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Heavens forbid the fluff piece on a Google executive gets pushed down the page. I'm dumbfounded that you would kill this story. Hacker News is changing.

by staunch 12y ago

dang 12y ago
Well, it was a borderline call, so I've restored the thread. Perhaps I should explain our thought process. There were at least half a dozen major web publications today putting out variants of this indignant post about "Facebook's unethical experiment". Did all these authors suddenly develop a passion for science ethics? Of course not. It is simply the internet controversy du jour. Those have never made for good HN stories, and the policy has always been to penalize them, because otherwise they would dominate the site. In cases of pile-on controversy like this one, when the original story has already been discussed on HN—which is pretty common, because HN users tend not to miss a day in posting these things—we usually mark the follow-up posts as dupes unless they add important new information, or at least something of substance. Does this article add anything of substance? It didn't strike me that way, but arguably it does. As for the PR fluff piece you think is on the front page, why haven't you flagged it? It's impossible for us to catch (or even see) all such things. We rely on users to point them out.
- staunch 12y ago
  The idea that this story is "controversy du jour" is wrong in my view. I think it's an incredibly important story and the underlying issue may be the biggest in technology. At the very least it is not spam, gossip, or other obvious junk. The explicit HN policy used to be to allow controversies like this to wash over the site. We all remember seeing the home page covered in many submissions on the same topic. The fear that this would cause a topic to "dominate the site" has been proven false numerous times. I'm not sure why that would be a consideration. I wasn't objecting to the puff piece on the home page. I don't think lightweight stuff like that can dominate the site either.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Complaints about stories taking over the entire front page of the site are as old as the site itself. This comment might be the first one I've ever read suggesting that the phenomenon was a good thing that we should preserve.
    - staunch 12y ago
      Who is going to decide how many stories on a topic we get to have? Should there have been one Mt.Gox related submission? One Snowden related submission? Up to one submission per day per topic? I'm not suggesting it's "good" I'm suggesting it's better than the alternative. Killing dupes when there is more than one active discussion is one thing. This submission was the only active discussion on this topic. Removing it is just editorial curation that is of no benefit to anyone at all.
      - dang 12y ago
        Those are good questions and I'd be happy to discuss them, but you seem to be under the impression that HN didn't use to be intensively moderated. That model is wrong. HN was always intensively moderated, curated, or whatever one calls it. That's the only reason why you are able to write something like this: The fear that this would cause a topic to "dominate the site" has been proven false numerous times. That didn't prove itself false, nor did the community make it false; it was PG who made it false. He poured countless hours into managing the site and countless more into writing code to help manage it. That model hasn't changed. It's more transparent now, because users asked for it to be. Transparency has the side-effect of making it seem to some people like we've fundamentally altered HN when it doesn't work like they assumed it did.
        staunch 12y ago
        Few people know better what PG, yourself, and others have done for this site or appreciate it more than me. I've seen lots of threads get penalized or killed and reversed. I know it hasn't been perfect in the past either. I regret saying anything and I won't comment in the future. Thanks.

Heavens forbid the fluff piece on a Google executive gets pushed down the page. I'm dumbfounded that you would kill this story. Hacker News is changing.

by staunch 12y ago

Heavens forbid the fluff piece on a Google executive gets pushed down the page. I'm dumbfounded that you would kill this story. Hacker News is changing.

dang 12y ago

Well, it was a borderline call, so I've restored the thread. Perhaps I should explain our thought process. There were at least half a dozen major web publications today putting out variants of this indignant post about "Facebook's unethical experiment". Did all these authors suddenly develop a passion for science ethics? Of course not. It is simply the internet controversy du jour. Those have never made for good HN stories, and the policy has always been to penalize them, because otherwise they would dominate the site. In cases of pile-on controversy like this one, when the original story has already been discussed on HN—which is pretty common, because HN users tend not to miss a day in posting these things—we usually mark the follow-up posts as dupes unless they add important new information, or at least something of substance. Does this article add anything of substance? It didn't strike me that way, but arguably it does. As for the PR fluff piece you think is on the front page, why haven't you flagged it? It's impossible for us to catch (or even see) all such things. We rely on users to point them out.

staunch 12y ago
The idea that this story is "controversy du jour" is wrong in my view. I think it's an incredibly important story and the underlying issue may be the biggest in technology. At the very least it is not spam, gossip, or other obvious junk. The explicit HN policy used to be to allow controversies like this to wash over the site. We all remember seeing the home page covered in many submissions on the same topic. The fear that this would cause a topic to "dominate the site" has been proven false numerous times. I'm not sure why that would be a consideration. I wasn't objecting to the puff piece on the home page. I don't think lightweight stuff like that can dominate the site either.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Complaints about stories taking over the entire front page of the site are as old as the site itself. This comment might be the first one I've ever read suggesting that the phenomenon was a good thing that we should preserve.
  - staunch 12y ago
    Who is going to decide how many stories on a topic we get to have? Should there have been one Mt.Gox related submission? One Snowden related submission? Up to one submission per day per topic? I'm not suggesting it's "good" I'm suggesting it's better than the alternative. Killing dupes when there is more than one active discussion is one thing. This submission was the only active discussion on this topic. Removing it is just editorial curation that is of no benefit to anyone at all.
    - dang 12y ago
      Those are good questions and I'd be happy to discuss them, but you seem to be under the impression that HN didn't use to be intensively moderated. That model is wrong. HN was always intensively moderated, curated, or whatever one calls it. That's the only reason why you are able to write something like this: The fear that this would cause a topic to "dominate the site" has been proven false numerous times. That didn't prove itself false, nor did the community make it false; it was PG who made it false. He poured countless hours into managing the site and countless more into writing code to help manage it. That model hasn't changed. It's more transparent now, because users asked for it to be. Transparency has the side-effect of making it seem to some people like we've fundamentally altered HN when it doesn't work like they assumed it did.
      - staunch 12y ago
        Few people know better what PG, yourself, and others have done for this site or appreciate it more than me. I've seen lots of threads get penalized or killed and reversed. I know it hasn't been perfect in the past either. I regret saying anything and I won't comment in the future. Thanks.