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Flagging legitimate threads by some members is the worst thing on HN. A thread can have a hundred upvotes but just a few flags will move it out from the front-p
by jakobdabo 11y ago
Flagging legitimate threads by some members is the worst thing on HN. A thread can have a hundred upvotes but just a few flags will move it out from the front-page, effectively killing the discussion. Something has to be done about this, i.e. ignore flaggings once a thread gets 15 points and maybe alert the mods so they can make human decision on whether leave it or flag out.
- GlickWick 11y agoI'm unclear as to how this thread is legitimate, personally. Doesn't seem to really fit with HN. I'm no fan of the Patriot Act either, but this belongs somewhere like Reddit.
- jakobdabo 11y agoAt this point 65 users of HN are thinking otherwise. edit: I didn't downvote you
- GlickWick 11y agoThat doesn't necessarily matter. It's well established by now that communities tend to upvote things they "like", not specifically things that belong. We know there's a large overlap between users of HN and Libertarians, which in itself is fine, but it doesn't mean this type of discussion should be occurring here.
- dvdfvo 11y agoIf you don't give any merit to a majority vote, why should relevance be given to your singular opinion? Seems like a double standard honestly.
- GlickWick 11y agoI think you're missing the point entirely. I'm not saying my opinion matters, I'm just pointing out that this thread is definitely not supposed to be on HN, as is defined by the rules of the website. I'm not positing an opinion, I'm arguing for a fact.
- dvdfvo 11y agoThe only fact here is that this is on the front page. However your opinion is that it shouldn't be. By the majority vote, you are wrong.
- GlickWick 11y agoNo, the rules state that this post should not be here. You're conflating opinion and fact. Please stop. Majority vote does not dictate fact. HN is not a "anything and everything can be on the front page of the community votes it as such" site like Reddit is.
- ceejayoz 11y agoWhat rule is this violating? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html says "anything that good hackers would find interesting" is on-topic, which clearly enough "good hackers" do given the upvotes. The "most stories about politics" clearly doesn't say "all stories about politics", and this one has a lot of relevance to the tech world. Meanwhile, you're definitely breaking the "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site." rule.
- GlickWick 11y ago> Meanwhile, you're definitely breaking the "Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site." rule. I'm actually replying to a discussion started about flagging.
- dvdfvo 11y agoBy complaining that the submission is inappropriate: GlickWick: I'm unclear as to how this thread is legitimate, personally. Doesn't seem to really fit with HN. I'm no fan of the Patriot Act either, but this belongs somewhere like Reddit.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- gtrubetskoy 11y agoIMHO this has a very direct impact on many internet start up (and not start up) businesses, as well as touches on the very important subject of legality and ethics of data collection and privacy by government as well as businesses.
- randomname2 11y agoNot only that, but HN will also usually post the very best possible links to big news stories that affect the HN audience as they break, which is a great feature of this website. Whlie this may not be a huge story, it will likely be the talk of the day tomorrow.
- GlickWick 11y agoThe Patriot Act (and policy in general) can have a serious impact on software companies for sure. However, this is a politically charged thread clearly aimed at drawing interest/support for an individual candidate. This is not supposed to be permitted on HN. A thread discussing the potential issues caused by the Patriot Act is much more suitable for the front page than this.
- remarkEon 11y agoIs that not what Paul is discussing on the floor? I mean, he's discussing the consequences of building backdoors right now. It would be wise, I believe, if a discussion here on HN about this were to be informed by what the actual policy makers are saying/thinking.
- SCHiM 11y agoWell it _is_ Rand Paul on the floor, how else would you like to phrase it? I've got no political interest in this either way, since I'm not American. So consider it an outsiders view when I say that I think it's not unreasonable to mention the person who's taking the action.
- daily_dose 11y agoMore legitimate that the SJW rhetoric and NYC narcissistic hipster shit that fills this website.
