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The subject is vast, and it is occasionally technical, but most of the discussion on HN is Frist Post and Natalie Portman/Hot Grits with a veil of legitimacy.

by timr 13y ago

The subject is vast, and it is occasionally technical, but most of the discussion on HN is Frist Post and Natalie Portman/Hot Grits with a veil of legitimacy. There's a population of maybe 50-100 people on here who are obsessed with the subject, and they're spamming every thread with off-topic NSA posts on the theory that they know better than everyone else what people should be talking about. It's no different than any other form of trolling, and it should be managed accordingly.

sinak2 13y ago
Interestingly, this post appears to have been flagged or relegated in some way. It has 141 points in one hour at 10th place, while the Steam Family Sharing post has 150 points in first place and is two hours old. Certainly some of the discussion on other threads should be filtered. But the moderation on stories themselves appears to be heavy-handed right now. Many significant new stories aren't making it to the home page (see above). A proposed solution: If the reason for this in fact flagging, and not moderation by admins, then perhaps showing the guidelines and possibly requiring users to give a reason for flagging might reduce the number of wayward flags. The official guidelines for flagging are: "If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link"
- timr 13y ago
  HN has had a long-thread penalty (since well before the NSA scandal) to prevent flamewars from taking over. That's probably what's happening here.
  - sinak2 13y ago
    91 comments doesn't seem like that many, but that's definitely a possibility.
    - timr 13y ago
      I think there's a rate calculation. It wouldn't make sense to just arbitrarily penalize long threads. It's postings per unit time or somesuch.
- DanBC 13y ago
  This thread is meta, and is thus discouraged by the guidelines.
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    There is a much simpler explanation: it's a poll, they're weighted differently.
tptacek 13y ago
This, 1000% this. The infection of non-NSA threads by the NSA commenters is a much bigger problem than the front page.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  Yep. To demonstrate, I present Exhibit A: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6361558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6361558 A news headline about the Apple iPhone event, completely overshadowed by NSA speculation. The first threads spans 1/2 a page to 3/4 a page and is entirely argumentative speculation with no real benefit to the discussion. I for one, just wanted some discussion about the phone moving over to 64-bit architecture. But, no, NSA speculation (read: not even new information, rehash) took over. EDIT: Also, in before -- yes, I know I can scroll down the page. But the point is that in principle, you shouldn't have to scroll down half a page just to find the meat that's actually relevant to the discussion. It's not like we're saying the NSA news is unimportant -- just don't hijack threads that are about other things with obsessive privacy speculation when there isn't any empirical evidence or information to offer. For example, Apple's fingerprint scanning TouchID could be compromised...or maybe not. We don't know. But let's not destroy entire threads speculating about it.
  - cheald 13y ago
    It's also worth noting that that thread was overwhelmed with meta-discussion about the validity of NSA comments in that thread, not the NSA discussion itself. If you take out the comments complaining about the NSA comments, that thread would be significantly more trim.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Maybe we need another poll to tell us what the HN comment voting system already told us: that discussion about the privacy implications of a new Apple device in a discussion about said new Apple device is on-topic and valued by the community. Oh oh, for that matter, lets get some polls about polls, where is the fun in derailing meta-conversation if we only stop at one level of recursion? /s
deveac 13y ago
>The subject is vast, and it is occasionally technical, I'm saying the subject itself is technical, but I think it's worth pointing out two things: 1) The conversation surrounding it is still more technical here on HN than almost any other community on or off the web. 2) The subject and/or conversation surrounding it need not be technical in the first place to qualify as a legitimate HN post (though we know this will greatly increase the number of people that don't wish to view the content). >and they're spamming every thread with off-topic NSA posts, This is a perfect example of where you should flag comments, as opposed to just flagging links to NSA stories on the front page. No argument there. >but most of the discussion on HN is Frist Post and Natalie Portman/Hot Grits with a veil of legitimacy. Getting back to point #2 above, this is OK. There plenty of users on here that are not experts enough to comment on the technical intricacies of some of the information, and it runs the full range from slightly out of the loop to ignorant of the technical details. But there are intellectual (and yes, political per the HN FAQ) responses that are valid to voice here. Some of the technical users on here may find it low value, but I'd argue it is extremely important nonetheless, but most importantly, squarely on-topic per the HN FAQ. My two cents anyway...

