18 ms·

There was a previous unrelated discussion about this just a few hours ago which was climbing to the top of the front page when I saw it. And then just vanished:

There was a previous unrelated discussion about this just a few hours ago which was climbing to the top of the front page when I saw it. And then just vanished: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264 It's not flagged, it just went from #13 on the front page to invisible. In a single refresh. How does that work? Looking at the votes and age, it should be in the top 5 of both Ask and the front page. What's the metric or decision that made it disappear? @dang might be worth commenting on this? Moderation is fine, opaque removal of content with no explanation, not so much. I fully believe @dang has the best interests of the community in mind, so please give us a clear explanation of what's going on here.

barbapapa22 6y ago
HN is extremely corrupt in that way, but don't worry, my reply to you will be flagged and people will continue to ignore HN's extreme biases, and ideological agenda.
- dang 6y ago
  Just out of curiosity: what ideological agenda?
gerbal 6y ago
If this is true, follow the money. HN is run by a Venture Capital firm. What are their incentives? Who does the business have to keep happy?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > If this is true, follow the money Isn't it more likely it was flagged off the front page by overly-enthusiastic users? I'll also admit that this link, to a support thread, is more compelling than the Ask HN, where half the comments were questioning whether the phenomenon was actually happening.
  - jshevek 6y ago
    Yes. I believe some topics get removed by sufficient community flagging alone, no intervention by mods. If true, then this feature can be abused by users with agendas.
  - atomashpolskiy 6y ago
    It was not flagged. It was on FP in top 10, then instantly moved to 3rd page without "[flagged]" appearing in the title.
    - JshWright 6y ago
      Flagging has impacts other than the binary "flagged" state.
      - atomashpolskiy 6y ago
        This does not explain an instant move of a submission made 1 hour ago from top 10 to 3rd page, where there are submissions made 1 DAY ago.
        JshWright 6y ago
        That depends on how many users flagged the post.
        AlchemistCamp 6y ago
        Yes, and within how short of a time span all those flags came in! A post that's regularly being flagged by 0.0X% of logged-in users will have different behavior than one that gets fairly few flags for many hours and then suddenly gets 30 within a five minute period.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
    Is that more likely? Should it be that easy for a user to flag an article that's trending so far upward? If it is that easy, maybe we should discuss the flagging system because it gives the ILLUSION that it was taken down because there's a conflict of interest.
- techntoke 6y ago
  I agree 100%. I've said this before and been threatened with ban by admin/mod. Anytime you go against the agenda, they prevent you for posting comments sometimes in excess of an hour. Then if you reply again and they don't like it you have to wait another hour. Nothing is transparent. They just say, no political discussion, however it only seems to apply towards comments they don't like. It looks like the previous post was flagged, so can't even comment on it.
  - barbapapa22 6y ago
    This is a very common bad experience on HN. To me, it must be PG's own character that is being reflected here through a series of mirrors (his disciples). The fish rots from the head down.
ddevault 6y ago
YCombinator has a financial incentive to support the Chinese regime.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  Hacker news and dang in particular has a very good track record of even handed and well thought of moderation. They have definitely earned benefit of the doubt from me. Let's wait a little before bringing the torches.
  - dooglius 6y ago
    And how exactly did you determine this track record? It's not as if there's a log or appeals process...
    - yorwba 6y ago
      The log is https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... The appeals process is to write to hn@ycombinator.com (Contact link in the footer.)
      - viklove 6y ago
        That's not a log, not even close. It's a link to dang's comment history, not a list of every comment/submission that has been deleted by the moderation team. Go ahead and downvote me, doesn't make what I'm saying wrong.
        kjaftaedi 6y ago
        AKA you want a tool that can be used by spammers to game the system. If you don't like the moderation, apply to be a moderator.. or start your own forum.
        viklove 6y ago
brmgb 6y ago
Some users tend to flag stories about China and censorship because they generate a lot of nationalistic and hot headed comments and very little actual intelligent discussion. Just look at the comments attached to this submission.
- missosoup 6y ago
  The submission I linked is not flagged (at least as far as I can see from my account?). Either there's some non-intuitive stuff going on with the way submissions stay on the front page, or HN soft-nuked it. Either way I think we deserve an explanation and a clear understanding of the underlying rules.
  - duxup 6y ago
    Does HN always tell you when someone flags it? Or just a critical number of users or something like that? I see the flagged indicator now and then, but I see it somewhat less frequently than I would THINK things get flagged, admittedly that's all conjecture.
    - mistermann 6y ago
      If something is memory holed quickly enough after being flagged, perhaps combined with an automated algorithm that considers certain keywords, then the likelihood of people noticing flagged posts can be kept very low. Of course this is all speculation, the truth of censorship on various platforms will likely never be known.
  - bigpumpkin 6y ago
    If a story gets moderately flagged, it gets deranked but don't show up as "flagged"
  - Lewton 6y ago
