4 ms·

This is a duplicate of this earlier submission of the WSJ article, which got flagged down from the front page to oblivion by those with a vested interest in not

This is a duplicate of this earlier submission of the WSJ article, which got flagged down from the front page to oblivion by those with a vested interest in not giving the story the attention it deserves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22639181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22639181

keeganpoppen 7y ago
well, here i am with another upvote, ready to give it another whirl xD
parthdesai 7y ago
I have seen weird things happen with Airbnb articles on HN. They are on front page for a very short period of time and then boom they are gone.
- seattle_spring 7y ago
  My guess is because every time there's an article on them, the comments ar unrelated complaints about some bad experience they had with Airbnb 3 years ago.
- dang 7y ago
  There have been a lot of Airbnb threads, often negative, on HN's front page: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=airbnb%20comments%3E5&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... Perceptions like this are usually sample bias, since we weight the things we notice more heavily, and what we notice is conditioned by our pre-existing opinions.
dredmorbius 7y ago
WSJ's paywall also has its critics.
dang 7y ago
The opposite is the case: we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC startups are involved. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... In this case, though, we downweighted the story the same way we've downweighted nearly every secondary coronavirus story, for exactly the same reason: otherwise the front page would have consisted of nothing else for the last week or more. More explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22643249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22643249
- hkmurakami 7y ago
  I'm not insinuating that YC moderation is at fault here. Unfortunately, there are plenty of others who'd be incentivized to flag an article in such a coordinated manner.
  - dang 7y ago
    That definitely wasn't the case with that submission. Airbnb threads, by the way, invariably turn into the same generic debate about Airbnb that some people seem to want to have over and over again: "I had a bad experience" vs. "I had a good experience". (Variations: "Airbnb ruined my neighborhood." "They rented the place next door to noisy people." And so on.) Just look at the comments in this thread. HN moderators are trained to downweight such repetition, because it doesn't serve curiosity, which is what this site exists for. For some reason, Airbnb is one of the topics that people (or rather, commenters inclined to post in such threads) seem unable to bring curiosity to.
    - hkmurakami 7y ago
      dang, this just went from front page to #347 in the last 10 minutes. I agree that this thread has a lot of "bad experience / good experience" posts that aren't informative or productive (I'm actually amazed at how much worse this thread is compared to the previous one), but if HN Mods are behind this latest downweighting, then I don't think you've given it enough time to have substantive comments (ex: the fate of longtime employees' options which are going to hit the 10 year expiration) be posted given that it's only been on the front page for a brief amount of time. If Mods aren't responsible for this precipitous drop (which would be my instinct), then that's another problem all together. Anyways, as a fellow mod on a different site, thanks for your team's work. I know it's not easy.

keeganpoppen 7y ago

well, here i am with another upvote, ready to give it another whirl xD

parthdesai 7y ago

I have seen weird things happen with Airbnb articles on HN. They are on front page for a very short period of time and then boom they are gone.

seattle_spring 7y ago
My guess is because every time there's an article on them, the comments ar unrelated complaints about some bad experience they had with Airbnb 3 years ago.
dang 7y ago
There have been a lot of Airbnb threads, often negative, on HN's front page: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=airbnb%20comments%3E5&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... Perceptions like this are usually sample bias, since we weight the things we notice more heavily, and what we notice is conditioned by our pre-existing opinions.

dredmorbius 7y ago

WSJ's paywall also has its critics.

dang 7y ago

The opposite is the case: we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC startups are involved. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... In this case, though, we downweighted the story the same way we've downweighted nearly every secondary coronavirus story, for exactly the same reason: otherwise the front page would have consisted of nothing else for the last week or more. More explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22643249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22643249

hkmurakami 7y ago
I'm not insinuating that YC moderation is at fault here. Unfortunately, there are plenty of others who'd be incentivized to flag an article in such a coordinated manner.
- dang 7y ago
  That definitely wasn't the case with that submission. Airbnb threads, by the way, invariably turn into the same generic debate about Airbnb that some people seem to want to have over and over again: "I had a bad experience" vs. "I had a good experience". (Variations: "Airbnb ruined my neighborhood." "They rented the place next door to noisy people." And so on.) Just look at the comments in this thread. HN moderators are trained to downweight such repetition, because it doesn't serve curiosity, which is what this site exists for. For some reason, Airbnb is one of the topics that people (or rather, commenters inclined to post in such threads) seem unable to bring curiosity to.
  - hkmurakami 7y ago
    dang, this just went from front page to #347 in the last 10 minutes. I agree that this thread has a lot of "bad experience / good experience" posts that aren't informative or productive (I'm actually amazed at how much worse this thread is compared to the previous one), but if HN Mods are behind this latest downweighting, then I don't think you've given it enough time to have substantive comments (ex: the fate of longtime employees' options which are going to hit the 10 year expiration) be posted given that it's only been on the front page for a brief amount of time. If Mods aren't responsible for this precipitous drop (which would be my instinct), then that's another problem all together. Anyways, as a fellow mod on a different site, thanks for your team's work. I know it's not easy.