes could pass, and a user-based flag kill would be understandable. In my experiences, instant decisions like that are results of a script. Obvious assumptions were that it was HN's script, protecting HN's assets. You've got one heck of a community here. I try to positively add... But I know we don't see eye-to-eye on quite many things.
  - dang 10y ago
    I like that you feel that way about the community, and it's fine if we don't always see eye-to-eye. HN wouldn't be as good a community if we all did. The main thing we're trying for is assuming good faith in such cases (which isn't easy. I don't find it easy when criticized, and don't expect anyone else to.) From https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kefka https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kefka, it looks like your account lost story submission privileges in Feb 2014 after having posted a bunch of stories that weren't appropriate for HN. That was at least 9 months before you posted anything about Thalmic/Myo, so I'm sure that the latter had nothing to do with it. (I'm also sure because we'd never take submission privileges away for that reason.) In Dec 2015 we restored story submission privileges to your account, probably because we saw https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10537529, which was a solid submission. If an account is posting the occasional substantive story—especially ones that other users aren't submitting—we err on the side of restoring privileges.
    - kefka 10y ago
      Thank you for clearing that up, dang. It was indeed a script that stopped those stories, but not in the nefarious way I suspected. I'm honestly not sure which stories triggered the "no submission" flag, but it does make sense. I would like if we could personally see flags like that (say on our user page). I've never been a fan of hell-* removal of privileges, only to think of worse cases like this. Thank you for being honest and frank about this. -Josh

throwanem 10y ago

Not a mod, but it's a dupe of a post from last night that linked directly to the Daily Beast article and generated mostly very low-quality discourse. I'm not upset this got flagged; I'd like to hope that worthwhile conversation on this topic is possible, but the evidence is all otherwise, and on the front page it would just be an attractive nuisance.

bryanlarsen 10y ago

It was marked as a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12563192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12563192 Which was flag-killed. No conspiracy, it's just that HN has: - users that will flag anything to do with politics - users that will flag anything that more properly belongs on mainstream media than HN - users that will flag anything disparaging their 'tribe'. And although I think Donald Trump supporters are a minority on Hacker News, they're a significant minority. After all, they're almost 50% of Americans. - users that will flag anything disparaging YC companies, especially if it's controversial - users that will flag anything controversial - users that will flag anything likely to encourage non-productive conversations Some may be good reasons for flagging, some are not. But the flagging happens, and the story got flag-killed very quickly.

kefka 10y ago
I would add that there's a list of flags as well, that trigger on creation and happen within a minute. I've ran across a few of those, including Thalmic Myo, Double Robotics, and some early Uber posts (which the blocks now seem to have been removed). Usually, on news sites (like... Hacker News), there is a disclosure when there's fiduciary connections to the news at large. Like "This object was provided gratis by company", or "News company is a subsidiary of parent company"... things like that. It's responsible reporting and news. But yes, things can get user-flag killed. And things can get system-flag killed. And we have no clue which happened. Seems rather slimy and questionably ethical.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  Hacker News definitely weights submissions based on URL, submissions from sites such as hypothetically buzzfeed fall faster than sites from better sources. But I don't think HN also flags based on URL. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
  - kefka 10y ago
    Indeed. I get weights upon quality of domain. But the evidence I have, is when I've posted things about (later find out) as YC funded companies, are killed on the spot. I confirmed my beliefs by posting, and then going to my VPS and checking the page there. The title, content, and everything was stripped out like a sort of inverse hellban (on article, not user). The only cite I can find any sort of corroboration is this https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Which states "Similarly, please don't use HN posts to ask YC-funded companies questions that you could ask by emailing them."