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This comment illustrates why it's a good idea to prune these kinds of stories from the homepage. No one learns anything new or surprising from discussing this s

This comment illustrates why it's a good idea to prune these kinds of stories from the homepage. No one learns anything new or surprising from discussing this stuff here, at this point we could have the same political nerdfight in our sleep.

Waterluvian 4y ago
I think if your focus is on the discourse, you’re right. But I bet you the majority of people who saw this item on the front page aren’t interested in comments and this is a form of news. To be aware that this is a thing.
- idlewords 4y ago
  My belief is this kind of news is hard to miss elsewhere, so no one is harmed if it's culled from here. But I'm open to correction on that point; everyone has their own surfing habits.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    It's awfully stupid, but as a meta point, take a step back and see how well HN's moderation focuses it all on this one dumb thread, and preserves the rest of the home page for a bunch of random tech stories, to the point where there's still room for "Roman Egypt was a strange province". It's pretty impressive. It wasn't always this good! Back during Snowdonia, the whole front page would be 11 different flavors of NSA stories.
sva_ 4y ago
> No one learns anything new or surprising from discussing this stuff here It was surprising to me to see that the various political parties are in direct contact with people at Twitter to remove stuff, and I consider myself fairly well informed.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Everybody reports everything to everybody. If that surprises you, reconsider how well informed you are. "Competitors work refs; film at 11."
- prawn 4y ago
  I've run a forum for almost 20 years. There are reporting tools that most people use, but regular reporters (either a contentious personality or just a regular and conscientious user) often just contact me directly after the email address was revealed previously. Seems completely obvious that media reps from every political party would have some direct line or priority tool to report things. They have this with newspapers and TV networks as well. They plead their case or make a legal threat, or appeal on personal grounds. As another "VIP contact" example, look at Musk supposedly directly contacting Kanye regarding his ban. The average user just sees a block screen. That seems fairly unremarkable to me.
prescriptivist 4y ago
Do you actually care about what happens on this website or is this just a good chance for you to emerge randomly and make some arch point about how stupid everyone is for falling for this garbage?
- idlewords 4y ago
  I don't have a particular attachment to this website, but I admire 'dang for doing the hard work of moderating it, and for doing so in an honest and transparent way for a very long time now. So it bugs me to see people disparage that work by insinuating darker motives.
  - prawn 4y ago
    And he's pretty transparent about wanting discussions satisfying intellectual curiosity. I'd guess that a lot of Twitter discussions are dampened (e.g., from hitting the front page) because the chance that they'll engender that sort of discussion is very, very low. I think the idea is that Hacker News isn't the place where you discuss anything tech in any way you want, but where you have that certain mode of discussion (rather than certain bias of viewpoint).

Waterluvian 4y ago

I think if your focus is on the discourse, you’re right. But I bet you the majority of people who saw this item on the front page aren’t interested in comments and this is a form of news. To be aware that this is a thing.

idlewords 4y ago
My belief is this kind of news is hard to miss elsewhere, so no one is harmed if it's culled from here. But I'm open to correction on that point; everyone has their own surfing habits.
- tptacek 4y ago
  It's awfully stupid, but as a meta point, take a step back and see how well HN's moderation focuses it all on this one dumb thread, and preserves the rest of the home page for a bunch of random tech stories, to the point where there's still room for "Roman Egypt was a strange province". It's pretty impressive. It wasn't always this good! Back during Snowdonia, the whole front page would be 11 different flavors of NSA stories.

sva_ 4y ago

> No one learns anything new or surprising from discussing this stuff here It was surprising to me to see that the various political parties are in direct contact with people at Twitter to remove stuff, and I consider myself fairly well informed.

tptacek 4y ago
Everybody reports everything to everybody. If that surprises you, reconsider how well informed you are. "Competitors work refs; film at 11."
prawn 4y ago
I've run a forum for almost 20 years. There are reporting tools that most people use, but regular reporters (either a contentious personality or just a regular and conscientious user) often just contact me directly after the email address was revealed previously. Seems completely obvious that media reps from every political party would have some direct line or priority tool to report things. They have this with newspapers and TV networks as well. They plead their case or make a legal threat, or appeal on personal grounds. As another "VIP contact" example, look at Musk supposedly directly contacting Kanye regarding his ban. The average user just sees a block screen. That seems fairly unremarkable to me.

prescriptivist 4y ago

Do you actually care about what happens on this website or is this just a good chance for you to emerge randomly and make some arch point about how stupid everyone is for falling for this garbage?

idlewords 4y ago
I don't have a particular attachment to this website, but I admire 'dang for doing the hard work of moderating it, and for doing so in an honest and transparent way for a very long time now. So it bugs me to see people disparage that work by insinuating darker motives.
- prawn 4y ago
  And he's pretty transparent about wanting discussions satisfying intellectual curiosity. I'd guess that a lot of Twitter discussions are dampened (e.g., from hitting the front page) because the chance that they'll engender that sort of discussion is very, very low. I think the idea is that Hacker News isn't the place where you discuss anything tech in any way you want, but where you have that certain mode of discussion (rather than certain bias of viewpoint).