4 ms·
Ask HN: Was my submitted post nerfed / hidden / shadowbanned?
I don't submit a lot of content, but this morning I submitted this link to a WaPo article on e-cigarette addiction.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20535474
It looks like it has been hidden from the front page / subsequent pages despite what appears to be a ranking upvote.
I don't really care about the visibility, but I am curious about the moderation that might have resulted in this content getting shadowbanned.
- minimaxir 7y agoIt likely triggered the flame war detector. (usually when comments > points)
- bredren 7y agoHm. It does not appear to be a flame war, but I do not know the algo.
- sp332 7y agoThe actual HN source is not open, but some people have reverse-engineered the ranking algorithm and I think the threshold is getting 40 comments before 40 upvotes = automatically sunk.
- dang 7y agoAn early version of HN is bundled with http://arclanguage.org/install http://arclanguage.org/install.
- dang 7y agoYes, that is what affected the rank in that case. We usually call it the overheated discussion detector now, even though the phrase is clumsy, because sometimes the discussions are just low-quality rather than outright flamewars.
- sp332 7y agoThe best way to ask about that kind of thing is to email hn@ycombinator.com (the Contact link at the bottom of the page here).
- bredren 7y agoOkay, I'll email and see what happens. I also note, that this question was also nerfed.
- sp332 7y agoThat might have been manual moderation. Read the FAQ and Guidelines posts at the bottom of the page. From the guidelines: Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Instead, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com.
- dang 7y agoI don't know what 'nerfed' means, but on HN, a post that doesn't get any upvotes doesn't go anywhere. That's suitable in this case, since the post was off topic and broke the site guidelines. It wasn't moderated, nor did the software do anything to it.