3 ms·

> One of those posts made it to #16 before being flagged, the other did not make the front page at all. Well, presuming we're talking about the minervanett.no

by nkurz 6y ago

> One of those posts made it to #16 before being flagged, the other did not make the front page at all. Well, presuming we're talking about the minervanett.no article, there's also this submission that made it to #2 with 24 votes and 18 comments in the 10 minutes before it was flagged to death: [flagged] The most logical explanation is that it comes from a laboratory (minervanett.no) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23738545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23738545 http://hnrankings.info/23738545/ http://hnrankings.info/23738545/ Then there was also a version a week earlier that got to #3 in 5 minutes before it was killed: [flagged] [dead] Norwegian virologists suggest Coronavirus originated in a laboratory (minervanett.no) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23738264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23738264 http://hnrankings.info/23738264/ http://hnrankings.info/23738264/ > You'll find that scale of upvoters upvoting anything, some of the time. I found that to be a surprisingly high number of votes in a short period of time, likely indicating that there is a substantial population on HN who would have liked to discuss that story but were prevented from doing so by a (presumably) much smaller number of flags. Is it actually common for stories without a broad degree of interest to get that many votes in their first few minutes? > it was users who flagged it down, not us Technically, but I'm hoping that you try to review the flagged stories and recover the ones where you disagree with the flagging? Otherwise this would seem to allow a "tyranny of the minority" where a small number of people who want to prevent a discussion from taking place are able to enforce their beliefs on the rest of the larger group. I'm a lot more comfortable with you using your expert judgement than with trusting that flags will always be used appropriately without review.

dang 6y ago
Ah, that was the one I remember seeing. In such cases, if (a) article is substantive and (b) there is a chance of an intellectually curious discussion, we turn off the flags and (probably also) downweight the article as a counterweight to sensationalism, which always attracts extra upvotes. In this case (b) seemed hopeless, so I didn't.
- nkurz 6y ago
  Sorry, I kept editing, probably after you had already posted. And I should be clear that I don't have a strong opinion on whether this particular article is actually appropriate for discussion here. I do think it's an example, though, of how certain topics are "off limits" because a small group does not want them to be discussed. For me, it exacerbates my long standing worries that abuse of flagging (or the counter-reaction thereto) may be the eventual downfall of HN.
  - cinquemb 6y ago
    > I do think it's an example, though, of how certain topics are "off limits" because a small group does not want them to be discussed. > For me, it exacerbates my long standing worries that abuse of flagging (or the counter-reaction thereto) may be the eventual downfall of HN. It doesn't really worry me, but topics that I may have wanted to discuss on HN long ago and try to today on some posts, I usually spend more time elsewhere discussing them now and less time on HN doing so because they usually have a very short shelf because of the above and that's fine for me, but maybe not HN.
- nl 6y ago
  I wonder if it would be useful including fact checker information next to some of these controversial articles? The FullFact check is rather good: https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/ https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-cla... Maybe it's just impossible to discuss a deeply politicised topic like this usefully here though.
  - burfog 6y ago
    Who will fact-check the fact checkers? The typical ones are horrific, with many having been started explicitly for political battle. The common tactic for something like "virus from a lab" would be to move the goalposts and hope the reader doesn't notice. Breeding coronaviruses in a lab actually happened, with scientific papers published about how genetically engineered cells with both human and bat traits were used to help the bat coronaviruses adapt to growing well in human cells. A typical fact checker tactic would be to purposely confuse that fact with the claim that the virus was created from scratch, modeled in a computer and assembled by a machine. Supposed experts say that this is impossible, and so the fact checker can claim that the fact was proven false... but it was a straw man. The URL you gave is not quite so directly misdirecting, but still vague and IMHO just wrong. I've looked over the scientific papers, and I think the evidence is clear.
- mistermann 6y ago
  > In such cases, if (a) article is substantive and (b) there is a chance of an intellectually curious discussion, we turn off the flags and (probably also) downweight the article as a counterweight to sensationalism, which always attracts extra upvotes. In this case (b) seemed hopeless, so I didn't. That's the point, in my opinion at least. Above you say: > This site may feel like a "consensus echo chamber" but in reality it is nothing remotely close to that. I think you may be running into the notice-dislike bias... If a certain class of articles get flagged by a large number of people who have a strong dislike for the topic, and you as the moderator are ok with it because here at HN with the culture being the way it is you allow it to be removed because it won't generate "intellectually curious discussion", then how can you say that HN is not a "consensus echo chamber" when it comes to these particular topics? It seems to me there are some very obvious errors in your explanation above. You can run this forum however you want, but being aware and transparent about what topics are and are not allowed seems like a better way to do it than disingenuously explaining away flaws. No person is omniscient, however it may seem that way. Just as you can observe flaws in other people evaluation that they themselves cannot see, is it not possible that you too may have some flaws that you cannot see?
  - dang 6y ago
    It's more complex than just "what topics are and are not allowed". Threads are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. One thread might discuss a topic within the site guidelines while another thread on the same topic might turn into a massive flamewar. Subtle (or not so subtle) differences in article, headline, URL, site design, and who knows what else can make the difference too. The decision I made was based on the thread, not the topic. As I mentioned above, we reduced the penalty on one of those threads. We wouldn't do that if the topic were "not allowed". Is it possible that I may have some flaws that I cannot see? That is beyond possible, it is certain. The trouble with these arguments though is that operating this place is a lot more complicated than people assume it is, and so they say oversimplified things like "aha, you are suppressing topic X so HN is an echo chamber after all" and I have to try to fill in the information gap before we can have a sensible conversation about what the actual flaws might be. I'm super interested in the flaws—but first we have to be talking about the same world, which unfortunately is already not so easy.

