Hacker News Reader

Wanting to keep the forum honest isn't "off-topic", and I'm not sure what "metaflamebait" is.. Thanks for the link to the query, but would it show everything that has been flagged?

View on HN

Meta posts like this one (posts about the forum itself) are addictive: it feels like they're interesting, but actually they are not. They're more like a waste product of the community, consisting of the same half-dozen points over and over. We've learned over the years that such discussions need to be managed like weeds.

In this case the post added nationalistic flamebait (cruising for a fight about China). That's close to the worst kind of flamebait we see, actually, because it leads to flamewars where people bash each other's countries. Since the post combined meta and flamebait I decided to join the words together.

As for that search query, it shows you that the countless active HN discussions about China aren't for or against China as a whole.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com