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Ask HN: Why was “Harvard withdraws acceptances” dropped from the front page?
At the time of writing, [1] has 81 points, 200 comments, and was posted 2 hours ago, but is currently #43 on page 2 of HN.
Meanwhile, [2] has 14 points, 1 comment, posted 4 hours ago is at #14 on the front page of HN.
What's going on here?
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[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14487788
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14485477
- novia 9y agoA post's ranking is penalized if it gets significantly more comments than upvotes, because generally this indicates a flame war is taking place.
- Simulacra 9y agoThat's a shame. I think many people honestly forget to upvote an article but will comment.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- haburka 9y agoSometimes moderators downvote posts that are inappropriate for HN even though people may like the content. This is really important for keeping the community decent because the crowd does not make good decisions for the future of the community. My guess is the post encourages an anti Harvard circlerjerk or something stupid about memes. If you've been on Reddit for a while, you would understand that the moderators having that power here is a good thing and that curating content is the only way to keep an online community from becoming a sensationalist hellhole.
- Simulacra 9y agoI didn't see an anti Harvard bias in here. I think it was a useful discussion on social media use and its impact on society. Certainly HN worthy.
- creaghpatr 9y agoagreed, even a little surprised, that it wasn't a Harvard pile-on.
- Simulacra 9y agoI can't put my fingers on it at the moment but I seem to recall this is not the first time this precise scenario has happened elsewhere.
- savanaly 9y agoI have no idea and for all I know, dropping it wasn't a choice of the moderators but a mistake or an unforeseen outcome of some algorithm, but if they did drop it on purpose I support the decision. There are countless other websites to debate that stuff on, I would rather have fewer of the incendiary, purely political discussions make it to the front page of HN. Come to think of it, I do recall hearing something about how HN's algorithm nukes topics with tons of commenting but not very many votes, so it is probably that.
- Simulacra 9y agoBased on the numbers wound that signal a rather weak algorithm trigger?
- unethical_ban 9y agoHN seems to do this with some regularity. I have made similar posts once or twice, noting how a link that is less popular in all metrics is substantially above another. Mods almost surely have a weighting button, though I don't know if your question is affected by it.
- DanBC 9y agoI think it's often users flagging the submissions.
- kiernanmcgowan 9y agoHuh, it appears this this tread has also been buried. Either there is some algorithm edge case going on or that Harvard thread got really toxic.
- dang 9y agoPlease see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.