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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.

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.