Can't believe this is flagged.
It's more a question of the article. What we're looking for includes: is the article not too repetitive of recent discussions? does it contain significant new information? is there a reasonable chance that it could support a substantive, thoughtful discussion, or is it too flamebaity/provocative? that kind of thing.
Here's a subthread from yesterday where I went into this in depth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011. Past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
If anyone has a question that isn't answered at those links, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
(Of course, I could just be misunderstanding how flagging works on the site... maybe the state machine has to transition in order from regular -> [flagged][dead] -> [flagged] after vouching?)
I didn't see much misuse of vouching in your recent history so I've removed that penalty from your account now. But please make sure that the comments you're vouching for are respecting the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
You're keen on reviewing a user's recent history, but provide no corresponding transparency to the user on what you've done.
HN works best with informal systems, not formal ones. The informal contract around transparency is: people are welcome to ask questions and we always answer them, but we don't formally publish a moderation log or anything like that (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
You're already removing the ability of users to vouch. That frog is boiled.
I'm saying tell them on their user page. Include a line that only they can see which says "can no longer vouch" or similar. That way they know what's happened instead of having to guess what's happened.
I didn’t realize the vouch link doesn’t show up in the main threads.
If a post is flagkilled w/ comments disabled, then you can typically vouch.
You can also email moderators at hn@ycombintor.com to request unflagging. I do that occasionally, with mixed results. (I've come to know which are long shots, and typically concede the point, but at least make the attempt.)
FAQ: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>
Guidelines: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>
Both are linked at the bottom of most HN pages.
It's in the guidelines that politics is not on topic here
As JWZ put it:
"A venture capital company's fan club, finance-obsessed manchildren making the world worse"
Slightly NSFW source: https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png
Care to revise your view?
But I would still maintain that this site's culture reflects the Silicon Valley finance culture it came from, and it's not a pretty culture.
But thanks for the kind reply—I confess I was expecting something else!
Edit: incidentally, (and not directing this at you personally!), if even one of the commenters spending their time complaining about flags on HN had let us know about this submission at hn@ycombinator.com, this would probably have happened earlier. I say "probably" because I haven't processed all the emails from the last 12 hours yet.
- Include the post item in your subject line. That would be "42922647" for this particular story.
- Include some idea of what the problem is. For example, for a flagged story I'd have "vouch" as the first word of my subject, followed by the article title.
- I typically include the full article link (in body) and title (in subject) as insurance against my own fat-finger-fumbling.
- A brief description of the problem. E.g., "I'd like to vouch for this article".
My own typical emails are for titles (frequent), link indirection, preferred sources, and occasional mentions of flagrant violations of HN comment guidelines (flagging tends to pick those up most of the time).
For the latter, you can use the "replies" endpoint to see if a mod has previously responded to a given userID, e.g.:
For dang replying to me: <https://news.ycombinator.com/replies?id=dredmorbius&by=dang>
(Yes, there's an admonishment in there if you dig back far enough, and I remember it.)
I haven't been flagging these topics, but I have defended those who do, on the grounds of "not politics" and "leads to flamewar discussions". On the politics front, you have deliberately allowed more politics recently (or at least that's my perception) when you thought it was of general interest, or of tech interest. But the discussions are, perhaps less flame-full than expected, still somewhat incindiary (not least the discussions around flagging, with accusations up to being full-on fascists aimed at those who just don't want HN to be overrun by this).
So: What made it clear to you that this was something that should not be flagged?
<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>
It may have come to your attention that 1) there's been a fair bit of political activity of late 2) with impacts on YC, startups, and many of HN's readers, and 3) involving some notable individuals within the tech world.
Much of that argues to facilitate some discussion of at least a sampling of these stories. And this particular item has garnered a large number of both votes and comments. Slightly over the "flamewar" threshold (> 40 votes, comments > votes), but not in the extreme. The flamewar-detector heuristic is surprisingly accurate (I've gone through much of HN's front-page archive a couple of years ago), but not perfect. High-profile political discussions are among the more notable exceptions. Self-discussion of HN is the other (and AFAIR the most highly-ratioed high-placed story was one such item early in HN's life).
I would rather the article had been more neutral and more informative, but beggars can't be choosers.
Btw, you do realize that not all politics is off topic on HN, yes? I'm pretty sure you must have seen some of my explanations about this over the years, but if not, please take a look at some of https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
All of the following can be (indeed are) true at once: (1) most political stories are off topic here; (2) we don't want the frontpage to be dominated by politics; (3) some political stories are on topic; (4) significant and interesting things are going on right now, even though it's hard for most people to stay curious about them.
Have I clarified sufficiently?
That is, for the moment. You're trying to walk a balance, and I tend to drift, over time, off on one side or the other.
> What we're looking for includes: is the article not too repetitive of recent discussions? does it contain significant new information? is there a reasonable chance that it could support a substantive, thoughtful discussion, or is it too flamebaity/provocative?
This article is a personal attack on individual engineers that are evidently very talented.
There's now a bunch of people using HN for personal insults in the comments.
I think the flags were warranted and turning them off was unnecessary.
Contentious topics, regardless of how merited a discussion might be, tend to draw flags inordinately. But again, you generally can't blame mods for this.
(HN does systemically penalise, or outright ban, numerous sites. I strongly doubt Wired is in either category, though if you want to know for certain, you can email mods. For a number of fairly evident reasons the full list isn't publicly disclosed, though pg provided some lists and extracts early in HN's histoyry, notably <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4984095>. There were 38,719 banned sites as of the end of 2012, a number which has doubtless increased.)