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The mods here are out of control to the point where I'm considering going back to Reddit completely. The fact the stories are being censored due to "topic assoc

The mods here are out of control to the point where I'm considering going back to Reddit completely. The fact the stories are being censored due to "topic association" despite having enough up-votes is ridiculous.

onewaystreet 12y ago
Which stories?
- sirsar 12y ago
  NSA for example. Any topic with "NSA" gets a very large hit.
  - akerl_ 12y ago
    I'm willing to bet that has way more to do with the substantial body of people flagging down all the NSA posts than some mod conspiracy
    - justsee 12y ago
      Where do you go to get this definitive data on HN activities?
      - tptacek 12y ago
        From Daniel Gackle, who comments on the stories that get buried.
        reuwsaat 12y ago
        That's exactly the problem. You received that info directly from a third person. There is no transparency. Would you believe everything I say? I wouldn't. But if the facts where out there you wouldn't need to. On an issue such as this where people take such sustained and intense interest, your second hand account of someone giving you their word is not sufficient. Maybe it is for you, but please don't condescend by passing it along as though it must be for others.
        tptacek 12y ago
        The third person is the site moderator. And yes, I believe pretty much whatever Daniel tells me. He's that kind of guy. "That Daniel Gackle is the HN moderator" is the kind of factual detail you might want to know before developing very strong opinions about how the site is run.
        reuwsaat 12y ago
        Please see my other comment on this page where explicitly say I completely agree HN is in the right in running a site in this manner. I was just trying to point out that while you may know Daniel others might not. And, again, I believe that a moderator system is 100% fine. HN news has made it work and produces quality content. But, for someone to tell me that since they know someone I should keep my trap shut, it's a little presumptuous.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        tptacek 12y ago
        First, nobody told you to keep your trap shut. Second, if you don't trust the site moderators, HN isn't going to be a pleasant place to spend time.
        reuwsaat 12y ago
        sheesh. your comment isn't a pleasant place to spent time. someone needs some internet kitten love.
    - discostrings 12y ago
      It's probably people flagging it and not the mods, yes. But are the people flagging it actual users? The story in question here had 200 upvotes when it was a link to an NSA story at Slate. The link was changed to the same, source NSA story at First Look and it was quickly flagged to oblivion. I think there're likely some monitoring scripts and flag alerts at play, not just NSA fatigue by actual users.
  - justsee 12y ago
    Is this real data or are you just going on gut feel?
    - gus_massa 12y ago
      A few months ago, kens wrote a detailed black-box analysis about the penalization system. http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really... HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 (920 points, 235 days ago, 190 comments) But many articles are flagged by users, don't assume that all the penalties/kills are dew to moderators actions.
  - gedrap 12y ago
    Although the issue with NSA is important, the problem with most of those threads is that they all the same. Same predictable arguments, or no arguments at all.
    - hrjet 12y ago
      Why do they get upvoted then?
      - auggierose 12y ago
        Because the community is fallible.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Stores with "NSA" get a large number of user flags. As recently as last week, they also got a small penalty --- the second smallest on the site --- to compensate for the very large number of NSA stories that are generated every day. If you submitted an NSA story and it fell off the front page, it was user flags that did it, not the penalty.
- Tycho 12y ago
  An article on global warming by Michael Crichton was killed a few hours ago.
  - dang 12y ago
    That was killed by user flags.
icebraining 12y ago
Why do you assume it were the mods and not just people flagging?
wglb 12y ago
Many stories are flagged by users off the page.
- discostrings 12y ago
  I think the penalty levels for flagging seriously need to be looked at, and some measures to prevent flag rings and other malicious flagging should to be put into place. The story this thread refers to is the perfect example: it was #1 with 200 upvotes after just a few hours. The link was then changed to a different domain that covered the topic in more depth, and the story was suddenly buried within a half hour--apparently by flagging. How was the first link so popular and the second link inappropriate for discussion when the topic was the same? Either some users are just very prejudiced against certain domains, or there are some users and/or organizations that have automated systems in place to detect certain domains or links and send alerts to bury them.
  - Pacabel 12y ago
    I think the problem extends beyond submission flagging. There have been enough times where I've witnessed completely factual and legitimate comments here that happened to criticize or even just question Mozilla, Rust, Ruby on Rails, NoSQL, or some other "revered" organization or technology get heavily voted down without justification. Some of this may just arise naturally. Certain submissions may draw the attention of people directly involved with the given organization or technology. They may take it personally when the discussion touches on perfectly valid, yet perhaps painful, topics. They respond by downvoting these comments that are totally valid and raise some good points. Even if these people are not intentionally acting maliciously, this misvoting can still be quite harmful. I'm not certain that there's a good way of dealing with this, however.
    - falcolas 12y ago
      The disconnect here is that downvotes are considered OK when you simply disagree with something. The problem arises in that people can be made "dead" when this happens, and that individual posts become virtually unreadable because a few people disagreed with them.

