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I think many here learned to appreciate this poem from HN postings of this analysis of Howl: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https

I think many here learned to appreciate this poem from HN postings of this analysis of Howl: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ SSC is a great site, and if you haven't, please do have a look^. Do please, however, be aware that spiked-online is pretty alt-right and politically extreme, and although this is a decent historical piece, most articles there are of the ultra-neocon and angry cable talkshow style opinion, dressed in intellectual wording.

yarrel 7y ago
Spiked Online is a successor to Living Marxism magazine. It's left contrarianism of the horseshoe theory kind.
- richardhod 7y ago
  Only partly true, I'm afraid. This source is hard right. I don't want to go down a non HN- rabbit hole bc we're here to talk mostly about tech and information related things, but in extreme cases it's worth noting. I had also once thought Soiked was left wing, its editorial bears no resemblance to the old Left whatsoever. You might call it alt-right-libertarian, and funded by the notorious Koch brothers. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked
  - jajag 7y ago
    It's confrontational, but it certainly isn't alt- or hard-right. I mean, this is its current lead article: https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/14/why-it-was-right-to-platform-ben-shapiro/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/14/why-it-was-right-to... - and the article is not kind to Ben Shapiro.
dang 7y ago
On HN, it's the article that matters. Most primarily-political sites have a downweight on them, but we turn the downweight off when a good article comes along. Or try to, at least; it depends on whether we see it or someone points it out to us.
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  Are you saying that they're algorithmically downweighted and that you manually turn that off when it seems appropriate? Interesting, I thought the feed was just based on chronology + votes! How quaint of me. Is there anything written anywhere about how the feed algorithm works generally?
  - dang 7y ago
    Correct. The feed has always been based on more than just time and votes. For example, flags. Another factor is HN's anti-abuse software, like the voting ring detector. Then there is moderation. For example, moderators downweight certain kinds of stories, such as sensational ones or indignant ones, that routinely attract many more upvotes than others. Another example is the boosting system that was discussed recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19871809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19871809. There's no article or essay about it, but I've posted many comments to HN about all of this over the years. None of it is secret, and we're happy to answer questions.
    - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
      That's helpful, thanks for the reply! Are all sites deemed political down-weighted equally? Is this a manually curated list or also algorithmically determined somehow? Are there other categories / topics that sites might be placed in that affect their ranking? The problem of trying to apply weights to domains and/or specific submissions based on some idea of how well they fit the ethos of the site seems like an interesting one!
      - dang 7y ago
        Yes, primarily-political sites are downweighted equally. And yes, there are other kinds of site that get penalized. For example, most major media sites produce more lightweight articles than substantive ones, so are marked that way in our system. I should mention, though, that there are plenty of ways for such penalties to be overridden, besides moderators turning them off manually. For example, they don't apply to submissions by users who have a track record of submitting solid stories. Some of this is algorithmically determined and some of it is manually curated. The more complicated a decision is (e.g. is site X primarily political), the less likely it is to be algorithmic.

yarrel 7y ago

Spiked Online is a successor to Living Marxism magazine. It's left contrarianism of the horseshoe theory kind.

richardhod 7y ago
Only partly true, I'm afraid. This source is hard right. I don't want to go down a non HN- rabbit hole bc we're here to talk mostly about tech and information related things, but in extreme cases it's worth noting. I had also once thought Soiked was left wing, its editorial bears no resemblance to the old Left whatsoever. You might call it alt-right-libertarian, and funded by the notorious Koch brothers. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked
- jajag 7y ago
  It's confrontational, but it certainly isn't alt- or hard-right. I mean, this is its current lead article: https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/14/why-it-was-right-to-platform-ben-shapiro/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/05/14/why-it-was-right-to... - and the article is not kind to Ben Shapiro.

dang 7y ago

On HN, it's the article that matters. Most primarily-political sites have a downweight on them, but we turn the downweight off when a good article comes along. Or try to, at least; it depends on whether we see it or someone points it out to us.

mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
Are you saying that they're algorithmically downweighted and that you manually turn that off when it seems appropriate? Interesting, I thought the feed was just based on chronology + votes! How quaint of me. Is there anything written anywhere about how the feed algorithm works generally?
- dang 7y ago
  Correct. The feed has always been based on more than just time and votes. For example, flags. Another factor is HN's anti-abuse software, like the voting ring detector. Then there is moderation. For example, moderators downweight certain kinds of stories, such as sensational ones or indignant ones, that routinely attract many more upvotes than others. Another example is the boosting system that was discussed recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19871809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19871809. There's no article or essay about it, but I've posted many comments to HN about all of this over the years. None of it is secret, and we're happy to answer questions.
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    That's helpful, thanks for the reply! Are all sites deemed political down-weighted equally? Is this a manually curated list or also algorithmically determined somehow? Are there other categories / topics that sites might be placed in that affect their ranking? The problem of trying to apply weights to domains and/or specific submissions based on some idea of how well they fit the ethos of the site seems like an interesting one!
    - dang 7y ago
      Yes, primarily-political sites are downweighted equally. And yes, there are other kinds of site that get penalized. For example, most major media sites produce more lightweight articles than substantive ones, so are marked that way in our system. I should mention, though, that there are plenty of ways for such penalties to be overridden, besides moderators turning them off manually. For example, they don't apply to submissions by users who have a track record of submitting solid stories. Some of this is algorithmically determined and some of it is manually curated. The more complicated a decision is (e.g. is site X primarily political), the less likely it is to be algorithmic.