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Are you and I reading the same guidelines? http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories abo

Are you and I reading the same guidelines? http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, Isn't "How to stop the drug wars" about politics? I know it is exactly the kind of article I expect to find on Reddit. I was surprised to see it on the front page here. From the linked article: > That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled. This is not an article about politics?

rms 18y ago
"most" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507890 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507890
- codinghorror 18y ago
  Isn't this exactly why downvoting should be a bit more prevalent than it is now? For marginally topical (and in my opinion completely off-topic) political stories like that? Right now only the people who upvote it get to have a say.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - gruseom 18y ago
    Right now only the people who upvote it get to have a say. Not so. The people who flag it also get to have a say. And if you observed the site more closely you would notice that their say is quite effective.
    - codinghorror 18y ago
      Fair enough. I understand how voting works, but how does the flagging mechanism work? Once it's flagged by (n) people, what happens? I checked http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and I couldn't find anything. I think flagging is a very different (and basically silent) axis of expression; you can't counter an upvote in the case of controversial, marginally on-topic questions like the drug war one. I totally agree that some of the powers like voting down and flagging have to be earned through participation, by the way. We do the same thing on Stack Overflow.
      - gruseom 18y ago
        flagging is a very different (and basically silent) axis of expression I think the silence is a feature not a bug. The meta-noise reached its peak just before flagging was introduced, and it got way better after that. It still flares up intermittently, like now. An interesting observation is that it's mostly new(ish) users who post complaining meta-comments. Perhaps after they've been around for a while they notice that those discussions are always the same, as are the "sky is falling" threads. Edit: uh-oh, the right margin is fast approaching. And damn it, I had managed to go at least 6 months without getting sucked in to this meta business!
        codinghorror 18y ago
        Good and worthy discussion, though, because this is the very heart and soul of designing software (or at least web apps with discussion) for human beings.
      - swombat 18y ago
        As I understanding, flagging brings articles to the attention of the secret cabal of editors (no one knows who they are, beyond the fact that pg is likely one of them). The more an article is flagged, I presume, the more it stands out to their attention. They then make a manual decision whether to kill the article - and can even bring it back if they change their mind (I've seen that happen a few times). So flagging in and of itself does not trigger any automatic removal of the article. There has to be a human action to remove the offending article.
  - lacker 18y ago
    The drug story is actually some really intelligent analysis by the Economist. It is not the sort of garbage you get on Reddit.
    - codinghorror 18y ago
      I totally respect the Economist, but are they really saying something about the pointlessness of the drug war that I haven't heard a thousand times over already? Furthermore does it belong on a site devoted primarily to programming topics? What next, some really intelligent analysis of Ron Paul?
      - axod 18y ago
        "An analysis of the 10 most prevalent lolcat photos, and what makes them entertaining".
        unalone 18y ago
        Man, I know you were joking, but suddenly I feel that a psychological/humor-driven analysis of popular memes might be a fascinating article to read/write.
      - lacker 18y ago
        Yes, it does belong here, because it's interesting, and it's not like Hacker News is flooded with drug stories. It's okay to have the occasional off-topic article if it's one of the best of its genre. There have also been intelligent, interesting stories about Ron Paul on Hacker News. For example this one ;-) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76469 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76469
      - trickjarrett 18y ago
        It seems it does based on the voting. We also had a post by Tim Ferriss on the top of the page for nearly two days last week, not programmer specific but it was enjoyed / hated and had a good discussion going on about it. This site is vastly related to programming and startups, but other topics that are of interest and thought provoking tend to rise up as an interest. We don't have kittens on the front page, so I consider it a victory.
so_user 18y ago
The Stack Overflow guidelines prohibit discussion topics, but they still find their way through every once in awhile because the community doesn't mind them if they're interesting enough. Same thing here.
- codinghorror 18y ago
  yes, that's true -- but we also allow people to vote against those off-topic articles, and move to close (or reopen) them. There's no way to vote down a link submission on HN.
  - swivelmaster 18y ago
    Right but if enough people find it interesting it finds its way to the front page. I think it makes sense in the context of saying that if X people like this, more than X other people will probably like it too. And that's the point - find stuff that the audience likes. I think that's pretty healthy. It means that Paul Graham gets an article to the front page one day, and the next day a rebuttal to that article goes up right next to it. Doesn't matter if all the people who agree with one want to downvote the other - as long as it's good, we all get a chance to judge for ourselves.
gruseom 18y ago
Yeah, those guidelines: the ones that say "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on topic and go out of their way to make explicit that this is "more than hacking and startups". Also, the ones that say "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site", which I wish you would respect. This is not an article about politics? My comment was plainly not about the article but about a false description you made of this site. The article itself strikes me as a borderline case. It can't really be called "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon", but neither is it narrowly about politics. It's an intellectually respectable piece about a thorny social issue. For me, it passes the test because of the interesting historical content of the first paragraph, which I was curious and gratified to learn. If I could make one thing go away from HN it isn't egregiously off-topic articles, which the flagging-and-editing protocol handles just fine, but rather the incessant "The sky is falling, it's just like Reddit" meta-noise.
- codinghorror 18y ago
  > Also, the ones that say "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site", which I wish you would respect. But that's precisely what happens when you give people no other option to vote against something: they write comments complaining about it. It's a direct and very literal consequence of the design decision not to allow downvotes on article submissions. Besides, I only brought that up because pg said: > The reason HN doesn't need downvotes is that HN, unlike Reddit, kills lame articles. Which is generally true, but clearly not true today because the top rated article is, as you said, borderline. And from my perspective, it is not at all borderline, and I'd vote against it in a heartbeat.
  - gruseom 18y ago
    That last point is a doozy of a non sequitur. Borderline does not equal lame. Not everyone agrees on what is interesting, so there will always be borderline cases, and these are not a problem. On the contrary, they add to the intellectual diversity of the site, which is its mandate.
    - 18y ago

