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Thanks for your reply. I'm relatively new to HN, so please excuse my ignorance if I'm misunderstanding how the site works, but it seems like currently there is

• tomhoward 8y ago
  There’s no downvoting on stories at any karma level. Only comments. On stories, users can either upvote if they like the story or flag it if they think it’s the wrong type of content for HN. So, no overlap. You might consider that dang has been an avid and respected user of HN since it began over 10 years ago, and has worked on it as his primary occupation for 6 years, so by now he knows a thing or two about what kinds of content, functionality and conduct are conducive to a healthy community.
  • hmyr0 8y ago
    In that case, maybe it would be beneficial to add that functionality and to encourage users to downvote instead of flagging. Currently, spam, malware and warez are treated the same as submissions some people consider uninteresting, and while that does eliminate many controversial topics that could've led to debates, it also removes an entire class of content that many people do find relevant and interesting. I have no doubt that dang knows what he is talking about, and arguably flagging on Hacker News is very effective at combating spam. However, no system is perfect, and neither is Hacker News[1]. I believe that the majority of HN users is mature enough to have sensible discussions even about controversial issues, and that showing submissions that most people like won't lead to an unhealthy community, even if a small number of people do not find the submission interesting. [1]: https://drewdevault.com/2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html https://drewdevault.com/2017/09/13/Analyzing-HN.html
    • tomhoward 8y ago
      Before you comment or think too much more about this topic, it might be helpful to (re-)familiarise yourself with the guidelines about what is on-topic vs off-topic on HN [1] In particular, what is on-topic is: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. [...] If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. That's it. Anything is allowed, and is embraced by the community, as long as it is intellectually interesting and cultivates interesting discussions, and people flag things that that are repetitive and lead to boring, predictable discussions. Remember that the topic that triggered this discussion was Github's decision to remove from trending, a repo that was trending only due to activist campaigning, not due to being an interesting software project. There has been no shortage of discussion about the MS/Github deal in the past week; there have been multiple stories about it on the front page at almost any time since the acquisition speculation began. For this particular micro-drama to be deemed below the standard of intellectual curiosity that HN expects, does not indicate any failure that needs to be remedied. Can you not believe that after so many years of observing and guiding this community, that dang has developed a good sense of what the majority of the community wants and how best to keep it healthy? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • hmyr0 8y ago
        Thank you, I am very much familiar with the site guidelines. GitHub's Trending page has previously featured many similar projects, open letters and other non-software repositories, so I don't see how this is relevant here. I understand that not all readers are interested in or even affected by GitHub's acquisition; however, a large number of them are. For this reason, a downvote button would be significantly more effective and democratic than giving two or three users the ability to completely hide a popular submission they do not agree with. I do believe that dang and the Hacker News moderators have developed a good sense of how to keep the community healthy. Unfortunately, the most reliable way of accomplishing this is to eliminate any and all controversy that could lead to debates and arguments. This, however, is not indicative of a good community, it simply places users in a filter bubble by only showing them content that no two other users have ever disagreed with. Despite eliminating nearly all arguments and controversy, this nonlinear voting mechanism is dangerous to the community and society as a whole, even if it gives the impression of a healthy community. Removing controversial submissions just as quickly as spam, child pornography and incitement to violence as can be expected from oppressive regimes is not an indicator of a healthy community, but rather that of a community that only gets to see what everyone agrees with. Many people who have spent much more time on Hacker News than I have agree that there is room for improvement (see, for example, the analysis from last year that I linked to above). Unfortunately, simply hiding all controversial submissions saves the moderators time, and it seems that they are currently not interested in investing additional time into creating a truly healthy community, one that is capable of remaining healthy despite openly holding and expressing different opinions, and thus the current form of moderation is likely going to remain as it is now.