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Comment by redbell | Hacker News Reader

The fact this event is trending in four different posts all are currently in the front page of HN says a lot! Hope moderators combines them all under one unified thread. See also:

There are reports of widespread power cuts in Spain and Portugal (bbc.co.uk): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43820163

Spain, Portugal and parts of France hit by power outage (euronews.com): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43820177

Nationwide Power Outages Also Disrupt Internet Traffic in Portugal and Spain (twitter.com/cloudflareradar): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43819914

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You missed the biggest one,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43819791 (123 comments)

(I've emailed the mods to ask them to merge)

Because it's not on the front page, despite the large number of up-votes and comments.

A tactic I've seen to "disappear" articles is to flag and then immediatly unflag them.

This item was flagged and I vouched for it when it was half-way down the new page, and it seems to have done OK. The monstorous secret cabal has failed again.

The cabal is eventually going to deploy AI bots that get themselves enough karma to flag everything. Then HN goes the way of /. as the corporate overlords decide what can be seen in public.

HN has always been an actively curated site, so (in case it's comforting I guess?) the overlords (though I prefer the word janitor) have been at it for awhile.

Here's me explaining this the day after I was outed as a moderator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494621 (March 2014)

Lots more along similar lines: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I wouldn't really want to call myself a "janitor," these days. Not that you asked, but the name connotes badly of late, and it's as I often say about fathers: I think the genuinely good and decent people among the cohort find it very hard to appreciate just how otherwise anything else can become.

Back before I joined the area of the industry containing companies anyone ever heard of, I liked to call myself a "computer plumber," and came eventually to enjoy that very much in all its implications. And hey, if you think about it, plumbers collectively really do save more lives in a year than most doctors I think would be too comfortable thinking too much about.

What's wrong with janitors?

Nothing in the general case. Just lately or since some time last week, I think they are 'a drug on the market' of widely variable quality, and it isn't really a role in which I would expect or wish to see someone cast himself who has incontrovertibly worthy accomplishments he can own under his own name.

What accomplishments? For one thing you have, if I correctly recall the history of HN's lead moderator role, put up with me for nearly some ten years now! If you think this is some small or mean accomplishment, I think I might still be able to put you in touch with my ex-wife who, if answering the phone this decade, I confide remains still very prepared to disabuse you. Oh, we were neither of us any great prize in those days, but what can you do? In any case, I hate to see you sell yourself so short.

Excuse me, I should have said 'some time a couple weeks ago.'

Oh, for God's sake. Unflagging was added because sometimes people hit "flag" by mistake, and I know that because I was one of the ones who asked for it. (Well, the "flagged" list on your profile page was so added. Unflagging I assume has existed about since flagging, but if you accidentally flagged from the homepage, that could not be undone until lately as I describe, because it would also hide the flagged story. Excuse me, I am as yet pre-coffee.)

I'm similarly familiar enough with the lead HN dev, with whom I have passed a friendly discussion or two of how some site features are implemented, to be quite sure unflagging reverses whatever specific moderation weighting flagging applies.

Do you have any specific knowledge to substantiate the claim you have made here?

>if you accidentally flagged from the homepage, that could not be undone until lately as I describe, because it would also hide the flagged story

Maybe we should remove the "flag" link from the homepage then, and only make it available on the submission itself. Or at least add a second confirmation click to the process.

They already fixed the problem though, why come up with a different solution? Just press "unflag".

How isn't this addressed? Hopefully this major event gets that fixed.

Flagging is used by large groups to keep "politics" off the front page. You'll find lots of interesting discussions on https://news.ycombinator.com/active that people would like to discuss but has been de-weighted or flag-removed

Oh, this is excellent! I had no idea the feature existed, and it should make a splendid basis for tooling to help identify those who always seem to find themselves at the center of discussions adding much heat and no light.

(For later reference, that link was: https://news.ycombinator.com/active)

Oh wow, thanks for sharing! I've been targeted with downvotes when ever the subject is Russian crimes against humanity, but I didn't know it had that range. Now a lot of things make sense!

I dont think there were any on the front page when I submitted it. ( May be they weren't upvoted ) Because I thought such big news someone should have done it before me.

there are many pro russian trolls in other posts so maybe keep only this one lol.

You tell them, anyone I disagree with is a pro-Russian troll!

Exactly! XD

No, seriously. A lot of badly translated russian (based on syntax) comments were removed, tho.

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