rms 18y ago

"most" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507890 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=507890

codinghorror 18y ago
Isn't this exactly why downvoting should be a bit more prevalent than it is now? For marginally topical (and in my opinion completely off-topic) political stories like that? Right now only the people who upvote it get to have a say.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- gruseom 18y ago
  Right now only the people who upvote it get to have a say. Not so. The people who flag it also get to have a say. And if you observed the site more closely you would notice that their say is quite effective.
  - codinghorror 18y ago
    Fair enough. I understand how voting works, but how does the flagging mechanism work? Once it's flagged by (n) people, what happens? I checked http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and I couldn't find anything. I think flagging is a very different (and basically silent) axis of expression; you can't counter an upvote in the case of controversial, marginally on-topic questions like the drug war one. I totally agree that some of the powers like voting down and flagging have to be earned through participation, by the way. We do the same thing on Stack Overflow.
    - gruseom 18y ago
      flagging is a very different (and basically silent) axis of expression I think the silence is a feature not a bug. The meta-noise reached its peak just before flagging was introduced, and it got way better after that. It still flares up intermittently, like now. An interesting observation is that it's mostly new(ish) users who post complaining meta-comments. Perhaps after they've been around for a while they notice that those discussions are always the same, as are the "sky is falling" threads. Edit: uh-oh, the right margin is fast approaching. And damn it, I had managed to go at least 6 months without getting sucked in to this meta business!
      - codinghorror 18y ago
        Good and worthy discussion, though, because this is the very heart and soul of designing software (or at least web apps with discussion) for human beings.
    - swombat 18y ago
      As I understanding, flagging brings articles to the attention of the secret cabal of editors (no one knows who they are, beyond the fact that pg is likely one of them). The more an article is flagged, I presume, the more it stands out to their attention. They then make a manual decision whether to kill the article - and can even bring it back if they change their mind (I've seen that happen a few times). So flagging in and of itself does not trigger any automatic removal of the article. There has to be a human action to remove the offending article.
- lacker 18y ago
  The drug story is actually some really intelligent analysis by the Economist. It is not the sort of garbage you get on Reddit.
  - codinghorror 18y ago
    I totally respect the Economist, but are they really saying something about the pointlessness of the drug war that I haven't heard a thousand times over already? Furthermore does it belong on a site devoted primarily to programming topics? What next, some really intelligent analysis of Ron Paul?
    - axod 18y ago
      "An analysis of the 10 most prevalent lolcat photos, and what makes them entertaining".
      - unalone 18y ago
        Man, I know you were joking, but suddenly I feel that a psychological/humor-driven analysis of popular memes might be a fascinating article to read/write.
    - lacker 18y ago
      Yes, it does belong here, because it's interesting, and it's not like Hacker News is flooded with drug stories. It's okay to have the occasional off-topic article if it's one of the best of its genre. There have also been intelligent, interesting stories about Ron Paul on Hacker News. For example this one ;-) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76469 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76469
    - trickjarrett 18y ago
      It seems it does based on the voting. We also had a post by Tim Ferriss on the top of the page for nearly two days last week, not programmer specific but it was enjoyed / hated and had a good discussion going on about it. This site is vastly related to programming and startups, but other topics that are of interest and thought provoking tend to rise up as an interest. We don't have kittens on the front page, so I consider it a victory.

so_user 18y ago

The Stack Overflow guidelines prohibit discussion topics, but they still find their way through every once in awhile because the community doesn't mind them if they're interesting enough. Same thing here.

codinghorror 18y ago
yes, that's true -- but we also allow people to vote against those off-topic articles, and move to close (or reopen) them. There's no way to vote down a link submission on HN.
- swivelmaster 18y ago
  Right but if enough people find it interesting it finds its way to the front page. I think it makes sense in the context of saying that if X people like this, more than X other people will probably like it too. And that's the point - find stuff that the audience likes. I think that's pretty healthy. It means that Paul Graham gets an article to the front page one day, and the next day a rebuttal to that article goes up right next to it. Doesn't matter if all the people who agree with one want to downvote the other - as long as it's good, we all get a chance to judge for ourselves.

gruseom 18y ago

Yeah, those guidelines: the ones that say "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on topic and go out of their way to make explicit that this is "more than hacking and startups". Also, the ones that say "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site", which I wish you would respect. This is not an article about politics? My comment was plainly not about the article but about a false description you made of this site. The article itself strikes me as a borderline case. It can't really be called "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon", but neither is it narrowly about politics. It's an intellectually respectable piece about a thorny social issue. For me, it passes the test because of the interesting historical content of the first paragraph, which I was curious and gratified to learn. If I could make one thing go away from HN it isn't egregiously off-topic articles, which the flagging-and-editing protocol handles just fine, but rather the incessant "The sky is falling, it's just like Reddit" meta-noise.

codinghorror 18y ago
> Also, the ones that say "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site", which I wish you would respect. But that's precisely what happens when you give people no other option to vote against something: they write comments complaining about it. It's a direct and very literal consequence of the design decision not to allow downvotes on article submissions. Besides, I only brought that up because pg said: > The reason HN doesn't need downvotes is that HN, unlike Reddit, kills lame articles. Which is generally true, but clearly not true today because the top rated article is, as you said, borderline. And from my perspective, it is not at all borderline, and I'd vote against it in a heartbeat.
- gruseom 18y ago
  That last point is a doozy of a non sequitur. Borderline does not equal lame. Not everyone agrees on what is interesting, so there will always be borderline cases, and these are not a problem. On the contrary, they add to the intellectual diversity of the site, which is its mandate.
  - 18y ago