    It takes some amount of people flagging it before it shows up as [flagged] but flagging submissions affect rankings before it reaches that point. On top of that "Ask HN" posts also have some modifier on them that makes them drop quicker, these two effects seem to be cumulative, explaining why it dropped so quickly
baylearn 6y ago
I also experienced this on numerous Chinese government-related posts in the past, where front page articles were not flagged, but quickly disappeared. Don't really have an explanation. Would be great if @dang can look into this.
- philwelch 6y ago
  I seriously doubt that there’s anything to “look into” from @dang’s perspective. A huge share of his moderation lately is focused on “nationalistic flamewar”, and from his perspective, it’s probably easier for any thread that might tend towards that to just quietly sink off the front page.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    While not all comment-wars are flame-wars I know what you mean. I've been involved in a few. Trouble is, if the chinese trolls cause enough trouble that the mods are happy to let the thread vanish[1], the trolls have won. Scratch that, china has won, because there's a strong reek of high-level organisation behind it. [1] Assuming that's what is occurring; I don't know.
  - dang 6y ago
    Unfortunately it's nowhere near that easy. Some of the stories that overlap with nationalistic flamewar are well on topic for HN. This is one. The recent TSMC stories come to mind. Really there are many of them.
atomashpolskiy 6y ago
I've posted an AskHN about self-regulation mechanisms on HN just today and instantly got flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23220998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23220998 Please upvote another attempt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223939
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  I remember seeing an exchange where a moderator seemed to be able to edit another person's comment well after the edit period with no indication an edit was made. Kind of hope I misunderstood the exchange, but if that's the case that instantly undermines any possible claim to being "ultimate place on the Web to discover and discuss bleeding-edge content" In general HN is not that place anyways. People here confuse meekness with civility. It's ok to tear someone apart with ad hominem attacks as long as you don't sound too passionate in doing so. "You're being dumb" not ok. "You're being silly", totally ok. I know I got rate limited and I'm pretty sure it's the over that time I had the audacity to talk back to a moderator - Look at this comment even, if you go against the hivemind your content gets flagged/buried in about 5 seconds
  - atomashpolskiy 6y ago
    That's why we have to compensate for it by upvoting!
  - artificial 6y ago
    Whelp, as far as edits are concerned one could always PGP sign their posts?
  - o10449366 6y ago
    I also don't appreciate it when comments are detached from their parents without a note from the moderators. I've had a few comments taken completely out of context because they were detached from their parent into their own top-level comment.
- atomashpolskiy 6y ago
buckminstrix 6y ago
Don't worry. There'll be an "innocent" explanation. There always is. Mods here "can do no wrong." And when they do...well, it just puff it disappears (as in they ignore it.)
kens 6y ago
A few years ago, I reverse-engineered the HN ranking algorithm [1]. Basic ranking is based on votes vs age, but there are numerous other factors. Penalties are applied based on words in the title or the domain. Posts with too many comments got penalized as controversial. A "voting ring detector" triggers other automatic penalties. HN ranking has probably become more complex since I looked at it. Manual moderation also impacts ranking. [1] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...
- duxup 6y ago
  Interesting. I suspect the formula is changing if only because the sheer volume of spammy type stuff skyrocketing to the top seems to have subsided. There was a short run where a lot of nearly raw spam type posts were quickly rising to the top, and sticking a long time despite almost / all the comments being about how terrible the spam is.
  - usr1106 6y ago
    That's why software should be open source. Ironically the article about google censorship ended up discussing whether there is hn censorship or whether it just magic ranking. With open source everybody could check whether there was censorship outside of any smart ranking algorithm.
    - DevKoala 6y ago
      No, you cannot open source a fraud prevention mechanism. You want to keep it secret.
      - CamperBob2 6y ago
        That sounds suspiciously like what used to be said of encryption.
        rbanffy 6y ago
linuxftw 6y ago
I've participated in several active, somewhat neutral threads here that have disappeared entirely from the site with no indication that they have. Unable to find by browsing backwards by new or backwards from front page. The one in question was that new Michael Moore documentary. There was a lively discussion, but obviously didn't fit the established narrative here, and it was disappeared.
wait_a_minute 6y ago
This is very worrisome. If we cannot as computing professionals raise the alarm about censorship and tech abuses on a primary forum for computing professionals, what options are left? Ethics is an important part of what we do for a living. We cannot back down from that now or ever.
mdturnerphys 6y ago
Same thing happened to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20863498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20863498. I meant to email dang to ask about it but never got around to it.
jader201 6y ago
I had a similar thing happen to my post [1] a month or so ago — one minute it was #1, then after a refresh, it vanished. No flag (that I know of), no explanation. When things happen like this, explanations are helpful to the submitter and/or the commenters, whichever was causing the problems. I suppose this opens things up for debate, but not sure a silent removal of content is great for the community either. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633570
