3 ms·

From the guidelines[1]: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a

From the guidelines[1]: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Maybe enough people flagged it for being off-topic 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

wcerfgba 6y ago
I don't like these guidelines because they are vague and subjective -- just because an article does or does not gratify one person's intellectual curiosity, it doesn't mean it won't / will gratify another person. Flagging is heavy-handed, because it hides the post unless you have showdead enabled, and it prevents the post being able to gain upvotes which would otherwise justify it being posted. When a post gets 10 upvotes in 50 minutes, it's clearly satisfying _some_ people's curiosity. If you're not interested in the post you can just scroll past it, you don't have to flag it out of everyone else's view...
- giantg2 6y ago
  Welcome to democracy. As the previous person said, maybe enough people flagged it. Democracy and majority rule can be a convenient cover for the oppression of the minority - just look at slavery in the early days of the US. I actually tried to comment on it asking for a TL;DR since it seems to stereotyping people from my perspective and was too verbose. Concisely writing about a topic is s virtue in my book.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I don't like these guidelines because they are vague and subjective They are intended to be subjective: since it's about fit to the audience. > just because an article does or does not gratify one person's intellectual curiosity, it doesn't mean it won't / will gratify another person. One vote/flag doesn't have a giant effect. The idea isn't to have stuff that might appeal to someone’s intellectual curiosity, but will do so for the HN community broadly. HN isn't the only community around and isn't intended to be, and it isn't trying to be all things to all people. > Flagging is heavy-handed, because it hides the post unless you have showdead enabled, and it prevents the post being able to gain upvotes which would otherwise justify it being posted. Tools to adjust the signal-to-noise ratio need to, well, actually have an effect to work. > When a post gets 10 upvotes in 50 minutes, it's clearly satisfying _some_ people's curiosity. Yes, and the formula weighting votes, flags, and activity already considers that. > If you're not interested in the post you can just scroll past it, you don't have to flag it out of everyone else's view... Conversely, if you are interested in content that doesn't appeal to the HN community generally as expressed by the mechanisms established, you are free to use a different link-sharing and discussion site (there are plenty) or set up your own.

wcerfgba 6y ago

I don't like these guidelines because they are vague and subjective -- just because an article does or does not gratify one person's intellectual curiosity, it doesn't mean it won't / will gratify another person. Flagging is heavy-handed, because it hides the post unless you have showdead enabled, and it prevents the post being able to gain upvotes which would otherwise justify it being posted. When a post gets 10 upvotes in 50 minutes, it's clearly satisfying _some_ people's curiosity. If you're not interested in the post you can just scroll past it, you don't have to flag it out of everyone else's view...

giantg2 6y ago
Welcome to democracy. As the previous person said, maybe enough people flagged it. Democracy and majority rule can be a convenient cover for the oppression of the minority - just look at slavery in the early days of the US. I actually tried to comment on it asking for a TL;DR since it seems to stereotyping people from my perspective and was too verbose. Concisely writing about a topic is s virtue in my book.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> I don't like these guidelines because they are vague and subjective They are intended to be subjective: since it's about fit to the audience. > just because an article does or does not gratify one person's intellectual curiosity, it doesn't mean it won't / will gratify another person. One vote/flag doesn't have a giant effect. The idea isn't to have stuff that might appeal to someone’s intellectual curiosity, but will do so for the HN community broadly. HN isn't the only community around and isn't intended to be, and it isn't trying to be all things to all people. > Flagging is heavy-handed, because it hides the post unless you have showdead enabled, and it prevents the post being able to gain upvotes which would otherwise justify it being posted. Tools to adjust the signal-to-noise ratio need to, well, actually have an effect to work. > When a post gets 10 upvotes in 50 minutes, it's clearly satisfying _some_ people's curiosity. Yes, and the formula weighting votes, flags, and activity already considers that. > If you're not interested in the post you can just scroll past it, you don't have to flag it out of everyone else's view... Conversely, if you are interested in content that doesn't appeal to the HN community generally as expressed by the mechanisms established, you are free to use a different link-sharing and discussion site (there are plenty) or set up your own.