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Comment by shockeychap | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit of an HN neophyte, having recently left FB for a place where thoughtful discussion was still welcome. I'm not being rhetorical when I ask, what is going on? Are some highly-rated users just abusing their power to flag, or is this something else? Is HN on its way to being more concerned with virtue signaling than open discussion?

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"If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it."[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Some flag that which they find disagreeable too, of course.

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."

It's hard to argue that thoughtful articles like this one don't pertain to an interesting new phenomenon. This concept is, of course, highly subjective. But I've seen countless articles on HN that existed in this space without being flagged. Why should this article, which garnered such high volume of feedback - without flaming - be treated differently?

Articles rise and fall because of luck partly. And having more comments than points works against them. It's programmed in as a sign the discussion has more heat than light. Which it does.

You think the article is thoughtful because you agree with it. The article itself said the phenomenon isn't new. And interest declines when we get several articles a week about the same thing.

Fair enough, except for the assertion that I think it’s thoughtful because I agree with it. I’ve read plenty of articles that I didn’t agree with that I would call thoughtful. Frankly, that is supposed to be the draw of articles on HN - that they’re culled such that the ones you might not agree with still provoke thought and engage the subject meaningfully. I think it’s a bit presumptuous to make “thoughtful” and “agrees with” synonymous.

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