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Don’t tell me with a straight face when you have access to the data more than anyone that these posts aren’t getting flagged en mass. We are all watching it hap
by mdhb 2y ago
Don’t tell me with a straight face when you have access to the data more than anyone that these posts aren’t getting flagged en mass. We are all watching it happen.
- like_any_other 2y agoWhich part of dang's post are you asserting is inaccurate?
- mdhb 2y agoThe part where he tries to point to a handful of exceptions to refute the idea that discussions about Musk are getting flagged en mass. It’s really not a difficult bit of text to parse. Edit: I have to reply to the comment below by editing this comment because I’ve now been banned from making new comments but I couldn’t help but notice you managed to take the original quote and literally remove half of it which would have made your argument look very silly. To be fair Dang did the exact same thing. Second edit: oh and would you look at that… it’s flagged. Exactly as predicted.
- like_any_other 2y agoBut the claim was "No discussion of this sort shall be allowed on hn", and his data shows that significant discussion is happening. Mass flagging doesn't change this. That is despite violating HN's "intellectual curiosity" rule.
- anigbrowl 2y agoYou know perfectly well that the original top comment was expressive and hyperbolic in nature, stop trying to analyze it as if it were a dry quantitative claim. The point, which is extremely obvious, is that many posts are being systematically flagged for reasons of favoritism. They're clearly HN relevant, given that they relate to a tech titan effecting drastic changes in government structure, with significant security and other, by technical rather than legal means. Systematic flagging of posts about the activites of the Biden administration would have been equally questionable.
- dang 2y agoPlease don't cross into personal attack.
- anigbrowl 2y agoI haven't. It's a critique of the argument.
- dang 2y ago"You know perfectly well" is a way of accusing another person of being disingenuous and this is a step into personal attack. We don't know what others know—that would require being a mind-reader—and it's against the site guidelines to be aggressive about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- anigbrowl 2y agoWe have a good idea because other people have comment histories and have demonstrated their own linguistic analytical skills on many occasions.
- dang 2y agoI don't believe that's reliable, but more importantly, you seem to be denying the emotional thrust of what you wrote. "You know perfectly well [etc.]" is an aggressive trope to begin with, and you followed it with other similar thrusts ("Stop trying to", "which is extremely obvious"). Your comment would have been just fine if it started at the "Many posts are being [etc.]"
- anigbrowl 2y agoWeird you are able to characterize 'you know perfectly well' as an aggressive trope without having any special insight into my mental state, but when I characterize something someone else wrote, you want to be all philosophical and say that we can't make any inferences about other people. My original comment expressed skepticism about the idea that an expressive remark should be interpreted as a formal assertion of fact. I think your efforts at semantic policing are misplaced.
- relaxing 2y ago> Mass flagging doesn't change this. It literally does. The majority of posters won’t ever see flagged posts.
- itronitron 2y agoIt's not violating HN's "intellectual curiosity" rule as many people are genuinely curious about this.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 77pt77 2y agoSome are (also) dead. Dead means, to my understanding, killed by moderation.
- mdhb 2y agoI don’t know why it’s supposed to be some secret but there is absolutely an effort here from multiple parties to minimise conversation on the topic. We can debate the reasons and logic as to why that might be but to pretend it isn’t happening is just silly.
- philipkglass 2y agoYou can see an alternate ranking of front-page stories that ignores flags here: https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active As I write, 4 out of the top 10 stories on "active" appear related to Musk, Trump, or both (numbers 4, 5, 8, 10): 1. Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data 2. Apple Ordered by UK to Create Global iCloud Encryption Backdoor 3. Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel 4. A German court rules: X must provide researchers access to data 5. Elon Musk's Demolition Crew 6. The origins of 60-Hz as a power frequency 7. Stop Using Zip Codes for Geospatial Analysis 8. Announcing the data.gov archive 9. U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts 10. Feds Halt the National Electric Vehicle Charging Program If you prefer what you see on "active", you can bookmark that as your standard entry point to HN. I flag stories when they appear to be getting repetitive. I haven't actually done that with any of these stories, but I have previously done it with submissions about COVID, OpenAI, and Matt Mullenweg when they come in waves.
- ttepasse 2y agoIf you go on the further pages of /active you'll find a lot of flagged posts. An epidemic of flagging by the looks of it.
- pvg 2y agoI don't think anyone is seriously suggesting there aren't flags, and a lot of them. The argument is that this is pretty much how HN works and is supposed to, for most repetitive topics. You can certainly make the case it should work some different way, either in general or for this topic specifically. But it's not some nefarious plot.
- dang 2y agoOf course. I've spent most of my time this week posting explanations and answering emails about this, so it's a bit odd to hear that I'm denying it, but I understand how these perceptions arise. It may seem strange, but both of these things are true: (1) it's the most-discussed topic that exists on HN right now; and (2) most of the submissions about it are getting flagged. If you think about how the internet (and HN) work, it's to be expected: there's a tsunami of submissions; some are getting through and producing condition #1; others are getting flagged and producing condition #2. This has happened many times on HN over the years, and every time it happens, the community splits between the people who want more and the people who feel like it's too much. For example, here's a case from 2020 where someone felt that HN was suppressing stories about what in fact was the most-discussed topic on the site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962. This dynamic has been around a long time.
- ivanech 2y agoThank you, Dan! I really appreciate all the work you do making HN what it is
- dttze 2y agoHow about you just show who is flagging instead of talking around people? It's trivial to show data about moderation here, but you never do. Why?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dang 2y agoVoting and flagging are intimate data—I wouldn't dream of disclosing that about anyone. I think most HN users would take that as a betrayal of the basic community contract. Also, I don't see what good would come of it. It would lead to much more conflict, and would change the character of the site. People would no longer feel free to express their preferences—actually they would no longer be free to express them. This is not a way to fix the problems we face as a community.