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> most of the world's most important news topics aren't on the HN front page because they don't gain traction among the HN audience. CV has, and to a very lar
by listenallyall 7y ago
> most of the world's most important news topics aren't on the HN front page
because they don't gain traction among the HN audience. CV has, and to a very large degree, according to dang's comment above.
- pvg 7y agoIt's mostly because they're not what HN is for. Sometimes things that are mostly not what HN is for gain traction on HN while still being mostly not what HN is for.
- dang 7y ago> because they don't gain traction among the HN audience That's a bit of a misperception. They do gain traction. If we didn't moderate them, HN's front page would consist of the hottest topics of the moment and would be a different site altogether. The strongest force on the internet is indignation—orders of magnitude stronger than curiosity—so there need to be countervailing mechanisms (like software and moderation) to contain its effects and allow HN to be HN. Upvotes alone don't do it, unfortunately. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22upvotes%20alone%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- listenallyall 7y agoI appreciate your thoughts in this thread, and more importantly, your willingness to explain your decisions. Your diligent moderation throughout the site ensures it remains a terrific, unique and much-needed resource. Thank you!
- dang 7y agoThank you too! It's important feedback to hear that the explanations are helpful, because otherwise I need to recalibrate how I do it, or just (if it's not working) do less. People are most welcome to ask further questions if there's something we haven't explained yet. I'm slowly building up a corpus of links to previous explanations, which is why my answers are so full of HN Search links. Eventually we might compile all that into some web pages.