4 ms·
Ask HN: Does HN not cover breaking news?
There is a current news event I am interested in.
As a discerning consumer of news, I was interested to see what the HN community has to say about the subject.
But, there are zero live posts about the topic.
I know that HN doesn't cover politics...
But, doesn't a news story cease to belong to any one category once it becomes the number one front-page headline across the USA?
Was I wrong to look forward to reading comments from Baltimore hackers this morning?
- gus_massa 12y agoFrom the guideline: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
- ColinWright 12y agoThis exact question turned up in reference to the Sandy Hook school shooting. A few of us asked why it was so prominent on HN given then guidelines, and in particular I said: Yes, this is important, yes, it's newsworthy. No, it's not "Hacker News". It's all over the news, and there's nothing specific about hacking, or start-ups. It's not even of "deep interest" in any real sense. It's tragedy, pure and simple, and then it becomes politics.[0] PG replied (in reference to the guidelines you quote) with: Note those words most and probably. Another accused me: Try on a little human emotion and sensitivity for size: this isn't your site to police. Even pg has pointed out the precision of the wording which you seemingly ignored. I usually stay out of discussions about on-topic/off-topic now. There's nothing to be gained. I just flag things according to my own criteria and move on. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380
- blueflow 12y agoIf you think it belongs here, just submit it. Please consider that things highly specific to a single country or non-technical/non-scientific links may be downvoted.
- ColinWright 12y agoSubmissions cannot be down-voted, only flagged.
- blueflow 12y agoAnother name for a similar mechanism.
- ColinWright 12y agoSimilar, perhaps, but not identical. For example, on comments, flagging has a much more drastic effect than a simple downvote, so keeping the conceptual difference clear is useful.
- bvrlt 12y agoLink to HN front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451652.