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What causes very active discussions like this to drop off the front page so quickly? I saw another newer post that was probably made because the poster didn't

What causes very active discussions like this to drop off the front page so quickly? I saw another newer post that was probably made because the poster didn't see this post, and a comment made in there linked to this discussion.

afavour 1y ago
They get flagged. Eventually flagging removes a post entirely but even a couple of flags cause it to slide down the rankings pretty quickly.
baobun 1y ago
> What causes very active discussions like this to drop off the front page so quickly? Supposedly posts with very high comments/upvote ratio are automatically classified as toxic and downranked. That combined with random users flagging it, presumably. In any case, seems more algorithmic than editorial (which is not to say that the latter never occurs around here in general)
- cloverich 1y ago
  Actually fascinating to really think of it as the inverse of what most social media platforms do these days, which is the opposite. HNs is a fairly typical "lock threads that degrade to flamewars" strategy that i first encountered more than 20 years ago.
  - rolph 1y ago
    an elegant weapon from an older, less civilized time.
alsetmusic 1y ago
> What causes very active discussions like this to drop off the front page so quickly? One answer might be the same cowardice seen at ABC. But that's just one of the possibilities.
panarchy 1y ago
It's kind of weird the HN transfers comments on dupes but not upvotes
- rolph 1y ago
  dupes split the discussion up all over the board. they get merged to a single discussion.
  - panarchy 1y ago
    I never said otherwise? I think you might have misread something. Edit: It was supposed to say "that HN" not the This post had about 60 upvotes where the one that the comments go moved from was at something like 175. So it basically kills a posts ability to gain traction.
phendrenad2 1y ago
As an amateur HNologist, it's been my observation that controversial topics DO tend to fall off the first page quickly, much more quickly than tech topics. I suspect that there's some part of the algorithm that detects when there are a lot of downvotes on comments, and it counts against the thread itself.
refurb 1y ago
Because discussions that go political are quite boring. There are a million sites you can go on to find such “discussions” so HN doesn’t feel like it’s the type of content that aligns well with its ethos.
- an0malous 1y ago
  At least change the name to VibeCodingBroNews then and stop appropriating "hacker." The founders of the computing industry were activists, I don't know any real hacker that would flag down posts about government censorship.
zzzeek 1y ago
hacker news moderation does not like political stories. it's explicitly in the guidelines of what not to post: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." it is of course in the interests of billionaire-owned companies like YC to keep the community all about "hacking" and "getting VC money" and away from rightfully discussing the most alarming period in the US' history since the Civil War. because hackers need to be at their screens spinning more gold for them and not getting disillusioned by the ongoing collapse of society into an authoritarian dystopia.
- Nevermark 1y ago
  I would argue the opposite. That in dark times there is a tendency for all open discussion venues to descend into the same pits. And there is value in avoiding that. The fact that this discussion is still here strikes me as moderation in moderation. A nice balance.
- dang 1y ago
  I spent half the day yesterday explaining and defending why HN does allow certain political stories (or stories with political overlap). If you missed that, I understand—no one sees everything that gets posted here, including us. I just mention it because it's odd, if familiar, to be answering opposing criticisms at more or less the same time.
  - zzzeek 1y ago
    Point taken ! I'm sure you know my opinion here is partially from your criticism of my posts being "inflammatory" some time ago. Real things happening all day long right now are unfortunately inflammatory. We have a president literally making decisions based on how much pain and terror they will cause to his chosen Boogeyman, "the libs".
    - dang 1y ago
      I hear you - the problem is that HN can't have a frontpage thread about all of these developments without turning into a current affairs site, which is not its mandate. So we end up taking a fairly small sample of the topics that arise. Many stories that HN doesn't cover are far more important than nearly everything on the front page. We know that and don't imply otherwise. Every user has their own list of which stories ought to clear the bar for frontpage representation, and it's impossible to include them all. Frontpage space is the scarcest resource that HN has (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20front%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). As a result, there's no HN reader who gets the frontpage they want, including us. This is baked into the fundamentals of how the site is designed, unless and until we start customizing the frontpage per user preferences. There's another important aspect that I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306 and still haven't explained very well. In that post it's called "the temporal decay of interestingness in any sequence of related stories"—a clumsy phrase—but if you follow the argument, the conclusion it's impossible to prioritize political stories by importance on HN, even if everyone were to agree about what the important stories actually are.
mizzao 1y ago
There is an "active" frontpage that actually ranks these appropriately: https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active

afavour 1y ago

They get flagged. Eventually flagging removes a post entirely but even a couple of flags cause it to slide down the rankings pretty quickly.

