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So the article about Osama Bin Laden being killed -- which has nearly 800 up-votes -- is being flagged off the front page, but the article about a guy who tweet

So the article about Osama Bin Laden being killed -- which has nearly 800 up-votes -- is being flagged off the front page, but the article about a guy who tweets about him being killed is having no problem staying #1. Then again, so many people had their comments down-voted into light gray in the original Osama article that I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of flaggings came from people that wanted to stem their own decline in karma. That would make for an interesting dataset.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago
Maybe, but deleting seems easier. Also note that the NYT story is older, which reduces its ranking. But yes, I agree - this is not the main story.
- coderdude 15y ago
  The article about Sony and PSN data stayed #1 for over a day if I recall correctly. I don't think that an article with 770 up-votes (that's an incredible number, for any article) would be #15 after 11 hours unless it had been repeatedly flagged. It's probably for the best though. Many of the comments for that article are inflammatory and that could also be the reason why it was flagged.
anthonycerra 15y ago
I think you're comparing apples to oranges. An article from the mainstream media about bin Laden's killing is nothing out of the ordinary. This link, however, is likely the first time in history that something so covert and meticulously planned has been exposed in real-time by someone experiencing it himself. We get the opportunity to see it from his perspective without the media's filters - just raw data. This is incredibly fascinating to me.
- fluidcruft 15y ago
  Yeah, seems like we kill him every other day.
- pnathan 15y ago
  Agreed. I will have to archive this guy's tweet stream when I get home. This is history, people.
- dkarl 15y ago
  He heard about bin Laden being killed the same way the rest of us did.
  - guyzero 15y ago
    But unlike the rest of us, he heard bin Laden being killed.
    - dkarl 15y ago
      Ptolemy saw the earth go around the sun every day his whole life. So what? This guy didn't "expose" anything because he didn't know what was going on himself. All he heard was helicopters and an explosion. All the rest -- starting with the fact that one of the helicopters was not Pakistani -- was just gossip he heard nth-hand from eyewitnesses. If Obama had not held a press conference, he still wouldn't know what happened. What's historic about that? It's just the standard excitement and local gossip when something dramatic happens. If he had credibly detailed a piece of information that wasn't officially released, or if he had reported something interesting before it was openly announced by the U.S. government, that would have meant something.
      - TikiTDO 15y ago
        Sure, it's not really historical, but it is certainly indicative of the new age. If you look at the top articles right now, not one of them is particularly important in the grand scheme of things. I think this is surely more interesting that finding out that some data center management tool that perhaps a few dozen people on here will ever use has switched to a different open source license.
ibejoeb 15y ago
Have to back you up on point 1. It is disappointing to see this deeply significance, globally relevant event treated as somehow immaterial to the hacker community. Such a dogmatic interpretation of the guidance is certainly contrary to the intention and spirit. That said, this stream is rather interesting, and it belongs here too.
famousactress 15y ago
I suppose twitter's involvement in real-time news isn't really news at this point? But I find the roles that these services are playing in affecting the way information moves pretty interesting, and completely relevant to HN. I'm also in the "Let major news events get voted up, if that's what happens" camp. If there's one thing that I find most useful about HN it's that articles here are constantly making me think about how our world is changing, and what new tools and solutions might enable compelling needs that arise from those changes. Major news events are relevant, and I'm more interested in what HN'ers have to say about them than most other communities I'm a part of.
credo 15y ago
imo what is worse is the lack of transparency around the flagging. We don't know how many people flagged that article, whether it was manually pushed down by a moderator etc. All we can guess is that it is artificially moving down because other articles (with much lesser upvotes and same age) are ahead of it. My request for more transparency (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495953 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495953 ) was itself killed with no transparency :)
- ecuzzillo 15y ago
  I flagged it because every comment I read on it was stupid. There was nothing intellectually curious about the topic-- just poking people's political identities. Here, someone in close proximity to a reasonably significant historical event used social networks to broadcast his observation of said event. If this has happened before, it hasn't been very many times, and it's undoubtedly been only quite recently. We are witnessing a new historical phenomenon that will undoubtedly be worth a line in a history textbook. Moreover, importantly, the comments on this article don't completely suck. There's some meta-noise like this, but much less complete political stupidity.
  - lotharbot 15y ago
    My reasoning was similar. Yes, UBL's death is significant to just about everyone. But it's not really intellectually gratifying or interesting, nor was much of the commentary surrounding it in the previous thread. There was lots of unfocused complaining about fallout from 9/11 including the TSA, DHS, wars, and political changes, but very little of it was new or enlightening. Definitely worthy of a flag. Here, I find it tremendously interesting to see a (distant) eyewitness account of a significant historical event, given in real time over social media and not filtered by any other entities after the fact. Much more of the commentary here is intellectually gratifying as well. This was worthy of an upvote.
- philwelch 15y ago
  The ranking algorithm might be influenced by the point-to-comment ratio, which PG has noted in the past to be a fairly good indicator of article value.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago

