The post was flagged and removed. Not sure why other than wikileaks discussion not being allowed....
Just for clarification, as I understand it, "flagged" is a result of users marking it flagged. I'm not sure how a submission gets marked dead (for example, if it's moderator-only or can be marked dead if there are enough flags)
There's been a lot of discussion on other similarly politically-charged threads as well. For example:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12738677
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12792215
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12839742
Those are just the first couple occurrences I found. I don't intend them to be representative of any particular bias.
Now, when most submissions are anti-Clinton, they are being flagged and removed. Those which despite that are able to get many upvotes, are being silently hidden from front page. Moderators also add "a moderation downweight" to these submissions (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12715332).
WikiLeaks submissions are particularly targeted, as these are pure facts, which cannot be easily dismissed in comment threads.
I checked the next 7 pages as well, and it isn't present there either.
It's disappointing that for whatever reason Clinton in particular is barely discussed on HN. What's come out in the last few weeks should be an enormous, shocking news story (especially if you've been living in the MSM bubble), and yet every submission gets knocked off the front page instantly.
Yes, I am a relatively new commenter (24 days). I started following comments at a particularly heated time. And the community aspects of the site are very interesting to me, in traction between users, community policing, the behavior of the moderators, how people choose to trust some sources and distrust others, how people who disagree can constructively discuss the contentious points. This last is particularly important to me, especially given the polarized political climate in the US.
I'm not prepared to weigh in on whether or to what extent there's user bias as to which stories or comments are getting flagged or down voted. I think it's a worthwhile question that should be examined analytically, with more than anecdotes.
Also, I don't know how the flamewar detection algorithms work, which causes some submissions to be removed from appearing on the front page. And based on what I've seen of the moderators, I give HN the benefit of the doubt that this system doesn't specifically include a political bias.
As for "moderation downweight", do you have some links for discussion on this feature?
Personally, I see no evidence that the moderators are actively biasing discussion other than trying to keep things civil and substantive. As for user flags and down votes, those are reflective of the community, and I say that without judging whether it's the correct behavior or not. Communities play a role in shaping themselves. How that shaping occurs is also up for discussion.
As for changes in flagging aggressiveness, I think people here in general want to be tolerant (explaining the early political/election topics) and have been getting increasingly tired of seeing the same topics getting rehashed (explaining the more aggressive flagging of political topics now).
Anyway, I am new so maybe this is all crap :) Thanks for taking the time for reading to this point. What do you think? Fair analysis? Bunk?
I pasted a wrong link in parentheses next to the fragment about moderation downweight. Here is a link to a comment where moderator admits it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12715332
Your phrasing "a comment where moderator admits it": "admit" is often used in cases where someone is acknowledging some wrongdoing. Is this the connotation you intended?
Here's what the moderator said:
"Sorry, but pure politics aren't a good fit for HN, so in addition to the user flags already on the post we've added a moderation downweight."
To me that looks like an explanation. It doesn't look like they're trying to hide their decisions (whether or not one agrees with them).
If I'm misreading your intent, please stop now and let me know :) I don't mean or want to put words in your mouth.
If you do think what they did was wrong in some way, I'm interested in hearing why you think so. Some more questions, if you'd take the time to answer. If you're not, that's perfectly fine, too.
- Is it wrong for moderators to enforce stated community guidelines? (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
- Do you think the moderators are doing so unevenly? On purpose?
- Should communities have guidelines? If so, what guidelines are fair?
- Is there a difference between topic guidelines and behavior guidelines? For example, I've seen users cautioned by moderators to keep comments substantive and civil here on HN.
I'm trying to inform my own opinion around these topics, and would like to know what others think to get a better understanding of the issues.
Thanks again! At this point I think I've said all I really can on this thread, so, as they say on the radio, I'll take my answer off the air :)
(The same applies for Trump quotes! We should give him the benefit of doubt and make a reasonable attempt to understand the proper context of his bizarre but extremely quotable statements... But in his case, it's often difficult or meaningless to determine context because he rambles off the cuff all the time -- often it seems like many of the quotes just surface from his subconscious, and there's nothing else in the surrounding thought stream that could explain it.)
He provided a link to the full content of email he cited. I thought that this is a preferred approach: provide just facts, without adding own subjective context and interpretation to them.
That's why I wish the poster would have given some context: why is this worthy of being on HN? Just because it's a private email from Eric Schmidt?
The fact that Schmidt obviously has ties to Google brings up the question of whether or not Google resources and user data would be used to help create such a thing.
Honestly, the political aspect is quite minor compared to the the tech aspect.
On another note, my original post included the suggestion that the Clinton campaign hire low wage workers. Implying their political passion would allow them to pay low wages. In my opinion, that manipulation is horrible.
Both of those topics seem like something the hn community would like to discuss. Unfortunately, it seems mods/admin/whoever are letting their political biased rise up above login and quality conversation.
There are plenty of places for on the internet where you can find Donald Trump circle jerks where you can discuss this with the plethora of conspiracy theorists, white nationalists and Trump supporters this stuff tends to attract. Hacker News is not one of them.
What's disturbing is the content of the emails. Clinton will not last six months into her presidency, I can promise you that. There is clear evidence from the Podesta emails so far that the Clinton campaign cheated, broke the law, and used the Clinton Foundation for shady purposes. Mark my words, after what's come out in the last few weeks about Clinton, she will be seen in history as criminal, just like her husband.
Did you see she got debate questions ahead of time via Donna Brazile (in addition to the previously discovered town hall question)? That they made millions off pay-for-play with brutal foreign governments? Every day there are multiple discoveries of enormous magnitude, and that confirm long-standing suspicions about the Clintons.
Quickly killed threads include https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12840068 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12840251
There's an intrinsic tension on this site: by excluding pure politics and the low level of discourse that comes with it (c.f. "butthurt Hillary supporters" elsewhere in this thread), HN becomes a place for relatively substantive discussion. Naturally, people then want to use this relatively substantive place for political discourse as well. That's understandable, because there are so few public places to have substantive discussions about politics. But if we were to let that happen, HN would soon become just like everywhere else (as I said, c.f. "butthurt Hillary supporters" elsewhere in this thread). Therefore we can't let that happen.
Unfortunately, a lot of people respond to this not with "yeah, I see the tradeoff" but with "this site is censored by butthurt Orwellians".
1. Being heavily censored by admins
2. Being heavily flagged by butthurt Hillary supporters
Idiotic comments like this are why users are flagging election news, by the way.