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Ask HN: why are some (political in nature) posts censored while others are not?
I recently posted a well written piece about Prop 30 (via Pando Daily) on HN: http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/13/proposition-30-yet-another-way-california-screws-entrepreneurs-over/. It was quickly censored by the mods.
I then looked at the HN guidelines which stated that most "political" articles are considered "off-topic." I considered it to be "on-topic," since it directly affects entrepreneurs and their companies based in CA. But fine, their forum, their rules.
But how is this TC article on Ron Paul any different (which has rec'd 100+ upvotes)? http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/16/ron-pauls-farewell-address-the-internet-can-stop-big-government/
- hooande 14y agoHere is the deal with politics on hn, as I understand it... As hackers, we like to learn about complex systems and figure out how they work. Politics can be very complicated and there's a lot going on behind the scenes. Any story that explains how something works as opposed to advocating for a political position will probably not get censored. Of course there are exceptions. Anything related to the technology of politics, patents and topics of interest to the tech community (like net neutrality). To answer your question specifically, Ron Paul is personally popular with many members of the tech crowd. He's a big deal on reddit and with many members of our community, so he kind of gets a pass.
- justinY 14y agoI personally think Ron Paul is bad*ss, but that was what I was implying...(him getting pass while others don't)!
- mooism2 14y agoFlagging can be done by anyone with enough karma, so there's an inherent lack of consistency.
- brudgers 14y agoLike startups, the vast majority of HN submissions will fail to gain traction. Even those that gain a little may get squashed by flagging. All get squashed by time. The rise of the Ron Paul submission is an unusual data point - as is that of the current one implying that Republicans are rejecting copyright. I suspect social media campaigns are being tested. HN is somewhat of a hardened target. During application cycles, however, its moderators might be preoccupied. The important point is that when a crappy submission gains traction, it doesn't lower the bar in general to justify other crappy articles. The way to contribute is by submitting good content unlikely to be encountered elsewhere. California politics probably doesn't make that cut.
- gyardley 14y agoAre you sure you were censored? Perhaps you just submitted the exact same URL that I submitted six days ago, here (which, incidentally, you commented on): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4781004 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4781004 When you submit the exact same URL as one that's been submitted before, the previous article gets a point, but a duplicate entry isn't created. To get the article to show up again, you'd have to do something with the URL to fool HN into thinking it's a distinct submission. I wouldn't recommend doing this except under rare circumstances - perhaps years have passed and the old article has become suddenly quite relevant due to current events.