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Hacker News Transparency
- gus_massa 9y agoIn the titles change, you should add some kind of highlighting, because most changes are minor. (My favorite: "American Airlines Accidentally Let Too Many Pilots Take Off the Holidays" -> "American Airlines Accidentally Let Too Many Pilots Take the Holidays Off") The section "Recently deleted posts" should be "Recently killed posts". Also, the number of comments in each post is wrong, many have more than 0 comments.
- GuiA 9y ago+1, text diff highlighting would be a great usability win.
- tptacek 9y agoIt's crazy how much work they're putting into the titles. Of the 10 most recent title changes on this site, I count 7 that are grammar and wording fixes done solely to make the titles more readable and consistent, with no component of damping down editorializing or promotion --- in other words, with no "policy" objective, but just to quietly make the site better.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lainon 9y agoIs it meant to be that the last listings are 28 days old?
- jitl 9y agoReceiving 500 Internal Server Error
- jacquesm 9y agoCache (site is down): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://hn.0x2237.club/ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
- freedomben 9y agoStill down 7 hours later, but the cache works
- gthtjtkt 9y agoNow if only you had some way to show how many people are shadow-banned or have their posts automatically buried. People seem to think this place is better than Facebook, Reddit or all the other vote-based, algorithm-driven discussion forums that encourage groupthink, but that's probably because they've never been guilty of posting an unpopular opinion. It might be eye-opening if they could see how heavily manipulated these discussions really are.
- username223 9y ago> People seem to think this place is better than Facebook, Reddit or all the other vote-based, algorithm-driven discussion forums... Reddit and FB are largely algorithm-driven; in this joint, things get personal.
- explainplease 9y agoSo the algorithm is executed on wetware. Still an algorithm. ;)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- justaduder 9y agoI'm away on Christmas vacation, but my home IP has been banned. Never been clear why, except that I have expressed some views about banking, Tesla and some well-known posters who like to bully people that aren't part of the Hackernews hivemind. I enjoy the site as a news aggregator, but this place is an echo chamber.
- chris_wot 9y agoNice to know who is rate limited. The HN mods don't say why.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoI've been rate limited for... years. The fact that HN rate limits some users more than others has rarely come up in discussion, even when discussing HN's moderation practices. It's particularly annoying because if you don't keep tabs on how many comments in you are, suddenly you just can't submit the comment you just spend a bunch of time writing. My rate limit is about 5 comments in a given 2 hour period, determined through significant trial and error. That being said, while these rules are not well documented publicly, from my various interactions with the mods, I've come to respect them as fairly reasonable and fair in their handling of the site.
- always_good 9y agoWhat HN needs to stop is how someone can take it upon their self to reply to half of the top level comments to infect each thread with their world view. It's one of the most annoying HN phenomena because now each top level thread is dominated by the exact same debate and they get to fight a bunch of battles in parallel. Totally kills the discussion. The only way 5 comments in 2 hours is acceptable to me is if it was in the comments section of the same submission. I think some people need to be ushered out of the theater so others can participate.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoGenerally, I hit it when I'm having a discussion with one or two people in particular.
- humanrebar 9y ago> ...they get to fight a bunch of battles in parallel... Isn't this what having a minority opinion would look like? It seems like aggressively rate limiting everyone would run the risk of increasing echo chamber effects.
- goofballlogic 9y agoAlso get 500s trying to link
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoOne thing I would point out here is that things marked [dupe] are listed in the "deleted" list. These are probably not deleted to remove discussion, but... because they're duplicates. If someone is looking at this list they might believe certain submissions are being deleted to censor them, rather than them just being oversubmitted topics/articles.
- hartator 9y agoKind of creepy that pro-repeal of net neutrality and anti-YC posts had being deleted.
- gus_massa 9y agoDeleted is a bad characterization. I guess your comment is about these articles. They are marked as duplicates and hidden. --- * Why Ajit Pai Is Right (Pro-Neutrality, Anti-Title II) (stratechery.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15800851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15800851 (14 points, 29 days ago, 3 comments) First comment is: > Is this not a repost? I could of sworn I saw this posted an hour or two ago. > edit: It is! Here's the discussion from the previous post.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15798960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15798960 . the linked post is an exact dupe and has 211 points, 29 days ago, 295 comments --- * Y Combinator Quietly Ends Relationship with Peter Thiel (gizmodo.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15726550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15726550 (21 points, 40 days ago, 1 comment) First comment is: > Dupe; more comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15725108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15725108 . the linked post is very similar and has 185 points, 40 days ago, 147 comments
- olfactory 9y agoThis story was live for < 1 hour before it was killed.
