3 ms·
A few points to keep in mind: - Little of HN's moderation is done directly by moderators. Rather it's user actions (flags on stories, downvotes and flags on c
by dredmorbius 3y ago
A few points to keep in mind:
- Little of HN's moderation is done directly by moderators. Rather it's user actions (flags on stories, downvotes and flags on comments), and some automated mechanisms, most especially the "flamewar detector".
- HN detects flames where a story has > 40 comments and the ratio of comments to votes is greater than one. As I write this comment, the story has a ratio of 2.24:1, which is quite high. The average front-page story floats far closer to 0.55 to 0.60 (2021 & 2022, respectively, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36926236>, based on my own analysis of all HN front-page archives).
(At some point I'd looked at all the "spiciest" HN stories in the front-page archive, and though I don't have that handy, a 2.24 ratio is remarkably high by comparison.)
The flamewar detector isn't perfect, but it's often appropriate, and can take what seems to be an otherwise interesting story off HN's front page quite quickly. I've seen this happen to a number of my own submissions, and until I understood the mechansism and cause (and inquired to the mods via email) it could be quite discouraging. Note that mods do occasionally override the metric (as they have in this case, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39676385 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39676385>).
Ironically, your best defence against the flamewar detector is to upvote the story and not comment on it.
- The story is of course possibly significant, but we've got very little information to go on presently. HN, as with other online discussion sites, has a tendency to go off half-cocked in such cases, often with regrettable results in terms of discussion accuracy or relevance. My suggestion is to absorb the report, keep it in mind, suspend judgement as to what you think may have happened, and look for further investigations or reports.