Maybe, but deleting seems easier. Also note that the NYT story is older, which reduces its ranking. But yes, I agree - this is not the main story.

coderdude 15y ago
The article about Sony and PSN data stayed #1 for over a day if I recall correctly. I don't think that an article with 770 up-votes (that's an incredible number, for any article) would be #15 after 11 hours unless it had been repeatedly flagged. It's probably for the best though. Many of the comments for that article are inflammatory and that could also be the reason why it was flagged.

anthonycerra 15y ago

I think you're comparing apples to oranges. An article from the mainstream media about bin Laden's killing is nothing out of the ordinary. This link, however, is likely the first time in history that something so covert and meticulously planned has been exposed in real-time by someone experiencing it himself. We get the opportunity to see it from his perspective without the media's filters - just raw data. This is incredibly fascinating to me.

fluidcruft 15y ago
Yeah, seems like we kill him every other day.
pnathan 15y ago
Agreed. I will have to archive this guy's tweet stream when I get home. This is history, people.
dkarl 15y ago
He heard about bin Laden being killed the same way the rest of us did.
- guyzero 15y ago
  But unlike the rest of us, he heard bin Laden being killed.
  - dkarl 15y ago
    Ptolemy saw the earth go around the sun every day his whole life. So what? This guy didn't "expose" anything because he didn't know what was going on himself. All he heard was helicopters and an explosion. All the rest -- starting with the fact that one of the helicopters was not Pakistani -- was just gossip he heard nth-hand from eyewitnesses. If Obama had not held a press conference, he still wouldn't know what happened. What's historic about that? It's just the standard excitement and local gossip when something dramatic happens. If he had credibly detailed a piece of information that wasn't officially released, or if he had reported something interesting before it was openly announced by the U.S. government, that would have meant something.
    - TikiTDO 15y ago
      Sure, it's not really historical, but it is certainly indicative of the new age. If you look at the top articles right now, not one of them is particularly important in the grand scheme of things. I think this is surely more interesting that finding out that some data center management tool that perhaps a few dozen people on here will ever use has switched to a different open source license.

ibejoeb 15y ago

Have to back you up on point 1. It is disappointing to see this deeply significance, globally relevant event treated as somehow immaterial to the hacker community. Such a dogmatic interpretation of the guidance is certainly contrary to the intention and spirit. That said, this stream is rather interesting, and it belongs here too.

famousactress 15y ago

I suppose twitter's involvement in real-time news isn't really news at this point? But I find the roles that these services are playing in affecting the way information moves pretty interesting, and completely relevant to HN. I'm also in the "Let major news events get voted up, if that's what happens" camp. If there's one thing that I find most useful about HN it's that articles here are constantly making me think about how our world is changing, and what new tools and solutions might enable compelling needs that arise from those changes. Major news events are relevant, and I'm more interested in what HN'ers have to say about them than most other communities I'm a part of.

credo 15y ago

imo what is worse is the lack of transparency around the flagging. We don't know how many people flagged that article, whether it was manually pushed down by a moderator etc. All we can guess is that it is artificially moving down because other articles (with much lesser upvotes and same age) are ahead of it. My request for more transparency (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495953 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495953 ) was itself killed with no transparency :)

ecuzzillo 15y ago
I flagged it because every comment I read on it was stupid. There was nothing intellectually curious about the topic-- just poking people's political identities. Here, someone in close proximity to a reasonably significant historical event used social networks to broadcast his observation of said event. If this has happened before, it hasn't been very many times, and it's undoubtedly been only quite recently. We are witnessing a new historical phenomenon that will undoubtedly be worth a line in a history textbook. Moreover, importantly, the comments on this article don't completely suck. There's some meta-noise like this, but much less complete political stupidity.
- lotharbot 15y ago
  My reasoning was similar. Yes, UBL's death is significant to just about everyone. But it's not really intellectually gratifying or interesting, nor was much of the commentary surrounding it in the previous thread. There was lots of unfocused complaining about fallout from 9/11 including the TSA, DHS, wars, and political changes, but very little of it was new or enlightening. Definitely worthy of a flag. Here, I find it tremendously interesting to see a (distant) eyewitness account of a significant historical event, given in real time over social media and not filtered by any other entities after the fact. Much more of the commentary here is intellectually gratifying as well. This was worthy of an upvote.
philwelch 15y ago
The ranking algorithm might be influenced by the point-to-comment ratio, which PG has noted in the past to be a fairly good indicator of article value.