by timr 13y ago

sinak2 13y ago

Interestingly, this post appears to have been flagged or relegated in some way. It has 141 points in one hour at 10th place, while the Steam Family Sharing post has 150 points in first place and is two hours old. Certainly some of the discussion on other threads should be filtered. But the moderation on stories themselves appears to be heavy-handed right now. Many significant new stories aren't making it to the home page (see above). A proposed solution: If the reason for this in fact flagging, and not moderation by admins, then perhaps showing the guidelines and possibly requiring users to give a reason for flagging might reduce the number of wayward flags. The official guidelines for flagging are: "If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link"

timr 13y ago
HN has had a long-thread penalty (since well before the NSA scandal) to prevent flamewars from taking over. That's probably what's happening here.
- sinak2 13y ago
  91 comments doesn't seem like that many, but that's definitely a possibility.
  - timr 13y ago
    I think there's a rate calculation. It wouldn't make sense to just arbitrarily penalize long threads. It's postings per unit time or somesuch.
DanBC 13y ago
This thread is meta, and is thus discouraged by the guidelines.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  There is a much simpler explanation: it's a poll, they're weighted differently.

tptacek 13y ago

This, 1000% this. The infection of non-NSA threads by the NSA commenters is a much bigger problem than the front page.

dylangs1030 13y ago
Yep. To demonstrate, I present Exhibit A: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6361558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6361558 A news headline about the Apple iPhone event, completely overshadowed by NSA speculation. The first threads spans 1/2 a page to 3/4 a page and is entirely argumentative speculation with no real benefit to the discussion. I for one, just wanted some discussion about the phone moving over to 64-bit architecture. But, no, NSA speculation (read: not even new information, rehash) took over. EDIT: Also, in before -- yes, I know I can scroll down the page. But the point is that in principle, you shouldn't have to scroll down half a page just to find the meat that's actually relevant to the discussion. It's not like we're saying the NSA news is unimportant -- just don't hijack threads that are about other things with obsessive privacy speculation when there isn't any empirical evidence or information to offer. For example, Apple's fingerprint scanning TouchID could be compromised...or maybe not. We don't know. But let's not destroy entire threads speculating about it.
- cheald 13y ago
  It's also worth noting that that thread was overwhelmed with meta-discussion about the validity of NSA comments in that thread, not the NSA discussion itself. If you take out the comments complaining about the NSA comments, that thread would be significantly more trim.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Maybe we need another poll to tell us what the HN comment voting system already told us: that discussion about the privacy implications of a new Apple device in a discussion about said new Apple device is on-topic and valued by the community. Oh oh, for that matter, lets get some polls about polls, where is the fun in derailing meta-conversation if we only stop at one level of recursion? /s

deveac 13y ago

>The subject is vast, and it is occasionally technical, I'm saying the subject itself is technical, but I think it's worth pointing out two things: 1) The conversation surrounding it is still more technical here on HN than almost any other community on or off the web. 2) The subject and/or conversation surrounding it need not be technical in the first place to qualify as a legitimate HN post (though we know this will greatly increase the number of people that don't wish to view the content). >and they're spamming every thread with off-topic NSA posts, This is a perfect example of where you should flag comments, as opposed to just flagging links to NSA stories on the front page. No argument there. >but most of the discussion on HN is Frist Post and Natalie Portman/Hot Grits with a veil of legitimacy. Getting back to point #2 above, this is OK. There plenty of users on here that are not experts enough to comment on the technical intricacies of some of the information, and it runs the full range from slightly out of the loop to ignorant of the technical details. But there are intellectual (and yes, political per the HN FAQ) responses that are valid to voice here. Some of the technical users on here may find it low value, but I'd argue it is extremely important nonetheless, but most importantly, squarely on-topic per the HN FAQ. My two cents anyway...