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This article appears to have been removed from the frontpage despite the points to support it. just making an observation, I had to go back into my browser his

by fosco 9y ago

This article appears to have been removed from the frontpage despite the points to support it. just making an observation, I had to go back into my browser history to find this when it was recently in the top list and visible. I think making API calls available for reasons why an algorithm has done this would be helpful in understanding why and how decisions are made. in relation to this article, I am observing an algorithm making a decision for me that I think I disagree with and I am not delighted about it. [edit] : to extrapolate on this further, whether either of them is 'right' or 'wrong' I think this is an important conversation to have and design effective means of review now, before we have built complex systems using this foundation and lose understanding of why a machine may make a decision like liquidating all hedges in a hedgefund (read "The Fear Index") or causing a car to turn into oncoming traffic to avoid a deer, being able to have the information readily available for review and improvement is necessary to discuss now... not later. a horrible analogy I am coming up with now is that the cause of climate change does not matter right now, it is having an immediate impact on people around the globe and we need to take action immediately. (it has impacted my ability to obtain home insurance, I have been denied by every single one except a small one that was recently purchased by geico -- the reason as quoted has been "home is within three miles of the coast line" -- I am on the east coast)

mjn 9y ago
I noticed that as well. I think it may have been manual in this case, going by what I've observed in the past. YC has some idea of what it doesn't want on the front page of its forum, and has paid staff who remove it. There are algorithms promoting and demoting content too, but afaik they don't have this effect. They either flag posts e.g. if detected as spam (which isn't the case here), or they penalize them, which might push them down to the second or third page, but not remove them from being ranked entirely. A page remaining unflagged but removed from ranking is more unusual, and I think in the past has been manual intervention.

by fosco 9y ago

mjn 9y ago

I noticed that as well. I think it may have been manual in this case, going by what I've observed in the past. YC has some idea of what it doesn't want on the front page of its forum, and has paid staff who remove it. There are algorithms promoting and demoting content too, but afaik they don't have this effect. They either flag posts e.g. if detected as spam (which isn't the case here), or they penalize them, which might push them down to the second or third page, but not remove them from being ranked entirely. A page remaining unflagged but removed from ranking is more unusual, and I think in the past has been manual intervention.