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Comment by mef | Hacker News Reader

Anyone know why this isn’t on the front page with 96 pts one hour after submission?

Hacker News is extremely strongly manipulated. What users see as popularity order is actually the order manipulated to the moderators' liking.

https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#behavi...

I believe this is a good technical article for HN concerning safety culture of engineers, but moderators didn't think so.

It's not a technical article. It's a lurid media topic* about a suspicious-looking alleged suicide with zero information for a substantive discussion, and tons of fuel for sinister speculation. That's not what HN is supposed to be for. However, we can give this one a pass because the ongoing Boeing saga is of interest and there's clearly a community appetite to discuss this development.

Edit: even though the thread is terrible, which is just what one would expect from a sensational topic with zero information for a substantive discussion.

* Edit 2: I changed the word 'story' to 'topic' because I don't mean to disparage the BBC article itself - anigbrowl's reply is right on that

Flatly untrue. It's a soberly worded recitation of the available facts with multiple caveas; the frenzy of speculation stems from Boeing's increasingly tattered corporate reputation, not the story. This was written to far higher standards than (for example) a story from the Daily Mail or New York Post; I'm astonished that you would characterize this way.

Sorry—I'm tired and expressed that carelessly, and you're quite right. I wasn't talking about the article and am glad that it is as good as you say. In fact I merged the other thread into this one precisely because the BBC article was better.

What I mean is that the story itself, i.e. the significant new information, is a lurid apparent suicide, and there aren't any details about that, other than it happened. Not because the article is bad but because that is the only piece of information available.

The interest in such a story is neither technical nor intellectual and we shouldn't pretend that it is. It's a suspicious death story with sinister overtones. The curiosity here is not primarily intellectual, which means it's not really a good story for HN, but I'm giving it a pass because it is strange enough to be different and there's a community appetite to discuss it. Normally the latter isn't enough to justify a story remaining on HN's front page but there are degrees of community appetite and I recognize this one.

Good guy dang. Thanks for all your hard work making this place great.

I also think there are 2 different ways of discussing this - one is on mental health (if it's truly a suicide), shadowy agencies, Boeing's failures, and about corporate whistleblowing and its risks in general.

The other discussion is speculation on what this truly is - which is a more political/controversial topic.

There are lots of discussions on the former set of topics which are fairly popular on HN which explains why this thread is popular. I do think such discussions are valuable if there isn't a ton of speculation, which I think this thread is handling decently (although maybe I'm late enough to see all controversial comments already dead).

alleged is too strong. There's speculation which seems reasonable given the circumstances.

Good point. 'alleged' isn't the word I was looking for. I've changed it to 'apparent' above.

Dang, it would be nice of you if you at least addmitted that the front page as opposed to /active is heavily curated and hand-picked by you and other moderators. Anyone who has been on HN long enogh can see this, there is no point in phrasing it otherwise. And I guess people will be ok with this as long you guys are transparent about it.

I've posted thousands of comments about that over 10 years, starting on the day I took over Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494621 (March 2014)

I don't know why you expect people will find your old comment.

The required explanation is unnecessarily unreadable, so I explain it again.

As I wrote in my other comment, I meant the article as it relates to technology. My original comment is hidden below so I explain it again here. The safety of the environment surrounding engineers is a serious concern of engineers. Note that even if it is a suicide, it is still a safety problem of the environment surrounding engineers. Since it is Boeing that pressured him until he committed suicide.

So I wrote "concerning safety culture of engineers". Your interpretation is a complete misunderstanding. At least the points voted on my above comment indicate that your interpretation is not the majority. Hence, thanks to the many supporters, my above comment received many votes and was moved to this thread and this thread was eventually returned to the top page.

We must not remain ignorant or indifferent to unsafe working environments.

That source doesn't match your claim at all. In fact it completely explains the observed behaviour?

> Most tech related submissions with a hint of political partisanship will quickly be flagged to death by users (or die a slow death due to the inevitable flame war).

High comment rates on a recently posted story will weigh the story down. This is by design, and the quality of comments presently on this story does much to demonstrate the reasoning behind that choice.

Most likely the story will be reposted or "second chance" resurrected in the morning, when all the grownups are awake and not just those of us having a touch of insomnia.

Timezones are a thing. It's noon now and it was already morning when you posted this.

Sometimes when there is an inane story floating around on page one/two, I'll comment on it without up voting; its basically like a downvote as far as the algorithm is concerned.

Meta comments about how the story is ranking or explaining the ranking algorithm to people complaining about how the story is ranking are a great subject for an empty comment.

are we reading through the same set of comments?

I see nothing wrong with people speculating over something like this.

The lack of information renders such speculation necessarily vacuous, and it quickly degrades into dueling assertions of worldviews. There are lots of websites where that sort of thing runs unchecked. To the extent this isn't one, that's one of the reasons I prefer this one.

We do have information.

the guy is a whistleblower, went to court day 1, missed court day 2, and was found dead in his vehicle of unnatural causes.

attaching the adjective vacuous doesn't actually strengthen your point.

Leaving out "self-inflicted" obliterates yours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com