This story I submitted hit the front page, was starting to blossom into an interesting discussion, and suddenly dropped to #1204 (yes, I went down several pages to find it).
What gives?
• Deepak Chopra is widely considered to be a quack, but the article talks semi-approvingly of him
• Although the general topic of the article is kind of interesting, the article itself says very little (sans quotes, it's seven very short and not particularly info-dense paragraphs)
• The article seems a bit afield from the general focus of Hacker News, so people might have just thought it was OT clutter
Can you explain this a bit more? I'm just curious as I've come across his stuff before but never opposing views.
Needless to say, there are a lot of people to whom this does not signal credibility.
(p-1)/(t+2)^1.5
Where votes are divided by age factor
P = points from users T = time from submission in hours
[1] http://www.seomoz.org/blog/reddit-stumbleupon-delicious-and-...
1) You triggered the voting ring detection code, and/or
2) You got several downvotes.
I do feel that there is a sizeable collection of people here on HN who, for whatever reason, don't like discussions about philosophy of consciousness and similar. If you get 10 or so downvotes and only 10 or so upvotes, your item will sink to the 1000s. I have seen it happen. (based on surmise about flags - they are not explicitly visible.)
This discussion happened recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890565
The item was flagged dead, but the discussion is still there.
HN remains a remarkably civil forum, and perhaps the occasional apparently draconian measures are part of the price to pay.
I agree with the commenter you're replying to: The moderators are really the ones in control here. And that's the way it should be. If this site was managed as a strict democracy, it would have been overrun with trolls and spam years ago, and we would have all moved on to something better.