4 ms·

I would like to know the reasoning of anybody flagging this submission after having read the posted article. The article supports neither political side of this

I would like to know the reasoning of anybody flagging this submission after having read the posted article. The article supports neither political side of this conflict, but it appears to me that people are still unhappy about such content.

hypeit 3y ago
I flagged it because debating the number of people killed isn't the point. We know it's in the thousands since Israel started bombing Gaza. Thousands more have been killed since this hospital was bombed. It's a sidetrack (and dare I say engineered distraction) to what's going on.
- user_7832 3y ago
  I'm not saying that innocent people dying is okay (it's obviously not) but the article isn't about that. It's about the apparent callousness of media companies in a topic that is already politically fraught/sensitive. Such topics require higher levels of correctness/ethical reporting, which is highlighted by the posted article.
  - hypeit 3y ago
    Even if this number is incorrect, it's not even a scratch on the surface of unethical reporting around this conflict and Israel in general. The MSM in the west is a propaganda outlet for the US/Israel.
    - user_7832 3y ago
      I agree that more standards and ethics are required for news and media. I fail to understand how other unethical reporting means this article is wrong/bad/a distraction and hence should be flagged. The article scrutinizes a specific case, and doesn't appear to be wrong, or purposely misleading.
      - hypeit 3y ago
        This particular issue is being litigated to death and is causing a lot of noise that's drowning out current events. I understand your point, but that's my reason for flagging it.
    - voisin 3y ago
      > The MSM in the west is a propaganda outlet for the US/Israel. I keep seeing this claim and I am genuinely interested as to why, and more importantly how, it could be the case? The media doesn’t seem to agree on anything.
- cdrini 3y ago
  According to the hacker news guidelines, I'm not sure that's a valid reason. Hacker news specifically blocks news about politics: > What not to submit: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html So an article about the actual state of the war is inappropriate for hacker news and would likely get removed. This article is about journalistic standards in news reporting and citation management, using one recent article as a case study. It doesn't directly debate that number; it debates journalistic practices in news reporting. I can understand why the focus on a seemingly small detail like this can be frustrating when there's so much more going on though. And I think you believe that this might influence people on the larger conflict. But I don't think that's cause for flagging according to the guidelines. And personally I think this article is more likely to have an impact on pushing for better journalistic standards (as evidenced by the majority of comments), which should be a win for everyone, but unfortunately that message is now suppressed since folks have flagged it. Regardless, thank you for taking the time to respond; I imagine there's fear of folks dog piling on a person when they flag a post, so I appreciate you responding despite that!
- remram 3y ago
  What is "the point" that we may talk about, according to you? Why should things that are not your favorite talking point be censored?
tptacek 3y ago
We're discouraged by moderation here from arguing about why things are flagged. If you think something is flagged erroneously, the thing to do is to mail hn@ycombinator.com and tell them; they'll look at who's flagging and what the story is, and sometimes remove the flag weights. There's a way to write the same comment without begging for this kind of meta-argument: just write a paragraph that doesn't talk about ranking and flagging but says what you found unexpectedly interesting or thoughtful about the article.
- user_7832 3y ago
  Thanks for your comment. > We're discouraged by moderation here from arguing about why things are flagged. Thanks for informing me, I wasn’t aware of that. I did know the part about emailing. Though, I wonder how this impacts in a fast-moving forum like HN where if a post fails to meet a critical threshold, it gets dropped. (I am aware of the second chance queue but I don’t know if they too have similar weights of “needing upvotes steadily to survive”. I think the posted article was important for HN readers to see and hence asked in my first comment.)
  - tptacek 3y ago
    I don't think stories like this have much of a chance on the front page regardless. There's more than one force pushing them down: they're political, which attracts flags, they're not technical, which (usually unreasonably) attracts flags, and they're volatile, which sets off the flame-war detector. The big thing though is you can't stage a debate about flags on the thread itself; whatever you think of those flags, debating them publicly works against your goal.

hypeit 3y ago

I flagged it because debating the number of people killed isn't the point. We know it's in the thousands since Israel started bombing Gaza. Thousands more have been killed since this hospital was bombed. It's a sidetrack (and dare I say engineered distraction) to what's going on.

user_7832 3y ago
I'm not saying that innocent people dying is okay (it's obviously not) but the article isn't about that. It's about the apparent callousness of media companies in a topic that is already politically fraught/sensitive. Such topics require higher levels of correctness/ethical reporting, which is highlighted by the posted article.
- hypeit 3y ago
  Even if this number is incorrect, it's not even a scratch on the surface of unethical reporting around this conflict and Israel in general. The MSM in the west is a propaganda outlet for the US/Israel.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    I agree that more standards and ethics are required for news and media. I fail to understand how other unethical reporting means this article is wrong/bad/a distraction and hence should be flagged. The article scrutinizes a specific case, and doesn't appear to be wrong, or purposely misleading.
    - hypeit 3y ago
      This particular issue is being litigated to death and is causing a lot of noise that's drowning out current events. I understand your point, but that's my reason for flagging it.
  - voisin 3y ago
    > The MSM in the west is a propaganda outlet for the US/Israel. I keep seeing this claim and I am genuinely interested as to why, and more importantly how, it could be the case? The media doesn’t seem to agree on anything.
cdrini 3y ago
According to the hacker news guidelines, I'm not sure that's a valid reason. Hacker news specifically blocks news about politics: > What not to submit: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html So an article about the actual state of the war is inappropriate for hacker news and would likely get removed. This article is about journalistic standards in news reporting and citation management, using one recent article as a case study. It doesn't directly debate that number; it debates journalistic practices in news reporting. I can understand why the focus on a seemingly small detail like this can be frustrating when there's so much more going on though. And I think you believe that this might influence people on the larger conflict. But I don't think that's cause for flagging according to the guidelines. And personally I think this article is more likely to have an impact on pushing for better journalistic standards (as evidenced by the majority of comments), which should be a win for everyone, but unfortunately that message is now suppressed since folks have flagged it. Regardless, thank you for taking the time to respond; I imagine there's fear of folks dog piling on a person when they flag a post, so I appreciate you responding despite that!
remram 3y ago
What is "the point" that we may talk about, according to you? Why should things that are not your favorite talking point be censored?

tptacek 3y ago

We're discouraged by moderation here from arguing about why things are flagged. If you think something is flagged erroneously, the thing to do is to mail hn@ycombinator.com and tell them; they'll look at who's flagging and what the story is, and sometimes remove the flag weights. There's a way to write the same comment without begging for this kind of meta-argument: just write a paragraph that doesn't talk about ranking and flagging but says what you found unexpectedly interesting or thoughtful about the article.

user_7832 3y ago
Thanks for your comment. > We're discouraged by moderation here from arguing about why things are flagged. Thanks for informing me, I wasn’t aware of that. I did know the part about emailing. Though, I wonder how this impacts in a fast-moving forum like HN where if a post fails to meet a critical threshold, it gets dropped. (I am aware of the second chance queue but I don’t know if they too have similar weights of “needing upvotes steadily to survive”. I think the posted article was important for HN readers to see and hence asked in my first comment.)
- tptacek 3y ago
  I don't think stories like this have much of a chance on the front page regardless. There's more than one force pushing them down: they're political, which attracts flags, they're not technical, which (usually unreasonably) attracts flags, and they're volatile, which sets off the flame-war detector. The big thing though is you can't stage a debate about flags on the thread itself; whatever you think of those flags, debating them publicly works against your goal.