baobun 1y ago

> What causes very active discussions like this to drop off the front page so quickly? Supposedly posts with very high comments/upvote ratio are automatically classified as toxic and downranked. That combined with random users flagging it, presumably. In any case, seems more algorithmic than editorial (which is not to say that the latter never occurs around here in general)

cloverich 1y ago
Actually fascinating to really think of it as the inverse of what most social media platforms do these days, which is the opposite. HNs is a fairly typical "lock threads that degrade to flamewars" strategy that i first encountered more than 20 years ago.
- rolph 1y ago
  an elegant weapon from an older, less civilized time.

alsetmusic 1y ago

> What causes very active discussions like this to drop off the front page so quickly? One answer might be the same cowardice seen at ABC. But that's just one of the possibilities.

panarchy 1y ago

It's kind of weird the HN transfers comments on dupes but not upvotes

rolph 1y ago
dupes split the discussion up all over the board. they get merged to a single discussion.
- panarchy 1y ago
  I never said otherwise? I think you might have misread something. Edit: It was supposed to say "that HN" not the This post had about 60 upvotes where the one that the comments go moved from was at something like 175. So it basically kills a posts ability to gain traction.

phendrenad2 1y ago

As an amateur HNologist, it's been my observation that controversial topics DO tend to fall off the first page quickly, much more quickly than tech topics. I suspect that there's some part of the algorithm that detects when there are a lot of downvotes on comments, and it counts against the thread itself.

refurb 1y ago

Because discussions that go political are quite boring. There are a million sites you can go on to find such “discussions” so HN doesn’t feel like it’s the type of content that aligns well with its ethos.

an0malous 1y ago
At least change the name to VibeCodingBroNews then and stop appropriating "hacker." The founders of the computing industry were activists, I don't know any real hacker that would flag down posts about government censorship.

zzzeek 1y ago

hacker news moderation does not like political stories. it's explicitly in the guidelines of what not to post: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." it is of course in the interests of billionaire-owned companies like YC to keep the community all about "hacking" and "getting VC money" and away from rightfully discussing the most alarming period in the US' history since the Civil War. because hackers need to be at their screens spinning more gold for them and not getting disillusioned by the ongoing collapse of society into an authoritarian dystopia.

Nevermark 1y ago
I would argue the opposite. That in dark times there is a tendency for all open discussion venues to descend into the same pits. And there is value in avoiding that. The fact that this discussion is still here strikes me as moderation in moderation. A nice balance.
dang 1y ago
I spent half the day yesterday explaining and defending why HN does allow certain political stories (or stories with political overlap). If you missed that, I understand—no one sees everything that gets posted here, including us. I just mention it because it's odd, if familiar, to be answering opposing criticisms at more or less the same time.
- zzzeek 1y ago
  Point taken ! I'm sure you know my opinion here is partially from your criticism of my posts being "inflammatory" some time ago. Real things happening all day long right now are unfortunately inflammatory. We have a president literally making decisions based on how much pain and terror they will cause to his chosen Boogeyman, "the libs".
  - dang 1y ago
    I hear you - the problem is that HN can't have a frontpage thread about all of these developments without turning into a current affairs site, which is not its mandate. So we end up taking a fairly small sample of the topics that arise. Many stories that HN doesn't cover are far more important than nearly everything on the front page. We know that and don't imply otherwise. Every user has their own list of which stories ought to clear the bar for frontpage representation, and it's impossible to include them all. Frontpage space is the scarcest resource that HN has (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20front%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). As a result, there's no HN reader who gets the frontpage they want, including us. This is baked into the fundamentals of how the site is designed, unless and until we start customizing the frontpage per user preferences. There's another important aspect that I wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306 and still haven't explained very well. In that post it's called "the temporal decay of interestingness in any sequence of related stories"—a clumsy phrase—but if you follow the argument, the conclusion it's impossible to prioritize political stories by importance on HN, even if everyone were to agree about what the important stories actually are.

mizzao 1y ago

There is an "active" frontpage that actually ranks these appropriately: https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active