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Posts can be intellectually stimulating yet not belong on this site. What's important about a submission to users is a lot more nuanced, and I absolutely see wh

Posts can be intellectually stimulating yet not belong on this site. What's important about a submission to users is a lot more nuanced, and I absolutely see why it was flagged. A slightly baity title on the wrong topic generally causes a derailed comment section since the title primes how you interpret the article(and many uses don't read the article). For example, consider a post about the political analysis of the changing voting habits of Congress. The post is great, it is filled with technical details and an explanation on the application of game theory on voting habits in Congress, yet it is titled "Racism in the American Political System along Party Lines." The title enough is alone to disqualify such a post here IMO as it would in itself cause a dumpster-fire of a comment section, or at least have a much higher likelihood of it.

dang 8y ago
Fair points as well. And sure, the title is by far the strongest influence on a new thread. But there are other ways, as I mentioned, for users to request a title change, and if they're flagging an article based on title alone without looking at the text, that's not good. I appreciate how the moderation call could seem non-obvious in this case, even though it was obvious to me. Here's the most important thing: people shouldn't just flag every divisive article. It depends on the quality of the specific article. We don't want HN to be taken over by political battle. But we also don't want to sanitize it of social issues, because it would be less intellectually interesting that way, and that is the entire point of the site. Here's a good question to ask when deciding whether to flag: what is the information-to-indignation ratio of the article? If it's high, don't flag it. I wrote about this the other day, for anyone who wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19720659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19720659. What prompted me to comment publicly in the current case is that the article was high in information and low in indignation—surprisingly low, considering where the author is coming from. Which makes the article even more interesting, btw—any time an article defies expectation for its genre, that's good for HN.
- acheron 8y ago
  Thanks for this comment. I tend to flag "every divisive article" myself, and maybe I'll resist that a bit more now. Essentially what I use HN for is the comment discussion. So for me, the main thing to look at is whether an article will generate a good discussion. Saying "I don't actually care if the article is good" is not exactly true, but it's also not that far off: a well-written article that generates a bad discussion is still a bad thing IMO. Whereas someone who uses HN as just a news aggregator may have the opposite thought -- the comments don't matter, all that matters is the article quality.
  - dang 8y ago
    I agree—but your comment omits something important, which is that article quality also conditions comment quality. It's a reciprocal loop. To get the most out of it means watching for quality articles that otherwise might fall through the cracks, and it also means coaxing threads to rise to a higher quality level instead of collapsing into default sludge. This submission is a good example to make the point; it sits just on the interesting edge. That's why I've spent so much time commenting in this thread: not because I know anything about the social implications of photography tech, but because it reveals something about how HN can get better.

dang 8y ago

Fair points as well. And sure, the title is by far the strongest influence on a new thread. But there are other ways, as I mentioned, for users to request a title change, and if they're flagging an article based on title alone without looking at the text, that's not good. I appreciate how the moderation call could seem non-obvious in this case, even though it was obvious to me. Here's the most important thing: people shouldn't just flag every divisive article. It depends on the quality of the specific article. We don't want HN to be taken over by political battle. But we also don't want to sanitize it of social issues, because it would be less intellectually interesting that way, and that is the entire point of the site. Here's a good question to ask when deciding whether to flag: what is the information-to-indignation ratio of the article? If it's high, don't flag it. I wrote about this the other day, for anyone who wants more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19720659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19720659. What prompted me to comment publicly in the current case is that the article was high in information and low in indignation—surprisingly low, considering where the author is coming from. Which makes the article even more interesting, btw—any time an article defies expectation for its genre, that's good for HN.

acheron 8y ago
Thanks for this comment. I tend to flag "every divisive article" myself, and maybe I'll resist that a bit more now. Essentially what I use HN for is the comment discussion. So for me, the main thing to look at is whether an article will generate a good discussion. Saying "I don't actually care if the article is good" is not exactly true, but it's also not that far off: a well-written article that generates a bad discussion is still a bad thing IMO. Whereas someone who uses HN as just a news aggregator may have the opposite thought -- the comments don't matter, all that matters is the article quality.
- dang 8y ago
  I agree—but your comment omits something important, which is that article quality also conditions comment quality. It's a reciprocal loop. To get the most out of it means watching for quality articles that otherwise might fall through the cracks, and it also means coaxing threads to rise to a higher quality level instead of collapsing into default sludge. This submission is a good example to make the point; it sits just on the interesting edge. That's why I've spent so much time commenting in this thread: not because I know anything about the social implications of photography tech, but because it reveals something about how HN can get better.