by nkurz 6y ago

dang 6y ago

Ah, that was the one I remember seeing. In such cases, if (a) article is substantive and (b) there is a chance of an intellectually curious discussion, we turn off the flags and (probably also) downweight the article as a counterweight to sensationalism, which always attracts extra upvotes. In this case (b) seemed hopeless, so I didn't.

nkurz 6y ago
Sorry, I kept editing, probably after you had already posted. And I should be clear that I don't have a strong opinion on whether this particular article is actually appropriate for discussion here. I do think it's an example, though, of how certain topics are "off limits" because a small group does not want them to be discussed. For me, it exacerbates my long standing worries that abuse of flagging (or the counter-reaction thereto) may be the eventual downfall of HN.
- cinquemb 6y ago
  > I do think it's an example, though, of how certain topics are "off limits" because a small group does not want them to be discussed. > For me, it exacerbates my long standing worries that abuse of flagging (or the counter-reaction thereto) may be the eventual downfall of HN. It doesn't really worry me, but topics that I may have wanted to discuss on HN long ago and try to today on some posts, I usually spend more time elsewhere discussing them now and less time on HN doing so because they usually have a very short shelf because of the above and that's fine for me, but maybe not HN.
nl 6y ago
I wonder if it would be useful including fact checker information next to some of these controversial articles? The FullFact check is rather good: https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-claims/ https://fullfact.org/health/richard-dearlove-coronavirus-cla... Maybe it's just impossible to discuss a deeply politicised topic like this usefully here though.
- burfog 6y ago
  Who will fact-check the fact checkers? The typical ones are horrific, with many having been started explicitly for political battle. The common tactic for something like "virus from a lab" would be to move the goalposts and hope the reader doesn't notice. Breeding coronaviruses in a lab actually happened, with scientific papers published about how genetically engineered cells with both human and bat traits were used to help the bat coronaviruses adapt to growing well in human cells. A typical fact checker tactic would be to purposely confuse that fact with the claim that the virus was created from scratch, modeled in a computer and assembled by a machine. Supposed experts say that this is impossible, and so the fact checker can claim that the fact was proven false... but it was a straw man. The URL you gave is not quite so directly misdirecting, but still vague and IMHO just wrong. I've looked over the scientific papers, and I think the evidence is clear.
mistermann 6y ago
> In such cases, if (a) article is substantive and (b) there is a chance of an intellectually curious discussion, we turn off the flags and (probably also) downweight the article as a counterweight to sensationalism, which always attracts extra upvotes. In this case (b) seemed hopeless, so I didn't. That's the point, in my opinion at least. Above you say: > This site may feel like a "consensus echo chamber" but in reality it is nothing remotely close to that. I think you may be running into the notice-dislike bias... If a certain class of articles get flagged by a large number of people who have a strong dislike for the topic, and you as the moderator are ok with it because here at HN with the culture being the way it is you allow it to be removed because it won't generate "intellectually curious discussion", then how can you say that HN is not a "consensus echo chamber" when it comes to these particular topics? It seems to me there are some very obvious errors in your explanation above. You can run this forum however you want, but being aware and transparent about what topics are and are not allowed seems like a better way to do it than disingenuously explaining away flaws. No person is omniscient, however it may seem that way. Just as you can observe flaws in other people evaluation that they themselves cannot see, is it not possible that you too may have some flaws that you cannot see?
- dang 6y ago
  It's more complex than just "what topics are and are not allowed". Threads are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. One thread might discuss a topic within the site guidelines while another thread on the same topic might turn into a massive flamewar. Subtle (or not so subtle) differences in article, headline, URL, site design, and who knows what else can make the difference too. The decision I made was based on the thread, not the topic. As I mentioned above, we reduced the penalty on one of those threads. We wouldn't do that if the topic were "not allowed". Is it possible that I may have some flaws that I cannot see? That is beyond possible, it is certain. The trouble with these arguments though is that operating this place is a lot more complicated than people assume it is, and so they say oversimplified things like "aha, you are suppressing topic X so HN is an echo chamber after all" and I have to try to fill in the information gap before we can have a sensible conversation about what the actual flaws might be. I'm super interested in the flaws—but first we have to be talking about the same world, which unfortunately is already not so easy.