4 ms·

Here's one from last week: "Ring will no longer allow police to request users' doorbell camera footage" (npr.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138423

by smcin 3y ago

Here's one from last week: "Ring will no longer allow police to request users' doorbell camera footage" (npr.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138423 I posted an on-topic supporting quote to explain why this item was newsworthy and got one unhelpful one-word response and my comment got inexplicably flagged (not the commenter) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138481 How did that slip past detection? How do I get the abusive flag on my comment reversed? This behavior seems to have managed to push an important story off the frontpage quickly. (yes there was a badly-worded dupe headline, but that's a separate thing)

dang 3y ago
If I understand correctly, you have three concerns here: (1) the story was downranked off the front page; (2) your comment was flagged; (3) a comment that replied to you was not flagged. I'll try to respond to these in turn: (1) the story was downranked off the front page because the topic had already been discussed a bunch—for example in these threads, two days earlier: Amazon's Ring to stop letting police request doorbell video from users - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39119387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39119387 - Jan 2024 (141 comments) Ring steps back from sharing video with police – mostly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39120892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39120892 - Jan 2024 (15 comments) Culling repetition from the front page is one of the most important things HN's systems need to do. Actually, it's probably the single most important thing. Certainly it's best if we can link to the previous discussions so people can know where to find them—but we can only do that some of the time. Users help out a ton by posting links to earlier threads. Ultimately we need better software support for dealing with this, but that's not done yet. (2) Your comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138481 was flagged by users. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I'm pretty sure I know why: comments that do nothing but quote from the article, or post a summary of it, are considered too formulaic by readers here. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but please do it in your own words and share your own thinking. To simply paste a quote from the article is too superficial. On HN the convention is to assume that readers are smart enough to evaluate an article for themselves. Edit: I'm going to copy the above paragraph into a reply below, so I can link to it in the future when this comes up, without the rest of the post. (3) The reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138536, which only said "and?", was definitely an unsubstantive comment that deserved to be flagged (and killed) even more than yours did. The reason it escaped detection was simple, albeit unsatisfying: pure randomness. We don't come close to reading everything that gets posted here—there's far too much. I've flagged it now.
- dang 3y ago
  Your comment was flagged by users. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I think I know why: comments that do nothing but quote from the article, or try to summarize the article, are considered too formulaic by readers here. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but please do it in your own words and share your own thinking. To simply paste a quote from the article, or a summary, is too superficial. On HN the convention is to assume that readers are smart enough to evaluate an article for themselves. (I copied this from the parent comment so I can link to it when this comes up in the future).

by smcin 3y ago

dang 3y ago

If I understand correctly, you have three concerns here: (1) the story was downranked off the front page; (2) your comment was flagged; (3) a comment that replied to you was not flagged. I'll try to respond to these in turn: (1) the story was downranked off the front page because the topic had already been discussed a bunch—for example in these threads, two days earlier: Amazon's Ring to stop letting police request doorbell video from users - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39119387 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39119387 - Jan 2024 (141 comments) Ring steps back from sharing video with police – mostly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39120892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39120892 - Jan 2024 (15 comments) Culling repetition from the front page is one of the most important things HN's systems need to do. Actually, it's probably the single most important thing. Certainly it's best if we can link to the previous discussions so people can know where to find them—but we can only do that some of the time. Users help out a ton by posting links to earlier threads. Ultimately we need better software support for dealing with this, but that's not done yet. (2) Your comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138481 was flagged by users. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I'm pretty sure I know why: comments that do nothing but quote from the article, or post a summary of it, are considered too formulaic by readers here. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but please do it in your own words and share your own thinking. To simply paste a quote from the article is too superficial. On HN the convention is to assume that readers are smart enough to evaluate an article for themselves. Edit: I'm going to copy the above paragraph into a reply below, so I can link to it in the future when this comes up, without the rest of the post. (3) The reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39138536, which only said "and?", was definitely an unsubstantive comment that deserved to be flagged (and killed) even more than yours did. The reason it escaped detection was simple, albeit unsatisfying: pure randomness. We don't come close to reading everything that gets posted here—there's far too much. I've flagged it now.

dang 3y ago
Your comment was flagged by users. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I think I know why: comments that do nothing but quote from the article, or try to summarize the article, are considered too formulaic by readers here. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but please do it in your own words and share your own thinking. To simply paste a quote from the article, or a summary, is too superficial. On HN the convention is to assume that readers are smart enough to evaluate an article for themselves. (I copied this from the parent comment so I can link to it when this comes up in the future).