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I don't think the flagging has anything to do with the Golang community. From my understanding, that came from the HN moderators themselves. @dang made some exp

by komuW 4y ago

I don't think the flagging has anything to do with the Golang community. From my understanding, that came from the HN moderators themselves. @dang made some explanations on one of those threads

andrelaszlo 4y ago
Oh, I missed that! Didn't realize the article was considered so inflammatory. I guess I'm desensitized :) Reading what dang wrote makes it seem really sensible. Links to dang's comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207126
dang 4y ago
The flags came from users. That's almost always the case (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).
- andrelaszlo 4y ago
  Not sure what happened to my comment but I guess you hid it dang? Thanks! It wasn't my intention to reignite the whole thing.
  - dang 4y ago
    A user marked it offtopic, which downweighted it. A few longstanding HN users have the ability to do this, as part of an experiment we've been running. I've written about it in a few places: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31228950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31228950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31117569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31117569 The downweighting is intended for when overly generic or offtopic subthreads are stuck at the top of a page, choking out more interesting or on-topic conversation. (Unfortunately it caused some trouble a while back because one such downweighted subthread was critical of a YC startup, and a much more important rule is that we moderate HN less when YC or YC startups are the topic. But it was a straightforward mistake—the user who marked the thread generic just didn't realize that the topic was YC related.) Since it's an experiment, we want to keep an eye on it. Currently I have the software send an email each time a downweight is applied, so we can review them as part of going through the regular HN inbox. When I saw this one, it was such a perfect example that I came to the thread and auto-collapsed it as well. So that's its current status: downweighted and auto-collapsed. Btw, basically none of these situations get created intentionally. They're a tragedy-of-the-commons thing where each person does what they do innocently but it all adds up to something suboptimal. That's pretty much what moderation exists for: to jiggle the system when it gets stuck in one of its failure modes.

by komuW 4y ago

I don't think the flagging has anything to do with the Golang community. From my understanding, that came from the HN moderators themselves. @dang made some explanations on one of those threads

andrelaszlo 4y ago

Oh, I missed that! Didn't realize the article was considered so inflammatory. I guess I'm desensitized :) Reading what dang wrote makes it seem really sensible. Links to dang's comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207126 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31207126

dang 4y ago

The flags came from users. That's almost always the case (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

andrelaszlo 4y ago
Not sure what happened to my comment but I guess you hid it dang? Thanks! It wasn't my intention to reignite the whole thing.
- dang 4y ago
  A user marked it offtopic, which downweighted it. A few longstanding HN users have the ability to do this, as part of an experiment we've been running. I've written about it in a few places: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31228950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31228950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31227584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31117569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31117569 The downweighting is intended for when overly generic or offtopic subthreads are stuck at the top of a page, choking out more interesting or on-topic conversation. (Unfortunately it caused some trouble a while back because one such downweighted subthread was critical of a YC startup, and a much more important rule is that we moderate HN less when YC or YC startups are the topic. But it was a straightforward mistake—the user who marked the thread generic just didn't realize that the topic was YC related.) Since it's an experiment, we want to keep an eye on it. Currently I have the software send an email each time a downweight is applied, so we can review them as part of going through the regular HN inbox. When I saw this one, it was such a perfect example that I came to the thread and auto-collapsed it as well. So that's its current status: downweighted and auto-collapsed. Btw, basically none of these situations get created intentionally. They're a tragedy-of-the-commons thing where each person does what they do innocently but it all adds up to something suboptimal. That's pretty much what moderation exists for: to jiggle the system when it gets stuck in one of its failure modes.