- ComputerGuru 9y agoExcept it’s still on the front page five hours later.
- wickedOne 9y agoyou might want to consider ignoring removal of query parameters for the "recent url changes" section...
- ziikutv 9y agoPlease pardon my ignorance. What is the point of this? How does it help?
- spaceseaman 9y agoHacker News has a libertarian leaning ideology among both its community and site-runners. As a result, things like deleted posts, changed thread titles, etc could be seen by folks with such leanings as an impingement on their "free speech" by the site's moderators. Thus folks want a way to check what has been deleted, changed, or modified by the folks in charge. I imagine this exists to help satisfy that desire. For an example, note this comment and its corresponding thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018978
- dang 9y agoNo, the phenomenon is rather that HN readers with strong ideological feelings tend to see the site as dominated by, and the mods in cahoots with, their ideological enemies. This has to be some kind of cognitive bias since the claims people make about HN, and us, are so comically contradictory. If you don't believe me, here are a few typical examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730 Plenty more here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%2013110004 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=.... It is perennial. By the way, that thread you linked to shows exactly the opposite of what you say, if you read it to the end. This too is typical, except for the part where the original commenter admirably accepts the correction. That bit is surprisingly rare!
- spaceseaman 9y ago> the phenomenon is rather that HN readers with strong ideological feelings tend to see the site as dominated by, and the mods in cahoots with, their ideological enemies. I agree, but I don't think that's why this is a popular piece. Such a post would not resonate as well on NeoGAF or ResetERA or even Reddit, but the political leanings of this site propelled this to the front page. There's more to it than just seeing the mods as being in cahoots with enemies. It's the ideology that any moderation is inherently untrustworthy and that the power must be constantly kept 'in check'. You can find endless examples of folks who feel they are pariahs. I still think that Hacker News has a severe idealogical bend, just like any online community. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that bend matches the mindset of many programmers - techno-libertarianism. To be clear, I'm not claiming that the moderators have some idealogical bias - I've never come across that. Simply that certain trains of thought are very popular here, and the notion of "free speech" being impeded by aggressive moderation is something that has been rehashed on this site time and time again. I realize you may have taken issue with my comment because I said "site-runners" in my claim of an ideology. I realize that this was poor word-choice, as I actually meant the YC, not Hacker News - they got conflated in my mind and I apologize for the mistake.
- wcr3 9y agopfffffft
- gnicholas 9y agoCouldn’t be more timely. There have been a couple of front-page stories that were flagged into oblivion just today. Look forward to seeing how external tools will help us keep track of these stories.
- scottmcdot 9y agoDo Flagged posts fall under "Recently deleted posts"?
- gnicholas 9y agoSome have said the categories aren’t properly named and I’ve not been able to access the site due to the HN hug of death.
- pmoriarty 9y agoSpeaking of transparency, one thing I've often wondered is if HN algorithms or admins ever downvote links to competitors such as Reddit. I've sometimes submitted links to Reddit discussions and they virtutally never get upvoted. In the past I've just assumed this was because HN's readers themselves didn't want to see such links, but now I wonder if HN's algorithms or admins downvote or otherwise bias the site against them.
- tomhschmidt 9y agoReddit is a YC company and HN is just a free service provided through YC (not a company), so it doesn't really seem like they have the incentive to do this.
- dang 9y agoSome sites are penalized because they have been the source of many lightweight submissions. You may not be surprised to learn that reddit.com is one. However, there are many ways for such penalties to get overridden. For example, if the submitter is known to have posted many fine submissions in the past, the penalty doesn't count. Your account is one of those. Thanks for posting fine submissions to HN! By the way, it's not hard to get answers to things like this that you're wondering about. You simply need to ask us at hn@ycombinator.com.
- nsomaru 9y agoHow is a submission considered to be "fine?" Looking at @pmoriarty's history, it seems that his submissions are not highly upvoted...
- dang 9y agoA combination of what the community has liked in the past and what moderators, plus a small number of story reviewers, think it might find intellectually interesting. > it seems that his submissions are not highly upvoted This ebbs and flows. But see https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:pmoriarty%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:pmoriarty%20points%3E10&sor...
- hueving 9y agoDoes this offer any visibility or insight into the rate limiting of undesirable accounts such as mine? Do all undesirable accounts get the same rate limit? Do rate limits expire? Is there a way to tell if an account is muzzled without trial and error? (Site is currently down otherwise I would check myself.)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]