4 ms·

What happened with the ranking? Were there people who flagged all the stories, even the first (obviously newsworthy) one?

• dang 3y ago
  The 30 or so submissions of this story all set off a bunch of software penalties that try to prune the most repetitive and sensational stories off the front page. Otherwise there would be a lot more repetition and sensationalism on the fp, which is the opposite of what HN is for (see explanations via links below if curious). The downside is that we have to manually override the penalties in the case of a genuinely important story, which this obviously is. Fortunately that doesn't happen too often, plus the system is self-correcting: if a story is really important, people will bring it to our attention (thanks, tkgally!) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
  • SilasX 3y ago
    Sometimes I wish you'd prune the users (at least from submission privileges) who can't be bothered to search first, which is how you get these n-fold submissions.
    • dang 3y ago
      That's impossible. We'd have to prune human nature.
      • ceocoder 3y ago
        Now that is a startup idea, can I apply to next batch with it?
        • dang 3y ago
          Sounds pretty unethical, so I don't think YC would fund it.
          • winwang 3y ago
            Shouldn't we think in terms of the post-pruning ethics? :D
      • SilasX 3y ago
        Sorry, I'm confused. Is there some clever joke I'm missing here? And is there a reason you don't make that clever joke or objection to any other preference for how HN is moderated?
        • dang 3y ago
          I wouldn't say it's clever, or much of a joke, but when people ask us to change things on HN that are humans-doing-what-humans-do, I do think that's setting the bar too high. I've made this point in response to many posts over the years: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22human%20nature%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22humans%20in%20general%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22lose%20sleep%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
          • SilasX 3y ago
            Wait, what? The first link points to you doing exactly what you're now claiming is impossible: pushing back, with threats of a ban, against behavior you recognize as human nature[1]: >Can you please make your substantive points without snark or ... sneering at the community? >It's human nature to make ourselves feel superior by putting down others, but it skews discussion in a way that goes against what we're trying to optimize for here [link]. >Edit: it looks like you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines in a lot of what you've been posting here. Can you please review them and stick to them? I don't want to ban you but we end up not having much choice if an account keeps posting in this low-quality way. I get that moderation is hard and time-consuming. But if you're going to reply to justify your decisions at all, I'm confused at why you'd do so just to invent a standard, on the spot, that you're obviously not following. (Hence why I charitably guessed that there was some more substantive reference I might be missing.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37717919
            • 3y ago
    • resonantjacket5 3y ago
      I mean if it's on reddit or other platforms, one could do some simple search for them before they submit the post and prompt "seems like this article has already been submitted" and a checkmark if they want to bypass it.
  • tailspin2019 3y ago
    Thanks for the explanation - I was just wondering the exact same thing as the parent.
  • netcraft 3y ago
    ideating out loud, I wonder if thered be a way to "collapse" all of the different articles submitted within some short time frame within one story, and maybe share the karma between them? In the case of breaking news it sucks to submit an article and you not being the one that gets "blessed", and different articles could conceivably have different valuable viewpoints. I'm sure it would be more complicated than that when it came to it though.
    • dang 3y ago
      It's on the list!
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]