I read the article in the submission, and I‘m just curious why it was flagged? Maybe I don’t understand flagging in general, but the submission seemed pretty relevant for HN, objectively speaking. What am I missing?
Users flagged it. This is the usual tug of war between upvotes, flags, and vouches.
We sometimes turn off flags if the article is substantive and we feel like it can support a thoughtful discussion. In this case, I'm wavering. I'm not sure how significant this information really is, given how many such things are happening right now (lots of moderation thoughts on that at [1] and [2]). The question is whether the resulting thread would be significantly different from previous discussions or not, or whether it would just get sucked into the nearest black hole, i.e. the nearest flamewar topic.
Wavering isn't a strong enough reason to override the community verdict so I guess we'll leave it as is. Sorry to disappoint—there's lots of room for disagreement about this stuff, and lots of interpretation involved. I'm not saying we're right, and certainly not always right, but someone has to make these calls.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22significant%20new%20informa...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=follow-up%20by%3Adang&dateRang...
The fact it got flagged is interesting all on its own. Maybe Wired is inviting flame wars by simply saying Fox News in the title? I wonder if it would’ve been flagged had they not. Food for thought.
Thanks, dang!
I got the submission in my RSS reader (Feedly) which regularly shows me posts that end up getting flagged for removal. After seeing the linked article elsewhere, this seemed like an odd submission to remove.
I have 4 karma, my guess is that HN admins restrict who can vouch, which would help stem the tide of spam.
I’m not spam. If this is working as designed, I’d like anyone calling the shots at HN (if they read this) to know that I am vouching in spirit and wish I could vouch in reality. :)
Update: I’m dumb, this comment explains what I’m too lazy to search for:
Don’t flag important conversation starters about problems endemic to the internet!
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Fake news is an incredibly important topic of discussion for anyone in the social media side of the tech world.
I think you’re wrong. Debate me?
https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/942367860709609472?lang=e...
Your opinion of HN and what deserves to be on here is what I take issue with. It felt initially like you argued that because Fox News was the subject of the link, it would start a shitstorm of garbage talk and therefore shouldn’t be on here. While it may start a shitstorm of garbage talk (it totally would, no doubt), I think this particular headline is interesting because it’s a move made by Wikipedia, one of the most widely used references on the internet.
I would argue that despite the shitstorm, we should still be allowed to talk about it on HN because it’s relevant to policy makers at various internet companies. We can see that Wikipedia did something they haven’t done before, and it might influence how others move forward. i.e. “If the good folks at Wikipedia doubt Fox News’ credibility as an information resource, maybe we should too? Let’s talk about that.“
It wouldn’t matter to me if it was Fox or CNN or MSNBC or what have you. What matters (to me) is that it’s Wikipedia, and I would love to know what people smarter than me think about this situation.
But how can I get their opinion if posts about this get flagged to oblivion?
Edit:
For example, if I could poll what information overlords at companies thought, here’s what I’d ask:
- At what point does a particular information resource deserve to have its reliability status revoked?
- What is a good summary of some of the internal discussions happening at Wikipedia regarding this problem and it’s surging importance?
- How do you, as a company, respond when the mob attacks with something along the lines of “Leftist/Rightist bad people at company XYZ told me my favorite news entertainment network wasn’t truthful, let’s cancel them!” (Personally, my answer to this one would be: nothing.)
- What do sociologists say about this, given historical context of misinformation and the cults that grow to protect it? How do we bridge existing knowledge about combating bad info with the instant-communication age we are in?
Honestly, I could go on forever. Might not be the kinds of discussions you personally want to see on HN, but as a long time lurker, these are exactly the kinds of discussions I’m looking for, and it’s disheartening to see that other people think they shouldn’t happen just because it ruffles feathers.
It just so happens to involve some politics - an area rife with potential case studies on this. I think articles like this influence the reader to question how information is obtained and validated, even the larger philosophical questions regarding the definition and identification of truth. Since all technology deals with some form of information, thinking about this subject can be beneficial to understanding their use, particularly if they involve human interaction or decision making, such as ML.
Thanks!
Thanks for your help! I will keep looking once I’m not on mobile.
> Q: In my profile, what does showdead do?
> A: If you turn it on, you'll see all the stories and comments that have been killed by software, moderators, or user flags.
> If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it—when enough users do this, the post is unkilled. Click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. There's a small karma threshold before vouch links appear.
This is the explanation I was looking for. I wish you all the karma, thanks!
For better or worse, there seems to be enough people who want these discussions on HN.