4 ms·

Right now, on the front page, there are posts about the recreation of the first automobile, the archaeological discovery of cannabis residue at a dig site, news

Right now, on the front page, there are posts about the recreation of the first automobile, the archaeological discovery of cannabis residue at a dig site, news articles about meetings between Zuckerberg and civil rights leaders. While this site trends heavily towards tech, it is not so narrow-minded that we cannot discuss things not strictly related to that subject.

yters 6y ago
i bring up this argument when anti ccp topics get flagged or modded, but for some reason the argument does not work in that context
- dang 6y ago
  The argument does work in that context. It's the same across all topics as far as I know. The moderation question is always: what serves intellectual curiosity? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Once a topic becomes repeated enough, there's a power-law-style dropoff in how interesting it is (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), except to people who have a strong identification with one side of an argument, and that sort of interest isn't intellectual curiosity, it's loyalty to a cause. That may be an admirable quality in many ways, but it's not a good fit for this site. Nationalistic flamewar, which is the theme you're referring to, definitely falls in this category. That doesn't mean that "anti ccp" stories don't get attention here—they certainly do. Just not enough to satisfy the warriors, and rightly so, since warriors want every story that serves their cause to be on HN's front page. See also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... for how we handle major ongoing topics. Edit: it looks like we've had a similar conversation before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22870427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22870427, which makes me think that your "for some reason" is an insinuation of the sort the site guidelines specifically ask people not to post: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please don't do that here.
  - yters 6y ago
    i see, so this topic is considered 'intellectually curious' while anti-ccp is 'loyalty to a cause' i am not really sure how you make that determination, i personally find accounts of what the ccp does to exploit its citizens intellectually interesting when it is not widely reported so, given you exponential drop off comment, i assume that means a small number of highly voted protest posts are allowed, and then past that point they will get modded. is that correct? and yes, we had this discussion before, and i became confused in this context since protest topics also seem prone to intellectually uninteresting flamewars hn wishes to avoid it seems there is an exception in this kind of case where a controversial topic is allowed if it is new technically, police brutality and protesta are not new topics, but i suppose this exception is the current national impact?
    - dang 6y ago
      None of that is correct. The primary issue isn't the topic itself but the amount of repetition around it. Curiosity withers under repetition. You would see exactly the same pattern if the current topic ended up getting repeated a lot: the users who felt most strongly about it ('loyalty to a cause') would want every single article to be on the front page, and would feel like the mods and/or community must be pro-police-brutality if that didn't happen, just as some people feel like we must be pro-communist or pro-China or whatever. I tried to explain that above, and linked to past explanations of the same points. If you want to take a look at those past explanations, and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be curious to know what it is. Perhaps it would be helpful to describe what these links contain more explicitly: (1) We try to optimize HN for intellectual curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (2) Curiosity and repetition don't go well together: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (3) With submissions on a MOT (major ongoing topic), the main thing we look for is SNI (significant new information): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... As far as I can tell, the complete answer to your question follows from those three points.

yters 6y ago

i bring up this argument when anti ccp topics get flagged or modded, but for some reason the argument does not work in that context

dang 6y ago
The argument does work in that context. It's the same across all topics as far as I know. The moderation question is always: what serves intellectual curiosity? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Once a topic becomes repeated enough, there's a power-law-style dropoff in how interesting it is (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), except to people who have a strong identification with one side of an argument, and that sort of interest isn't intellectual curiosity, it's loyalty to a cause. That may be an admirable quality in many ways, but it's not a good fit for this site. Nationalistic flamewar, which is the theme you're referring to, definitely falls in this category. That doesn't mean that "anti ccp" stories don't get attention here—they certainly do. Just not enough to satisfy the warriors, and rightly so, since warriors want every story that serves their cause to be on HN's front page. See also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... for how we handle major ongoing topics. Edit: it looks like we've had a similar conversation before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22870427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22870427, which makes me think that your "for some reason" is an insinuation of the sort the site guidelines specifically ask people not to post: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please don't do that here.
- yters 6y ago
  i see, so this topic is considered 'intellectually curious' while anti-ccp is 'loyalty to a cause' i am not really sure how you make that determination, i personally find accounts of what the ccp does to exploit its citizens intellectually interesting when it is not widely reported so, given you exponential drop off comment, i assume that means a small number of highly voted protest posts are allowed, and then past that point they will get modded. is that correct? and yes, we had this discussion before, and i became confused in this context since protest topics also seem prone to intellectually uninteresting flamewars hn wishes to avoid it seems there is an exception in this kind of case where a controversial topic is allowed if it is new technically, police brutality and protesta are not new topics, but i suppose this exception is the current national impact?
  - dang 6y ago
    None of that is correct. The primary issue isn't the topic itself but the amount of repetition around it. Curiosity withers under repetition. You would see exactly the same pattern if the current topic ended up getting repeated a lot: the users who felt most strongly about it ('loyalty to a cause') would want every single article to be on the front page, and would feel like the mods and/or community must be pro-police-brutality if that didn't happen, just as some people feel like we must be pro-communist or pro-China or whatever. I tried to explain that above, and linked to past explanations of the same points. If you want to take a look at those past explanations, and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be curious to know what it is. Perhaps it would be helpful to describe what these links contain more explicitly: (1) We try to optimize HN for intellectual curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (2) Curiosity and repetition don't go well together: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (3) With submissions on a MOT (major ongoing topic), the main thing we look for is SNI (significant new information): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... As far as I can tell, the complete answer to your question follows from those three points.