4 ms·

I would like to point out how this story is an excellent example of the @mods power to manipulate stories on HN. This nice little pro-mask antidote made it to

I would like to point out how this story is an excellent example of the @mods power to manipulate stories on HN. This nice little pro-mask antidote made it to the front page and yet this thread [1] get marked so it won't be moved out of the Newest and onto New. I watched thread get 30+ upvotes and 50+ discussion points yet it never never showed up anywhere on New. I like you mod but people like me can see the patterns where it's very clear that the owners and moderators have the ability to weight and manipulate the placement of stories in New. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320778

throwaway89201 6y ago
It's pretty well known that the HN algorithm punishes stories which have a lot more comments than points. So describing them as "discussion points" exactly misses the mark. You're likely wrong (and a bit silly).
dang 6y ago
The submission was put in the second-chance pool by a moderator. This is explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 and the links back from there. Note that I described it as "long-running" and that was 4.5 years ago. None of this is secret. I haven't looked at the article but if a mod chose it for second-chance submission that's because they thought it might interest the community, not because we care about "pro-mask antidotes". The complete list of stories hasn't been published yet (it's on my list, I just haven't gotten to it), but you can see a subset of them at https://news.ycombinator.com/invited https://news.ycombinator.com/invited. That's entirely representative of the sort of stories we choose, and if anybody notices any bias in there at all, other than towards what HN might find intellectually interesting, I'd love to hear about it. As for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320778, it set off the flamewar detector. No mod touched it.

throwaway89201 6y ago

It's pretty well known that the HN algorithm punishes stories which have a lot more comments than points. So describing them as "discussion points" exactly misses the mark. You're likely wrong (and a bit silly).

dang 6y ago

The submission was put in the second-chance pool by a moderator. This is explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 and the links back from there. Note that I described it as "long-running" and that was 4.5 years ago. None of this is secret. I haven't looked at the article but if a mod chose it for second-chance submission that's because they thought it might interest the community, not because we care about "pro-mask antidotes". The complete list of stories hasn't been published yet (it's on my list, I just haven't gotten to it), but you can see a subset of them at https://news.ycombinator.com/invited https://news.ycombinator.com/invited. That's entirely representative of the sort of stories we choose, and if anybody notices any bias in there at all, other than towards what HN might find intellectually interesting, I'd love to hear about it. As for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25320778, it set off the flamewar detector. No mod touched it.