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I’m grateful for those who do visit /newest because it’s a cesspit of spam and uninteresting links that, justifiably, never make their way to the home page. /a
by afavour 11mo ago
I’m grateful for those who do visit /newest because it’s a cesspit of spam and uninteresting links that, justifiably, never make their way to the home page.
/active, on the other hand, is the real insiders tip. It shows the most active submissions, irrespective of whether they’ve been flagged off the homepage by users who want to avoid “controversial” topics or by an algorithm trying to avoid the same.
You don’t want it to replace the homepage as the arguing will drive you mad over time but it’s worth checking in with to see what conversation is being hidden from you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active
- zahlman 11mo agoI've been wondering, why isn't /active in the top nav bar?
- tekla 11mo agoHN is tries (and mostly succeeds) to discourage controversial topics.
- akerl_ 11mo agoDoes it? The rules seem to suggest that the intent is to discourage arguments and grandstanding in favor of discussions, and many controversial topics and posts tend to end up as shouting matches in the comments.
- monero-xmr 11mo agoI could name 10 widely held societal opinions that would instantly get flagged and likely your account banned if you mention a few times. Very hive mind place here
- akerl_ 11mo agoCan you cite any evidence of anybody being banned for the societal opinions they’ve expressed here?
- monero-xmr 11mo agoHN wants polite discussion which lends itself well to science and technology topics. Get farther away into history or politics where opinion comes in, then it becomes impossible to debate because arguments that disagree with the hive mind (upper middle class, intelligent, center-left technology professionals) get downvoted and flagged because of popularity. This just isn’t a site for arguing politics, if you do it too much with opinions different from the hive mind you get banned for disruptive behavior
- akerl_ 11mo agoDid you mean to post this as a reply elsewhere? You made the claim that people are banned for certain opinions and I asked for more information on that.
- monero-xmr 11mo agoI’m not going to cite evidence, the evidence is my lived experience posting controversial opinions here for years. Try it yourself and see!
- akerl_ 11mo agoExcept… you aren’t banned?
- monero-xmr 11mo agoYou will get banned if you speak too controversially, but the bigger issue is you get downvoted for wrong-think, but that’s the nature of HN and probably why it has survived so long
- tayo42 11mo agoWhat opinions do you want to share that are going to get you banned here?
- monero-xmr 11mo agoWhich controversial topic do you want to hear my hot take on?
- akerl_ 11mo agoMy bet is that what gets people banned is repeatedly being disrespectful or rude, not the opinions they’re disrespectful or rude about. We have a great example via the flagged reply in this comment tree, where somebody is complaining about being silenced and their example is full of rambling invective yelling at the moderator.
- tayo42 11mo agoI'm just curious what opinions you hold that will get you banned for typing them out.
- torben-friis 11mo agoReligious wars like emacs vs vim are common, so that kind of controversy shows up, but for example anything related to Elon tends to get insta buried. Basically the topics you might see in mainstream news are usually out.
- akerl_ 11mo ago> Basically the topics you might see in mainstream news are usually out. Well yea, that’s officially part of the guidelines: “ Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- torben-friis 11mo agoI meant before the DOGE stuff: the technical discussions on his claims about Tesla’s future capabilities, purchase of twitter and latter management, etc. I am generally very happy with HN’s moderation, but I do feel some borderline topics that have been banned or buried missed interesting discussion. I don’t fault those responsible for not wanting to deal with the potential mess though.
- afavour 11mo agoIt’s a shame. I distinctly remember a DOGE topic about assertions Musk was making that were easily explained by COBOL oddities. There was a great discussion about it here with knowledgable folks chiming in. And then it got flagged into oblivion. Mainstream news covered it but without any of the knowledge HN users had.
- zahlman 11mo agoI tend to flag submissions about these kinds of political topics because it becomes clear in context that they're being submitted primarily to provide space for complaining about a political outgroup. This never leads anywhere productive. Best case, everyone agrees and they just stew about how awful the world supposedly is. Common case, people are forced to confront the fact that other people have different values, cultural assumptions etc. and can reasonably come to wildly different conclusions, even starting from the same evidence, because a lot of this is nowhere near as objective a matter as it appears. Worst case, the disagreeing people in the hated outgroup also feel that their position has been grossly misrepresented in the submission.
- tptacek 11mo agoIt's been under /lists practically since the site started, when /lists was just a dump of interesting rollups 'pg could think of. There's probably less thought put into its placement than you think.
- alecco 11mo agoIndeed, /active, https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/ and similar are good to see submissions unfairly flagged off the main page by dishonest groups.
- SoftTalker 11mo agos/dishonest groups/other points of view/
- alecco 11mo agoNo, I mean dishonest. When people gang up to push each other's blogs/startups/whatever, it's dishonest. When political groups organize to mass upvote/flag, it's dishonest. They are purposefully sabotaging the wider community for their niche interests. They are cheaters. And IME, more often than not, they are immoral and/or anti-social.
- zahlman 11mo ago> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
- ryandrake 11mo agoI've always found it pretty convenient that discussing rule breaking (astroturfing, shilling, brigading) is itself against the rules.
- throw10920 11mo agoThis is dishonest and incorrect. Discussing rulebreaking is not against the guidelines, which is clear to anyone who reads them (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Accusations of those specific offenses (astroturfing, shilling, brigading) are against the rules, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who thinks about them for a few minutes.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]