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Comment by grzm | Hacker News Reader

I think there are a lot of HN users who are flagging political/US election-related topics in general, especially those that don't have a strong tech angle.

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.

View on HN

You must be a new HN user. Few weeks ago HN front page was full of political/election topics. They weren't flagged, and even some of them were heavily upvoted. But these submissions were mostly anti-Trump.

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.

"You must be a new HN user. Few weeks ago HN front page was full of political/election topics."

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?

> As for "moderation downweight", do you have some links for discussion on this feature?

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

Thanks for the link! I appreciate it.

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 :)

And here we go: this story has just been delisted from front page, despite it (now, 2016-10-31T20:34:43+00:00) has 21 points and isn't flagged.

I checked the next 7 pages as well, and it isn't present there either.

Flagging affects ranking before it is visible (it's actually a fairly new feature that flagging is shown at all before the story is killed and closed for new comments)

Yes, and it obviously has to do with tech. I thought hackers news was a little more open minded and generally a more intelligent community. Guess some users and mods/admins aren't...

I'm with you.

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.

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