- GlickWick 11y agoThat stuff doesn't belong either, and you should flag it. Not entirely sure what the point of this reply was. Are you saying that we should post irrelevant things across the spectrum to get revenge on people who post other irrelevant things?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoHN has long been a bastion of Ron Paul fandom, going back as far as the founding of the board. So there's backstory here. I don't support either political party, and the odds are great that I will not vote for Rand Paul. However, as a technical person living in a democratic society I _am_ interested in the factors that change public policy, whether it's a RP filibuster, a Snowden leak, or a public move on policy by Wyden. Perhaps if the tech community pulled together, somebody like Wyden could cross the aisle and make it a bipartisan filibuster. Whether you like either guy or either party or not is immaterial. The important thing is to try to get a little momentum here. The system is totally hosed, and we've got a long way to go to get it functioning again.
- GlickWick 11y agoI agree that public policy that impacts software is very relevant to HN in general. However, this post is clearly meant to draw focus to supporting a political candidate specifically. A thread about the cons of the renewal of the Patriot Act without the obvious Libertarian political candidate undertones would be much more fitting for the front page of HN.
- dang 11y ago> HN has long been a bastion of Ron Paul fandom, going back as far as the founding of the board. I don't think that's accurate. Fewer than ten Ron Paul stories got much traction here in eight years, and most were either tied to more popular topics (SOPA, Snowden) or skeptical: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ron%20paul&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ron%20paul&sort=byPopularity&p... Similarly, I doubt that the interest in the current post has much to do with partisan support for a candidate. Given the community's interests, it is more likely because of what he's talking about.
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoApologies. It appears I remember this discussion with pg and paul -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76469 -- but not the fact that it was about reddit, not HN. It certainly felt to me like during the 2008 election that there were RP stories all over HN. Wasn't the case though. Odd.
- skwirl 11y agoYeah, this is a live stream of a political speech by a presidential candidate. I bet we wouldn't see any complaints about flagging if this was a flagged live stream of Hillary Clinton talking about immigration reform.
- ohnomrbill 11y agoThey (Sen. Wyden and Sen. Paul) are going over backdoors in encryption right now.
- sp332 11y agoPeople and businesses have moved their data away from USA-based companies because of worries about privacy. The outcome of this bill will directly affect the ability of US tech companies to attract overseas customers.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- bdcravens 11y agoAs does discussion of San Francisco real estate prices.
- randomname2 11y agoWell this specific submission seems highly relevant, and so far it hasn't been flagged off the front page yet :) OT: I agree there is a lot of downvoting of submissions and comments with a political slant. Anything that's phrased as being slightly partisan seems to be immediately downvoted by people from the other side of the political spectrum because they don't agree with it.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoI have in the past flagged blatantly political articles that align perfectly with my own opinions, simply because they had no place on HN. There are better places for politics; see also http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ . In this case, I think this article is relevant for the HN audience, because of the massive technology-related threat involved here.
- dang 11y agoThat isn't far from the way things work now, and worked in the case of this thread. I'd add: (1) the community doesn't necessarily agree about what's legitimate. I don't see any evidence that the flags on this one are less in good faith than the upvotes; (2) upvotes can't be the only factor determining HN's front page; that would make it consist of controversy, gossip, and fashion, and undermine the reason why readers come here in the first place.
- jakobdabo 11y agoThanks for the reply, I'm sorry for the off-topic discussion, it's just that I witnessed several times how a thread is doing very well (like 50 points in 10 minutes), is in the first places on the FP, then in a minute it's on the bottom of the FP, in another minute it's on the third page. So I though it must be the flaggings. Is HN's ranking algorithm public?
- pzxc 11y agoIf a topic gets 40 comments before it gets 40 votes, it gets auto-penalized even with no flags. (too controversial) There are also other mechanisms, such as vote-ring-detection, that can kill a topic as well. (That is my current understanding anyway, I am not HN staff, and I am not saying whether I agree/disagree with any of these mechanisms, just stating them to help alleviate your confusion about why some topics may be doing very well and then suddenly die -- it's not always because of flagging)
- thaumasiotes 11y ago> If a topic gets 40 comments before it gets 40 votes, it gets auto-penalized even with no flags. (too controversial) I've heard about this before and it still sounds crazy to me. I comment quite a bit, and almost never upvote topics. Using the standard "other people are like me" heuristic, I deduce that the normal operation of HN involves automatically killing all the topics. It's more likely that other people are in fact nothing like me, but I'd like to understand this a bit better.
- 11y ago
- SilasX 11y agoYeah, I sure hate when a vocal majority can override a clear majority. That's as bad as a filibuster. Oh wait...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]