tarsinge 6y ago
Not the first time I see something like this, would have I not been using hckrnews.com I would have missed it.
thih9 6y ago
I always assumed the activity in comments might affect how long the submission stays on the front page. I don’t know this for sure and this is just a guess. It would be great to know the details, waiting to learn more seems best.
insickness 6y ago
Earlier today, a post linking to this article vanished: https://wmbriggs.com/post/30833/ https://wmbriggs.com/post/30833/. It was generating upvotes and discussion.
- mistermann 6y ago
  Perception is reality. If you control what portions of reality the public is allowed to see, you can control their minds and their behavior. The primary behaviors that need controlling are adherence to authoritarian dictates, and voting.
- vixen99 6y ago
  Perhaps there is an innocent explanation? Or are HN users not smart enough to decide for themselves and indeed tear apart controversial views on the burning topic of the day should the arguments presented warrant such treatment?
- dang 6y ago
  That one was flag-killed by users (I've turned that off now). Moderators didn't see it. The combination of taking an extreme contrarian position and presenting it in a grandiose and inflammatory way is pretty reliably fatal. I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, I don't like to see contrarian views get killed for being contrarian. On the other hand, if the initial conditions of a thread are that inflammatory, we're guaranteed to get a flamewar, which is bad for this site.
zbentley 6y ago
Might it be because threads like these often cause toxic, rude, unproductive, and generally tribal discourse in the comments? Looking around the comment threads, I certainly don't see a lot of intellectual curiosity being stimulated or minds being expanded. I see a lot of dogmatic accusations, hyperbolic bemoaning-the-downfall-of-civilization, and general "how could you possibly believe that?!"-toned rudeness. Not our finest hour.
- non-entity 6y ago
  Yeah pretty much all of HN's lines about how it's much better than other communities go out the window. Perhaps such conversations can be had productively, but I've yet to see it.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I challenge you to find an on-line community whose average is better than HN's worst. I really do. I might start visiting it; we lack civilized places on the Internet.
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      Do you have show dead on or ever check the bottom page/new posts?
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        I do, and the kind of stuff that I see greyed out at the bottom is usually something I see floating around the middle of the page in other popular communities.
rezeroed 6y ago
"I fully believe @dang has the best interests of the community in mind" -- which community? Censorship, I mean moderation, is preferential.
cybernoodles 6y ago
This is where I draw my line. I will not be using HN anymore
dang 6y ago
It was flagged by users and set off the flamewar detector. We review those, but not while asleep. The site guidelines specifically ask you not to post like this, but to send such questions to hn@ycombinator.com instead. Would you please review them (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? The reason we ask that is that such comments routinely spark completely speculative subthreads that range from completely off topic (at the high end!) to outrage mobs. They're extremely repetitive and they basically act like a drug and not a nice one. We're always happy to answer questions—it just takes time to deal with the firehose. Yes, you have to wait for an email reply, but you've had to wait for a reply to this comment too, and if you'd sent an email you wouldn't have damaged HN. This digression (I'll use a nice word) was the #1 subthread on the #1 story of HN when I saw it. You can't compute a post's rank from its timestamp and score. The software is more complicated than that, plus user flags affect things, plus moderator action. The "why is this post at rank N when given the score X and the timestamp Y my mental algorithm tells me it should be at rank Z?" question is an HN classic, but people grossly overweight moderator action, or rather sinister-moderator-misdeeds in the answers they give themselves. I mean, think about it you guys. Do you really think we're suppressing discussion of the suppression of the phrase "communist bandits" from YouTube? I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a.
- missosoup 6y ago
  It seems like my comment was also vanished from the top of the thread? I don't see what guidelines I came even close to breaking. Help me out here? No one's going to see your reply, my comment is detached from the submission. But I do want to understand what's going on here.
  - diego898 6y ago
    For what its worth, I was also shocked to see your entire comment thread, with over 110 children I believe, deleted from the thread without mention. Before this, I thought HN handled deletion with graying out, [flagged] or [dead] etc. I only found it again by checking @dang's profile. I've also emailed HN support strongly objecting to this complete deletion.
atomashpolskiy 6y ago
Seems like a child comment has been detached from this thread and moved into a separate top-level thread, that is currently at the top (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223772), while its' former parent (comment that I'm currently responding to) has been moved to the bottom (2nd page). QED.
- missosoup 6y ago
  Seems like your comment has also been detached. I'm seriously confused right now.
- dang 6y ago
  If we're downweighting an off-topic subthread A, but it has a subthread B which is actually on-topic, we sometimes detach B so that it doesn't get pulled down by its parent. This is a good example. In this case A and B were almost completely unrelated.

