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I'm quite used to articles like this appearing as (flagged) by the time I click the actual comments. It would be interesting to know who is constantly flagging

I'm quite used to articles like this appearing as (flagged) by the time I click the actual comments. It would be interesting to know who is constantly flagging the articles, either users hell-bent on hn being only about tech, or right-wing people that don't want to be reminded about this.

yorwba 9y ago
I'd say there is a certain amount of both kinds of flags. I don't tend to flag submissions that aren't obviously spam, but for political topics the quality of the article does need to pretty high to prevent sane discussion being drowned out by the flamewar, so I can understand when others are flagging more aggressively.
weberc2 9y ago
It goes both ways. For example, submissions that were critical of Google's handling or the media's reporting of the "Google memo" were flagged as well.
- mcphage 9y ago
  Part of that was sheer mass. For what, at least 2 weeks (?) there was article after article after article about it. And most articles were posted repeatedly, to the point where it was hard to tell which were posted first and which were posted later. I definitely got sick of seeing the same links over and over again..
  - weberc2 9y ago
    Maybe, but it's not the only example of center/right political content being flagged.
    - mcphage 9y ago
      Articles supporting Google's decision were also posted repeatedly, and flagged repeatedly. And articles criticizing the current administration are also frequently flag-killed, so it's not just right-wing coverage that gets removed.
      - weberc2 9y ago
        I agree. The OP raised the point that left-leaning submissions get flagged a lot, making it seem like this is unique to that end of the spectrum. My point is that it happens to the right as well.
        mcphage 9y ago
        Ha! Sorry, you're right. The "threads" page doesn't give you any of the context of what your original message was in response to, so I forgot what I had been responding to :-)
        weberc2 9y ago
        No worries!
vinhboy 9y ago
> users hell-bent on hn being only about tech I think communities, like ours, having this attitude is very self-destructive. We can't keep trying to operate in a silo and exclude politics from our discussions. Especially when a lot of us work on tools that exasperate these political problems.
- FLGMwt 9y ago
  Absolutely agree. Even from a purely economical sense, if the content we're exposed to is purely the [t]echo chamber of SV concerns, we end up with startups solving SV problems which is a pretty limited market.
- grzm 9y ago
  I understand where you're coming from. At the same time, not every forum is the appropriate forum for every discussion. Some are better suited for particular topics. The experience of discussing political issues on HN is often very fraught and I think it's a very open question as to whether it ends up being constructive or destructive to the HN community as a whole. I think it's very important to be able to talk about political issues. I'm not sure HN can consistently have constructive conversations on divisive topics and remain the platform it is.

yorwba 9y ago

I'd say there is a certain amount of both kinds of flags. I don't tend to flag submissions that aren't obviously spam, but for political topics the quality of the article does need to pretty high to prevent sane discussion being drowned out by the flamewar, so I can understand when others are flagging more aggressively.

weberc2 9y ago

It goes both ways. For example, submissions that were critical of Google's handling or the media's reporting of the "Google memo" were flagged as well.

mcphage 9y ago
Part of that was sheer mass. For what, at least 2 weeks (?) there was article after article after article about it. And most articles were posted repeatedly, to the point where it was hard to tell which were posted first and which were posted later. I definitely got sick of seeing the same links over and over again..
- weberc2 9y ago
  Maybe, but it's not the only example of center/right political content being flagged.
  - mcphage 9y ago
    Articles supporting Google's decision were also posted repeatedly, and flagged repeatedly. And articles criticizing the current administration are also frequently flag-killed, so it's not just right-wing coverage that gets removed.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      I agree. The OP raised the point that left-leaning submissions get flagged a lot, making it seem like this is unique to that end of the spectrum. My point is that it happens to the right as well.
      - mcphage 9y ago
        Ha! Sorry, you're right. The "threads" page doesn't give you any of the context of what your original message was in response to, so I forgot what I had been responding to :-)
        weberc2 9y ago
        No worries!

vinhboy 9y ago

> users hell-bent on hn being only about tech I think communities, like ours, having this attitude is very self-destructive. We can't keep trying to operate in a silo and exclude politics from our discussions. Especially when a lot of us work on tools that exasperate these political problems.

FLGMwt 9y ago
Absolutely agree. Even from a purely economical sense, if the content we're exposed to is purely the [t]echo chamber of SV concerns, we end up with startups solving SV problems which is a pretty limited market.
grzm 9y ago
I understand where you're coming from. At the same time, not every forum is the appropriate forum for every discussion. Some are better suited for particular topics. The experience of discussing political issues on HN is often very fraught and I think it's a very open question as to whether it ends up being constructive or destructive to the HN community as a whole. I think it's very important to be able to talk about political issues. I'm not sure HN can consistently have constructive conversations on divisive topics and remain the platform it is.