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It's currently at position 119. My guess is it got flagged enough to drop. It's annoying that an interesting new tech is flagged down off the front page, but

It's currently at position 119. My guess is it got flagged enough to drop. It's annoying that an interesting new tech is flagged down off the front page, but HN has an anti-cryptocurrency contingent. Doesn't speak well for this community that this happens.

tptacek 13y ago
HN has an anti-cryptocurrency contingent? Besides me and Patrick? From my vantage point, HN not only encourages cryptocurrencies, but also (through YC) has a profound financial stake in them. It is weird that anyone would have flagged the Etherium story. The Moderator should pull up the list of people that did that. What's more likely, though, is that the story was promoted by a voting ring. HN has what I perceive to be a bit of a hair-trigger voting ring detector, which is understandable, because it's pretty intensely targeted by rings. There are some pretty simple things you can do to get your story penalized this way. The best advice for avoiding the problem is to try and make sure your story rises to the front page naturally; think of HN like a pinball machine, and the detector as a "tilt" sensor.
- gphilip 13y ago
  (Totally off topic; please feel free to ignore. I ask here because I feel asking via email would be even more intrusive.) Are the Matasano Crypto Challenges alive? A friend of mine and I sent (first) requests around a week back, and we haven't heard back yet. I understand that real people respond to these requests (at their leisure, I guess) and so turn-around times would be long, but will somebody eventually look at the requests, or is the program on hold/in limbo?
  - tptacek 13y ago
    They're alive, but we've been particularly slow over the last month or so, because we've all been totally slammed at work.
    - gphilip 13y ago
      Thank you!
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  Patrick is the loudest, but yes, there is a fairly sizable (but shrinking) anti-cryptocurrency contingent here. It's not unusual for cryptocurrency stories to get flagged down, though it's not as common as it used to be. A voting ring is possible, I suppose. Certainly possible that the detector thought there was one, though the story had dozens of votes and comments before it dropped off. It actually went from #2 to nowhere that I could find it and then showed back up in slot 119. I've seen stuff temporarily vanish like that before (all kinds of topics), not really sure what causes it. I've recently seen things that behaved like comment voting rings, but that's probably a lot harder to detect, and I can't say for sure it's happening from the available data.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Sharp drops off the front page are usually either (1) the ring detector, (2) the flame-war detector (not here, though) or (3) aggressive flagging. But as I understand it, (3) really only works with stories in their infancy; by the time a story gets as many upvotes as the Etherium story got, it's hard for flags to make a dent. Believe me, I've tried, many times. :) I'd be willing to bet on (1), the ring detector.
  - SamReidHughes 13y ago
    The anti-cryptocurrency contingent you are talking about is probably more of an anti-cryptocurrency stories contingent. There were a lot of fluff Bitcoin stories in the past, much of which was harmful "drama".

tptacek 13y ago

HN has an anti-cryptocurrency contingent? Besides me and Patrick? From my vantage point, HN not only encourages cryptocurrencies, but also (through YC) has a profound financial stake in them. It is weird that anyone would have flagged the Etherium story. The Moderator should pull up the list of people that did that. What's more likely, though, is that the story was promoted by a voting ring. HN has what I perceive to be a bit of a hair-trigger voting ring detector, which is understandable, because it's pretty intensely targeted by rings. There are some pretty simple things you can do to get your story penalized this way. The best advice for avoiding the problem is to try and make sure your story rises to the front page naturally; think of HN like a pinball machine, and the detector as a "tilt" sensor.

gphilip 13y ago
(Totally off topic; please feel free to ignore. I ask here because I feel asking via email would be even more intrusive.) Are the Matasano Crypto Challenges alive? A friend of mine and I sent (first) requests around a week back, and we haven't heard back yet. I understand that real people respond to these requests (at their leisure, I guess) and so turn-around times would be long, but will somebody eventually look at the requests, or is the program on hold/in limbo?
- tptacek 13y ago
  They're alive, but we've been particularly slow over the last month or so, because we've all been totally slammed at work.
  - gphilip 13y ago
    Thank you!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
waterlesscloud 13y ago
Patrick is the loudest, but yes, there is a fairly sizable (but shrinking) anti-cryptocurrency contingent here. It's not unusual for cryptocurrency stories to get flagged down, though it's not as common as it used to be. A voting ring is possible, I suppose. Certainly possible that the detector thought there was one, though the story had dozens of votes and comments before it dropped off. It actually went from #2 to nowhere that I could find it and then showed back up in slot 119. I've seen stuff temporarily vanish like that before (all kinds of topics), not really sure what causes it. I've recently seen things that behaved like comment voting rings, but that's probably a lot harder to detect, and I can't say for sure it's happening from the available data.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Sharp drops off the front page are usually either (1) the ring detector, (2) the flame-war detector (not here, though) or (3) aggressive flagging. But as I understand it, (3) really only works with stories in their infancy; by the time a story gets as many upvotes as the Etherium story got, it's hard for flags to make a dent. Believe me, I've tried, many times. :) I'd be willing to bet on (1), the ring detector.
- SamReidHughes 13y ago
  The anti-cryptocurrency contingent you are talking about is probably more of an anti-cryptocurrency stories contingent. There were a lot of fluff Bitcoin stories in the past, much of which was harmful "drama".