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Flagging this post strikes me as shameful censorship of an unpopular opinion. You may say it's the snark/anger/frustration that got flagged, but I suspect it w

Flagging this post strikes me as shameful censorship of an unpopular opinion. You may say it's the snark/anger/frustration that got flagged, but I suspect it would not have been flagged if the topic were different. Presuming the author is making bad-faith arguments for internet blog points goes against the spirit of HN. I prefer to draw my own conclusions, thank you. I normally expect HN to take the higher ground with calm and reasoned counter arguments of the content but not today I guess.

otterley 4y ago
- rglullis 4y ago
  What's "inappropriate" about the post? I for one wish that we had more posts like these instead of typical stuff that has been getting to the front page lately.
  - otterley 4y ago
victoryhb 4y ago
I am also surprised that a reasoned discussion like this gets flagged while comments calling it a "shitpost" are not.
- dang 4y ago
  It's like this: when the input is a soup of reasoned discussion plus sensational flamebait, the flamebait will always dominate, and will always determine the output. Sad, but reliable.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  Because people learn to cling emotionally to hyped-up topics. Any criticism of sacred icon is taken like an aggression to the reader's sense of self.
sph 4y ago
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  That post also got flagged initially FWIW.
dang 4y ago
> You may say it's the snark/anger/frustration that got flagged, but I suspect it would not have been flagged if the topic were different. HN has had plenty of threads about Go over the years. What's different here is that there was just a big Go flamewar yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31191700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31191700), from the same site. Having another big Go flamewar the next day is a really bad idea, because then on top of shallow ragey flameposts (boo) the thread will fill up with fluffy ragey metaposts (double boo). More explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207126 "Shameful censorship" is one way to put it, but front page space is the scarcest resource that HN has (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and the amalgam of upvotes, flags, software weightings, and mod actions is what determines which stories end up / stay there vs. which stories fall off. This is the cycle of life on HN—it's always been that way and always will. One psychological effect is that everybody feels like their favorite topic is under-represented (or shamefully censored!) and in a way everybody is right. I've often joked by adding "even Rust hackers feel that way" but maybe that's not the best line to use in this case :) p.s. I feel like it's been a long time since HN had a passionate explosion about flagging and censorship (side note: ctrl+f misinformation...yup, that too) around a programming language. In a way it feels like a healthy sign. Like a family fight at Thanksgiving - at least it's about, say, a board game or something.
- pg_1234 4y ago
  As someone coding in Go (and having doubts about the language) I find articles like this professionally valuable. They don't have to be correct, they just need to provoke meaningful discourse, which for me means crowdsourcing the insights of hundreds of fellow devs.
  - dang 4y ago
    Yes. The problem here is that there was a big one of those just yesterday. HN does poorly with repetition, and throwing in the indignation aspect and the meta aspect (can you believe what an HN commenter said yesterday? the nerve!) guarantees that the thread will get high and go crazy. None of that is intentional, but it's a well-known failure mode, so the flags in this case were helpful. We've taken the [flagged] stigma off the title above, so as not to rub salt in any wounds. The system has checks and balances to prevent such things from dominating discussion here. (Flags are part of that system; so are software bells and whistles; so are moderators). If we didn't have those, the front page would consist of nothing but sensational flamewars and endless towers of meta!

otterley 4y ago

rglullis 4y ago
What's "inappropriate" about the post? I for one wish that we had more posts like these instead of typical stuff that has been getting to the front page lately.
- otterley 4y ago

victoryhb 4y ago

I am also surprised that a reasoned discussion like this gets flagged while comments calling it a "shitpost" are not.

dang 4y ago
It's like this: when the input is a soup of reasoned discussion plus sensational flamebait, the flamebait will always dominate, and will always determine the output. Sad, but reliable.
goodpoint 4y ago
Because people learn to cling emotionally to hyped-up topics. Any criticism of sacred icon is taken like an aggression to the reader's sense of self.

sph 4y ago

whimsicalism 4y ago
That post also got flagged initially FWIW.

dang 4y ago

> You may say it's the snark/anger/frustration that got flagged, but I suspect it would not have been flagged if the topic were different. HN has had plenty of threads about Go over the years. What's different here is that there was just a big Go flamewar yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31191700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31191700), from the same site. Having another big Go flamewar the next day is a really bad idea, because then on top of shallow ragey flameposts (boo) the thread will fill up with fluffy ragey metaposts (double boo). More explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207126 "Shameful censorship" is one way to put it, but front page space is the scarcest resource that HN has (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) and the amalgam of upvotes, flags, software weightings, and mod actions is what determines which stories end up / stay there vs. which stories fall off. This is the cycle of life on HN—it's always been that way and always will. One psychological effect is that everybody feels like their favorite topic is under-represented (or shamefully censored!) and in a way everybody is right. I've often joked by adding "even Rust hackers feel that way" but maybe that's not the best line to use in this case :) p.s. I feel like it's been a long time since HN had a passionate explosion about flagging and censorship (side note: ctrl+f misinformation...yup, that too) around a programming language. In a way it feels like a healthy sign. Like a family fight at Thanksgiving - at least it's about, say, a board game or something.

pg_1234 4y ago
As someone coding in Go (and having doubts about the language) I find articles like this professionally valuable. They don't have to be correct, they just need to provoke meaningful discourse, which for me means crowdsourcing the insights of hundreds of fellow devs.
- dang 4y ago
  Yes. The problem here is that there was a big one of those just yesterday. HN does poorly with repetition, and throwing in the indignation aspect and the meta aspect (can you believe what an HN commenter said yesterday? the nerve!) guarantees that the thread will get high and go crazy. None of that is intentional, but it's a well-known failure mode, so the flags in this case were helpful. We've taken the [flagged] stigma off the title above, so as not to rub salt in any wounds. The system has checks and balances to prevent such things from dominating discussion here. (Flags are part of that system; so are software bells and whistles; so are moderators). If we didn't have those, the front page would consist of nothing but sensational flamewars and endless towers of meta!