barbapapa22 6y ago

HN is extremely corrupt in that way, but don't worry, my reply to you will be flagged and people will continue to ignore HN's extreme biases, and ideological agenda.

dang 6y ago
Just out of curiosity: what ideological agenda?

gerbal 6y ago

If this is true, follow the money. HN is run by a Venture Capital firm. What are their incentives? Who does the business have to keep happy?

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> If this is true, follow the money Isn't it more likely it was flagged off the front page by overly-enthusiastic users? I'll also admit that this link, to a support thread, is more compelling than the Ask HN, where half the comments were questioning whether the phenomenon was actually happening.
- jshevek 6y ago
  Yes. I believe some topics get removed by sufficient community flagging alone, no intervention by mods. If true, then this feature can be abused by users with agendas.
- atomashpolskiy 6y ago
  It was not flagged. It was on FP in top 10, then instantly moved to 3rd page without "[flagged]" appearing in the title.
  - JshWright 6y ago
    Flagging has impacts other than the binary "flagged" state.
    - atomashpolskiy 6y ago
      This does not explain an instant move of a submission made 1 hour ago from top 10 to 3rd page, where there are submissions made 1 DAY ago.
      - JshWright 6y ago
        That depends on how many users flagged the post.
        AlchemistCamp 6y ago
        Yes, and within how short of a time span all those flags came in! A post that's regularly being flagged by 0.0X% of logged-in users will have different behavior than one that gets fairly few flags for many hours and then suddenly gets 30 within a five minute period.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
  Is that more likely? Should it be that easy for a user to flag an article that's trending so far upward? If it is that easy, maybe we should discuss the flagging system because it gives the ILLUSION that it was taken down because there's a conflict of interest.
techntoke 6y ago
I agree 100%. I've said this before and been threatened with ban by admin/mod. Anytime you go against the agenda, they prevent you for posting comments sometimes in excess of an hour. Then if you reply again and they don't like it you have to wait another hour. Nothing is transparent. They just say, no political discussion, however it only seems to apply towards comments they don't like. It looks like the previous post was flagged, so can't even comment on it.
- barbapapa22 6y ago
  This is a very common bad experience on HN. To me, it must be PG's own character that is being reflected here through a series of mirrors (his disciples). The fish rots from the head down.

