Ask the mods: Why did this article get flagged?
12 comments
Seems like a great article. Presumably it was flagged because someone glanced at the domain name and assumed it was off-topic. Or, as you hint, because someone has an adverse reaction to the word 'socialism'. If this thread doesn't get a response from him, email Dan at '[email protected]' and see if he can help to rehabilitate it.
It was a worthwhile article. It wasn't inflammatory at all, and it was insightful. You don't have to agree with the overall political analysis to feel that this was a worthy and substantial contribution to the discussion of very important issues in tech.
I have some sympathy for the mods in that I don't see all the submissions that get flagged. It could be that without aggressive flagging, which will inevitably lead to some "errors" (this getting flagged that perhaps shouldn't have). It could be that HN would turn into nothing but flame wars about politics and complaints about the tech industry. People complain about what HN has turned into, but the quality of discussion here remains much higher (vastly higher, in many cases) than a lot of other forums. Craigslist, a while back, devolved from a good forum into something essentially unreadable.
Still, I have my doubts as to whether an article similar in treatment, depth, and tone, but from a libertarian point of view, would have been flagged. In this case, I do think it was a mistake to flag and remove this article, though I appreciate that any meaningful defense of a good discussion forum will inevitably involve a few mistakes like this.
I have some sympathy for the mods in that I don't see all the submissions that get flagged. It could be that without aggressive flagging, which will inevitably lead to some "errors" (this getting flagged that perhaps shouldn't have). It could be that HN would turn into nothing but flame wars about politics and complaints about the tech industry. People complain about what HN has turned into, but the quality of discussion here remains much higher (vastly higher, in many cases) than a lot of other forums. Craigslist, a while back, devolved from a good forum into something essentially unreadable.
Still, I have my doubts as to whether an article similar in treatment, depth, and tone, but from a libertarian point of view, would have been flagged. In this case, I do think it was a mistake to flag and remove this article, though I appreciate that any meaningful defense of a good discussion forum will inevitably involve a few mistakes like this.
Flagging often isn't done by mods, but by users. I could for example flag yours and if enough others did, your question would automatically be hidden. I don't know if mods had anything to do with that one, but it's quite possible they didn't.
Ah, thanks. Title changed.
edit Hm, seemed to preempt myself on that. I guess the post is fixed now.
edit Hm, seemed to preempt myself on that. I guess the post is fixed now.
Someone emailed about it and we fixed it. That's the preferred way to ask us a question. We don't see all the posts that try to ask us something, but we do see all the emails.
For completeness, here's what I told the user who emailed:
Users flagged it. User flags make a post drop in rank and, when enough users do it, eventually kill the post. When there's an ongoing discussion, we typically unkill the post so that comments can continue. That's what I've done here.
For completeness, here's what I told the user who emailed:
Users flagged it. User flags make a post drop in rank and, when enough users do it, eventually kill the post. When there's an ongoing discussion, we typically unkill the post so that comments can continue. That's what I've done here.
When you say you "fixed it", does this include removing the rank penalty? Or does the post remain lowered in rank? I'd presumed that you tended to manually review flagged posts, and then make a judgement as to whether the flags are appropriate. But if even "inappropriate" use of flagging can keep posts off the front page, it's still a pretty powerful tool. I'd feel more comfortable knowing that permanent removal from the front page requires an explicit editorial decision, at least upon review.
In most cases, we unkill the thread so it stays open for comments, but do not turn off the rank penalty. Occasionally, though, we do turn it off. Some easy cases are when a good article has a bad title and people were flagging the title (solution: change the title and turn off flags), or when there is evidence of a flagging ring (solution: turn off flags and ignore future flags from the offenders).
The harder cases are posts like this one, where the community is divided on a political question, some want it on HN and others don't. In that case we usually stop short of overriding the rank penalty. The voting and flagging systems have been in a stable equilibrium for years, and we've learned that it's a mistake to fight that very much or very often.
But we do do it sometimes, I'd guess maybe 10% of the time (but haven't looked at the data). For example, sometimes an article is so substantive and otherwise so obviously a good fit for HN that it doesn't seem fair to the community to let the flags have their usual say. Sometimes a thread turns out to be unexpectedly high-quality and not a flamewar. And sometimes a story is of so much interest to the community that we couldn't stop it even if we wanted to (a recent example being the Strange Loop/Yarvin thing), in which case we turn flagging off for hopefully the best submission on the topic and treat the others as dupes.
In the end, there's no escaping editorial judgment, though not every HN user shares your positive view of it. We try not to over-exercise it, but never doing so would be suboptimal for the community. There's a tragedy of the commons paradox in there somewhere.
The harder cases are posts like this one, where the community is divided on a political question, some want it on HN and others don't. In that case we usually stop short of overriding the rank penalty. The voting and flagging systems have been in a stable equilibrium for years, and we've learned that it's a mistake to fight that very much or very often.
But we do do it sometimes, I'd guess maybe 10% of the time (but haven't looked at the data). For example, sometimes an article is so substantive and otherwise so obviously a good fit for HN that it doesn't seem fair to the community to let the flags have their usual say. Sometimes a thread turns out to be unexpectedly high-quality and not a flamewar. And sometimes a story is of so much interest to the community that we couldn't stop it even if we wanted to (a recent example being the Strange Loop/Yarvin thing), in which case we turn flagging off for hopefully the best submission on the topic and treat the others as dupes.
In the end, there's no escaping editorial judgment, though not every HN user shares your positive view of it. We try not to over-exercise it, but never doing so would be suboptimal for the community. There's a tragedy of the commons paradox in there somewhere.
Thanks for the insight into how you folks try keep things sane on here.
Inadvertently, HeadlineHawk has shown you the probable reason: there are plenty of people who will knee-jerk downvote just because of its source and POV, and HN is far from free from that.
HeadlineHawk(1)
http://socialistworker.org/2015/06/24/class-capitalism-and-the-tech