5 ms·

You are waaaay overthinking it. Probably was just flagged to death because people are getting overloaded with NSA stories, especially when there is no new addi

by swanson 13y ago

You are waaaay overthinking it. Probably was just flagged to death because people are getting overloaded with NSA stories, especially when there is no new additions. I would probably have flagged it if I saw it, doesn't really advance the discussion and frankly, I don't come to HN for politics.

gbaygon 13y ago
Be careful when flagging articles you are tired of seeing, apparently if your tastes are different to that of the watchmen the ability to flag gets removed from you.
- ynniv 13y ago
  Well that sounds down right democratic.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
bhauer 13y ago
alan_cx is not describing a scenario that fits with the explanation of being "flagged to death." Alan is speaking about the "new" page, where you will routinely see dead articles if you have showdead enabled. In fact, if you reload the new page frequently you can see many articles that become dead the moment (effectively) they are posted. This isn't flagging; it's an automatic mechanism. It may be an automatic mechanism informed by previous heavy flagging of other articles from the same domain or any number of other heuristics, but it happens too quickly for it to be the result of user action on the specific article. As far as I can tell, flagging affects the sorting algorithm for the home page (use of the user script "HN Slapdown" allows you to visualize each article's score versus its rank order, providing color coding to indicate heavily-flagged articles) but I have not in my admittedly short HN experience ever seen an article become dead as a direct result of flagging. I have my own misgivings about the rigid title-normalization policy so I appreciate him and the op taking the time to ask some questions.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
Probably was just flagged to death because people are getting overloaded with NSA stories, especially when there is no new additions People also seem to flag stuff a lot even when there are new points made. That is, we have a gazillion articles about programming patterns, frameworks, or languages, NONE of which add "new facts"; which is fine, because they make new points, or even just old ones in an eloquent way. The Snowden/NSA stuff was/is news, but there are also essays about the general situation. These also get flagged, and looking at dates, points, numbers of comments and positions on the front page is actually so SNAFU sometimes, I actually thought of scraping the first few pages and making a graph of position vs. time vs. points, just to find the interesting stuff that gets buried for some reason more easily. frankly, I don't come to HN for politics. Right. Then why do you and others engage in the political act of stifling discussion about a specific topic, for reasons you then don't apply to other topics as well? I don't come to HN to masturbate about money and disruption; yet I'm sure if I just started flagging everything I don't like, I'd loose that privilege real quick.
k3n 13y ago
In my experience, few topics are off-topic here if properly presented, including politics. I don't come to HN for politics, either, but that doesn't preclude my use of the site for other topics -- well, except for sensational situations such as when the Aaron Swartz bomb dropped, I have a screenshot around here somewhere where every single post on the frontpage was related to that topic. "Meh" I said, came back a day later, and it was down to 1/2, came back the next day and it was at 1/4 or less. Not that the topic didn't interest me, but god, it was a downright masturbatory vortex; though, I didn't throw a fit, I just let it die-down and soon enough we were back to the normalcy. With that said, point being is that I didn't flag anything simply because there was "too much" of it for my tastes -- I don't believe, even as a participant, that I have the onus to try and dictate what others on the site participate in. Only if it's intentionally bad (spam, misleading, flaming, etc.) do I ever flag or downvote. edit: And evidently I still don't grok HN -- why is my reply here "dead" as soon as I posted it....?

by swanson 13y ago

gbaygon 13y ago

Be careful when flagging articles you are tired of seeing, apparently if your tastes are different to that of the watchmen the ability to flag gets removed from you.

ynniv 13y ago
Well that sounds down right democratic.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

bhauer 13y ago

alan_cx is not describing a scenario that fits with the explanation of being "flagged to death." Alan is speaking about the "new" page, where you will routinely see dead articles if you have showdead enabled. In fact, if you reload the new page frequently you can see many articles that become dead the moment (effectively) they are posted. This isn't flagging; it's an automatic mechanism. It may be an automatic mechanism informed by previous heavy flagging of other articles from the same domain or any number of other heuristics, but it happens too quickly for it to be the result of user action on the specific article. As far as I can tell, flagging affects the sorting algorithm for the home page (use of the user script "HN Slapdown" allows you to visualize each article's score versus its rank order, providing color coding to indicate heavily-flagged articles) but I have not in my admittedly short HN experience ever seen an article become dead as a direct result of flagging. I have my own misgivings about the rigid title-normalization policy so I appreciate him and the op taking the time to ask some questions.

PavlovsCat 13y ago

Probably was just flagged to death because people are getting overloaded with NSA stories, especially when there is no new additions People also seem to flag stuff a lot even when there are new points made. That is, we have a gazillion articles about programming patterns, frameworks, or languages, NONE of which add "new facts"; which is fine, because they make new points, or even just old ones in an eloquent way. The Snowden/NSA stuff was/is news, but there are also essays about the general situation. These also get flagged, and looking at dates, points, numbers of comments and positions on the front page is actually so SNAFU sometimes, I actually thought of scraping the first few pages and making a graph of position vs. time vs. points, just to find the interesting stuff that gets buried for some reason more easily. frankly, I don't come to HN for politics. Right. Then why do you and others engage in the political act of stifling discussion about a specific topic, for reasons you then don't apply to other topics as well? I don't come to HN to masturbate about money and disruption; yet I'm sure if I just started flagging everything I don't like, I'd loose that privilege real quick.

k3n 13y ago

In my experience, few topics are off-topic here if properly presented, including politics. I don't come to HN for politics, either, but that doesn't preclude my use of the site for other topics -- well, except for sensational situations such as when the Aaron Swartz bomb dropped, I have a screenshot around here somewhere where every single post on the frontpage was related to that topic. "Meh" I said, came back a day later, and it was down to 1/2, came back the next day and it was at 1/4 or less. Not that the topic didn't interest me, but god, it was a downright masturbatory vortex; though, I didn't throw a fit, I just let it die-down and soon enough we were back to the normalcy. With that said, point being is that I didn't flag anything simply because there was "too much" of it for my tastes -- I don't believe, even as a participant, that I have the onus to try and dictate what others on the site participate in. Only if it's intentionally bad (spam, misleading, flaming, etc.) do I ever flag or downvote. edit: And evidently I still don't grok HN -- why is my reply here "dead" as soon as I posted it....?