ddevault 6y ago

YCombinator has a financial incentive to support the Chinese regime.

im3w1l 6y ago
Hacker news and dang in particular has a very good track record of even handed and well thought of moderation. They have definitely earned benefit of the doubt from me. Let's wait a little before bringing the torches.
- dooglius 6y ago
  And how exactly did you determine this track record? It's not as if there's a log or appeals process...
  - yorwba 6y ago
    The log is https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... The appeals process is to write to hn@ycombinator.com (Contact link in the footer.)
    - viklove 6y ago
      That's not a log, not even close. It's a link to dang's comment history, not a list of every comment/submission that has been deleted by the moderation team. Go ahead and downvote me, doesn't make what I'm saying wrong.
      - kjaftaedi 6y ago
        AKA you want a tool that can be used by spammers to game the system. If you don't like the moderation, apply to be a moderator.. or start your own forum.
        viklove 6y ago

brmgb 6y ago

Some users tend to flag stories about China and censorship because they generate a lot of nationalistic and hot headed comments and very little actual intelligent discussion. Just look at the comments attached to this submission.

missosoup 6y ago
The submission I linked is not flagged (at least as far as I can see from my account?). Either there's some non-intuitive stuff going on with the way submissions stay on the front page, or HN soft-nuked it. Either way I think we deserve an explanation and a clear understanding of the underlying rules.
- duxup 6y ago
  Does HN always tell you when someone flags it? Or just a critical number of users or something like that? I see the flagged indicator now and then, but I see it somewhat less frequently than I would THINK things get flagged, admittedly that's all conjecture.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    If something is memory holed quickly enough after being flagged, perhaps combined with an automated algorithm that considers certain keywords, then the likelihood of people noticing flagged posts can be kept very low. Of course this is all speculation, the truth of censorship on various platforms will likely never be known.
- bigpumpkin 6y ago
  If a story gets moderately flagged, it gets deranked but don't show up as "flagged"
- Lewton 6y ago
  It takes some amount of people flagging it before it shows up as [flagged] but flagging submissions affect rankings before it reaches that point. On top of that "Ask HN" posts also have some modifier on them that makes them drop quicker, these two effects seem to be cumulative, explaining why it dropped so quickly

baylearn 6y ago

I also experienced this on numerous Chinese government-related posts in the past, where front page articles were not flagged, but quickly disappeared. Don't really have an explanation. Would be great if @dang can look into this.

philwelch 6y ago
I seriously doubt that there’s anything to “look into” from @dang’s perspective. A huge share of his moderation lately is focused on “nationalistic flamewar”, and from his perspective, it’s probably easier for any thread that might tend towards that to just quietly sink off the front page.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  While not all comment-wars are flame-wars I know what you mean. I've been involved in a few. Trouble is, if the chinese trolls cause enough trouble that the mods are happy to let the thread vanish[1], the trolls have won. Scratch that, china has won, because there's a strong reek of high-level organisation behind it. [1] Assuming that's what is occurring; I don't know.
- dang 6y ago
  Unfortunately it's nowhere near that easy. Some of the stories that overlap with nationalistic flamewar are well on topic for HN. This is one. The recent TSMC stories come to mind. Really there are many of them.

atomashpolskiy 6y ago

I've posted an AskHN about self-regulation mechanisms on HN just today and instantly got flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23220998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23220998 Please upvote another attempt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223939