onewaystreet 12y ago

Which stories?

sirsar 12y ago
NSA for example. Any topic with "NSA" gets a very large hit.
- akerl_ 12y ago
  I'm willing to bet that has way more to do with the substantial body of people flagging down all the NSA posts than some mod conspiracy
  - justsee 12y ago
    Where do you go to get this definitive data on HN activities?
    - tptacek 12y ago
      From Daniel Gackle, who comments on the stories that get buried.
      - reuwsaat 12y ago
        That's exactly the problem. You received that info directly from a third person. There is no transparency. Would you believe everything I say? I wouldn't. But if the facts where out there you wouldn't need to. On an issue such as this where people take such sustained and intense interest, your second hand account of someone giving you their word is not sufficient. Maybe it is for you, but please don't condescend by passing it along as though it must be for others.
        tptacek 12y ago
        The third person is the site moderator. And yes, I believe pretty much whatever Daniel tells me. He's that kind of guy. "That Daniel Gackle is the HN moderator" is the kind of factual detail you might want to know before developing very strong opinions about how the site is run.
        reuwsaat 12y ago
        Please see my other comment on this page where explicitly say I completely agree HN is in the right in running a site in this manner. I was just trying to point out that while you may know Daniel others might not. And, again, I believe that a moderator system is 100% fine. HN news has made it work and produces quality content. But, for someone to tell me that since they know someone I should keep my trap shut, it's a little presumptuous.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        tptacek 12y ago
        First, nobody told you to keep your trap shut. Second, if you don't trust the site moderators, HN isn't going to be a pleasant place to spend time.
        reuwsaat 12y ago
        sheesh. your comment isn't a pleasant place to spent time. someone needs some internet kitten love.
  - discostrings 12y ago
    It's probably people flagging it and not the mods, yes. But are the people flagging it actual users? The story in question here had 200 upvotes when it was a link to an NSA story at Slate. The link was changed to the same, source NSA story at First Look and it was quickly flagged to oblivion. I think there're likely some monitoring scripts and flag alerts at play, not just NSA fatigue by actual users.
- justsee 12y ago
  Is this real data or are you just going on gut feel?
  - gus_massa 12y ago
    A few months ago, kens wrote a detailed black-box analysis about the penalization system. http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really-works.html http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really... HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 (920 points, 235 days ago, 190 comments) But many articles are flagged by users, don't assume that all the penalties/kills are dew to moderators actions.
- gedrap 12y ago
  Although the issue with NSA is important, the problem with most of those threads is that they all the same. Same predictable arguments, or no arguments at all.
  - hrjet 12y ago
    Why do they get upvoted then?
    - auggierose 12y ago
      Because the community is fallible.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Stores with "NSA" get a large number of user flags. As recently as last week, they also got a small penalty --- the second smallest on the site --- to compensate for the very large number of NSA stories that are generated every day. If you submitted an NSA story and it fell off the front page, it was user flags that did it, not the penalty.
Tycho 12y ago
An article on global warming by Michael Crichton was killed a few hours ago.
- dang 12y ago
  That was killed by user flags.

icebraining 12y ago

Why do you assume it were the mods and not just people flagging?

wglb 12y ago

Many stories are flagged by users off the page.

discostrings 12y ago
I think the penalty levels for flagging seriously need to be looked at, and some measures to prevent flag rings and other malicious flagging should to be put into place. The story this thread refers to is the perfect example: it was #1 with 200 upvotes after just a few hours. The link was then changed to a different domain that covered the topic in more depth, and the story was suddenly buried within a half hour--apparently by flagging. How was the first link so popular and the second link inappropriate for discussion when the topic was the same? Either some users are just very prejudiced against certain domains, or there are some users and/or organizations that have automated systems in place to detect certain domains or links and send alerts to bury them.
- Pacabel 12y ago
  I think the problem extends beyond submission flagging. There have been enough times where I've witnessed completely factual and legitimate comments here that happened to criticize or even just question Mozilla, Rust, Ruby on Rails, NoSQL, or some other "revered" organization or technology get heavily voted down without justification. Some of this may just arise naturally. Certain submissions may draw the attention of people directly involved with the given organization or technology. They may take it personally when the discussion touches on perfectly valid, yet perhaps painful, topics. They respond by downvoting these comments that are totally valid and raise some good points. Even if these people are not intentionally acting maliciously, this misvoting can still be quite harmful. I'm not certain that there's a good way of dealing with this, however.
  - falcolas 12y ago
    The disconnect here is that downvotes are considered OK when you simply disagree with something. The problem arises in that people can be made "dead" when this happens, and that individual posts become virtually unreadable because a few people disagreed with them.