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Comment by kelukelugames | Hacker News Reader

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kelukelugames

"To test her ideas, Carolyn assembled 50 participants, mostly from among students, who underwent a series of tests."

Sensationalist title that fits a narrative people want to believe.

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I agree it's sensationalist:

"Not only was she awarded an exceptionally high mark of 85 per cent"

In most PhD programs (at least in the USA), a B is the absolute minimum grade you can get to receive credit for a course. An 85% on a major class project would have basically been a "B for effort" - you did SOMETHING, but it had major flaws.

In the UK (in most cases) you don't get the same sort of dynamic range compression in marking you seem to get in the US (though it is coming - witness the A/A/A* stuff at GCSE). It is fairly ridiculous for 85% to represent 'you turned up'.

well, you know, it is a scale but perhaps not an interval scale. Probably ordinal.

UK grading at undergrad is 40% pass, then anything over 75% is Class 1.

A for average, B for bad, C for catastrophe.

Perfect for the front page of hacker news!

I know it's fun to say stuff like that, but we work hard to make exactly the opposite be true. Users help a lot by flagging inappropriate stories. We can't even skim all the articles, let alone evaluate how substantiated their claims are.

The system seems to have worked well in this case.

Of course you work hard, and thank you for that, but you're fighting an uphill battle. It's not like all the submissions are coming from YC founders anymore. People love to post stories with these sensational titles and meager content, and other people like to upvote them. There are still a lot of great posters/commenters here on hacker news, which is why I still come back occasionally, esp. for casual browsing. But the userbase is quickly being (has quickly been) diluted, and there is no protection from these goons by stricter posting rules like on subreddits. That's why I've started to go to /r/programming instead when I want to learn something. All this non-intellectual political content drains my energy. Just my two cents.

Do my downvoters have any feedback? How can you deny that content dilution is a serious problem that can be ameliorated, but not solved by intelligent modding. YC has already recognized this by recently adding the separate "Show HN" section.

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