BoorishBears 6y ago
I remember seeing an exchange where a moderator seemed to be able to edit another person's comment well after the edit period with no indication an edit was made. Kind of hope I misunderstood the exchange, but if that's the case that instantly undermines any possible claim to being "ultimate place on the Web to discover and discuss bleeding-edge content" In general HN is not that place anyways. People here confuse meekness with civility. It's ok to tear someone apart with ad hominem attacks as long as you don't sound too passionate in doing so. "You're being dumb" not ok. "You're being silly", totally ok. I know I got rate limited and I'm pretty sure it's the over that time I had the audacity to talk back to a moderator - Look at this comment even, if you go against the hivemind your content gets flagged/buried in about 5 seconds
- atomashpolskiy 6y ago
  That's why we have to compensate for it by upvoting!
- artificial 6y ago
  Whelp, as far as edits are concerned one could always PGP sign their posts?
- o10449366 6y ago
  I also don't appreciate it when comments are detached from their parents without a note from the moderators. I've had a few comments taken completely out of context because they were detached from their parent into their own top-level comment.
atomashpolskiy 6y ago

buckminstrix 6y ago

Don't worry. There'll be an "innocent" explanation. There always is. Mods here "can do no wrong." And when they do...well, it just puff it disappears (as in they ignore it.)

kens 6y ago

A few years ago, I reverse-engineered the HN ranking algorithm [1]. Basic ranking is based on votes vs age, but there are numerous other factors. Penalties are applied based on words in the title or the domain. Posts with too many comments got penalized as controversial. A "voting ring detector" triggers other automatic penalties. HN ranking has probably become more complex since I looked at it. Manual moderation also impacts ranking. [1] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

duxup 6y ago
Interesting. I suspect the formula is changing if only because the sheer volume of spammy type stuff skyrocketing to the top seems to have subsided. There was a short run where a lot of nearly raw spam type posts were quickly rising to the top, and sticking a long time despite almost / all the comments being about how terrible the spam is.
- usr1106 6y ago
  That's why software should be open source. Ironically the article about google censorship ended up discussing whether there is hn censorship or whether it just magic ranking. With open source everybody could check whether there was censorship outside of any smart ranking algorithm.
  - DevKoala 6y ago
    No, you cannot open source a fraud prevention mechanism. You want to keep it secret.
    - CamperBob2 6y ago
      That sounds suspiciously like what used to be said of encryption.
      - rbanffy 6y ago

linuxftw 6y ago

I've participated in several active, somewhat neutral threads here that have disappeared entirely from the site with no indication that they have. Unable to find by browsing backwards by new or backwards from front page. The one in question was that new Michael Moore documentary. There was a lively discussion, but obviously didn't fit the established narrative here, and it was disappeared.

wait_a_minute 6y ago

This is very worrisome. If we cannot as computing professionals raise the alarm about censorship and tech abuses on a primary forum for computing professionals, what options are left? Ethics is an important part of what we do for a living. We cannot back down from that now or ever.

mdturnerphys 6y ago

Same thing happened to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20863498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20863498. I meant to email dang to ask about it but never got around to it.

jader201 6y ago

I had a similar thing happen to my post [1] a month or so ago — one minute it was #1, then after a refresh, it vanished. No flag (that I know of), no explanation. When things happen like this, explanations are helpful to the submitter and/or the commenters, whichever was causing the problems. I suppose this opens things up for debate, but not sure a silent removal of content is great for the community either. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633570

tarsinge 6y ago

Not the first time I see something like this, would have I not been using hckrnews.com I would have missed it.

thih9 6y ago

I always assumed the activity in comments might affect how long the submission stays on the front page. I don’t know this for sure and this is just a guess. It would be great to know the details, waiting to learn more seems best.

insickness 6y ago

Earlier today, a post linking to this article vanished: https://wmbriggs.com/post/30833/ https://wmbriggs.com/post/30833/. It was generating upvotes and discussion.

