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Comment by tomlock | Hacker News Reader

This article just plunged down the front page.

Calling out the jerks that think this isn't relevant tech material. Bullshit. Tech culture is frequently mentioned. Articles about work-life balance don't get downmodded this much.

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Two things are probably happening here.

First: there are people who flag these kinds of stories, for more than one reason (some people, for instance, just don't want to see ugliness on the front page).

Second: not enough people have upvoted the story to counteract the number of comments on the thread, which is part of the signal HN uses to automatically detect threads with flamewar characteristics.

Yeah, I believe HN probably uses large number of downvoted comments and downvotes in general to also identify flamewar fodder, and these topics spawn a lot of those. I do believe this article deserves to stay at the top longer, and mods should do something about it.

I +1'd your comment, but I think the algorithm hasn't worked in this instance.

The fact there would be a flamewar about someones experiences at a tech event says more about the culture of tech than that article about michelin star reviewers that is on the frontpage at the moment.

edit: But I did like that michelin-focused article :D

Oh, I'm not saying it's working. I mean: this comment thread is a full-on unproductive flamewar, but I think the immune system on HN should probably let this particular fever burn itself out.

A lot of these articles just create pointless conversations that make people go backwards rather then be productive, it's common to be down-voted because of this.

You are already calling people jerks.

Funnily enough, that seems to be a common reason to suppress discussion of many issues of rights and fairness, whether its been about same-sex marriage or sufferage.

And people get called jerks in those discussions, too.

> And people get called jerks in those discussions, too.

Do you think it helps if you believe in a cause to start off by calling people jerks. I feel sorry for you if you do.

This isn't the "start" of the cause - this cause and problem has been going on for literally years now. Perhaps you are only just becoming aware of this because of this HN thread, but a lot of people have been fighting this for a long time.

It seems like you think people don't have a right to be angry about this problem. I think that shows how much you really care about how it hurts people.

I care about solutions not others anger.

The top comment ATM is about punching someone in the face.

Do you think suffrage was solved by childish flame wars or hard work?

>>Do you think suffrage was solved by childish flame wars or hard work?

Actually, I don't need to just wonder. There's plenty of historical evidence to show that suffragettes not only engaged in physical violence, but vicious rebukes of their opponents. At this point you've really shown that you don't know that much about the topic.

Articles about work-life balance don't get downmodded this much.

Is that even possible? I don't see a downmod button available on any articles.

I watched (and commented on) this happening to an extremely similar article six months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9322540

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