mistermann 6y ago
Perception is reality. If you control what portions of reality the public is allowed to see, you can control their minds and their behavior. The primary behaviors that need controlling are adherence to authoritarian dictates, and voting.
vixen99 6y ago
Perhaps there is an innocent explanation? Or are HN users not smart enough to decide for themselves and indeed tear apart controversial views on the burning topic of the day should the arguments presented warrant such treatment?
dang 6y ago
That one was flag-killed by users (I've turned that off now). Moderators didn't see it. The combination of taking an extreme contrarian position and presenting it in a grandiose and inflammatory way is pretty reliably fatal. I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, I don't like to see contrarian views get killed for being contrarian. On the other hand, if the initial conditions of a thread are that inflammatory, we're guaranteed to get a flamewar, which is bad for this site.

zbentley 6y ago

Might it be because threads like these often cause toxic, rude, unproductive, and generally tribal discourse in the comments? Looking around the comment threads, I certainly don't see a lot of intellectual curiosity being stimulated or minds being expanded. I see a lot of dogmatic accusations, hyperbolic bemoaning-the-downfall-of-civilization, and general "how could you possibly believe that?!"-toned rudeness. Not our finest hour.

non-entity 6y ago
Yeah pretty much all of HN's lines about how it's much better than other communities go out the window. Perhaps such conversations can be had productively, but I've yet to see it.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I challenge you to find an on-line community whose average is better than HN's worst. I really do. I might start visiting it; we lack civilized places on the Internet.
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    Do you have show dead on or ever check the bottom page/new posts?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I do, and the kind of stuff that I see greyed out at the bottom is usually something I see floating around the middle of the page in other popular communities.

rezeroed 6y ago

"I fully believe @dang has the best interests of the community in mind" -- which community? Censorship, I mean moderation, is preferential.

cybernoodles 6y ago

This is where I draw my line. I will not be using HN anymore

dang 6y ago

It was flagged by users and set off the flamewar detector. We review those, but not while asleep. The site guidelines specifically ask you not to post like this, but to send such questions to hn@ycombinator.com instead. Would you please review them (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? The reason we ask that is that such comments routinely spark completely speculative subthreads that range from completely off topic (at the high end!) to outrage mobs. They're extremely repetitive and they basically act like a drug and not a nice one. We're always happy to answer questions—it just takes time to deal with the firehose. Yes, you have to wait for an email reply, but you've had to wait for a reply to this comment too, and if you'd sent an email you wouldn't have damaged HN. This digression (I'll use a nice word) was the #1 subthread on the #1 story of HN when I saw it. You can't compute a post's rank from its timestamp and score. The software is more complicated than that, plus user flags affect things, plus moderator action. The "why is this post at rank N when given the score X and the timestamp Y my mental algorithm tells me it should be at rank Z?" question is an HN classic, but people grossly overweight moderator action, or rather sinister-moderator-misdeeds in the answers they give themselves. I mean, think about it you guys. Do you really think we're suppressing discussion of the suppression of the phrase "communist bandits" from YouTube? I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a.

missosoup 6y ago
It seems like my comment was also vanished from the top of the thread? I don't see what guidelines I came even close to breaking. Help me out here? No one's going to see your reply, my comment is detached from the submission. But I do want to understand what's going on here.
- diego898 6y ago
  For what its worth, I was also shocked to see your entire comment thread, with over 110 children I believe, deleted from the thread without mention. Before this, I thought HN handled deletion with graying out, [flagged] or [dead] etc. I only found it again by checking @dang's profile. I've also emailed HN support strongly objecting to this complete deletion.

atomashpolskiy 6y ago

Seems like a child comment has been detached from this thread and moved into a separate top-level thread, that is currently at the top (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223772), while its' former parent (comment that I'm currently responding to) has been moved to the bottom (2nd page). QED.

missosoup 6y ago
Seems like your comment has also been detached. I'm seriously confused right now.
dang 6y ago
If we're downweighting an off-topic subthread A, but it has a subthread B which is actually on-topic, we sometimes detach B so that it doesn't get pulled down by its parent. This is a good example. In this case A and B were almost completely unrelated.