Re:Ask HN: [Meta] Popular/active political posts disappearin...
by grzm on Sunday January 29, 2017 @05:01PM
(#13516986)
From what I've observed and read from others:
- Member flags push a submission further down in rankings even prior to the [flagged] tag appearing.
- There's an "overheated discussion detection" algorithm which appears to take into account time, votes, and comment rates, which, when triggered, will further push down a submission.
- On occasion, the mods will downweight a submission. Sometimes, particularly if it's a contentious issue related to YC, they'll purposefully override the downweighting and flagging to ensure the topic gets adequate attention.
And yes, I've observed a strong bias against political submissions, particularly those that cover well-trodden ground and are highly likely to devolve quickly if not immediately into flamewars.
> I want HN debating politics because of how HN debates.
That only works because HN mostly isn't about politics. There must be a name for this paradox.
From what I've seen, the HN community highly values the quality of its discourse and is fiercely protective of it, and rightly so, in my opinion. Figuring out how to maintain a vibrant, useful, civil, online community is very hard. While there's always room for improvement, I think HN manages a pretty good balance.
- Member flags push a submission further down in rankings even prior to the [flagged] tag appearing.
- There's an "overheated discussion detection" algorithm which appears to take into account time, votes, and comment rates, which, when triggered, will further push down a submission.
- On occasion, the mods will downweight a submission. Sometimes, particularly if it's a contentious issue related to YC, they'll purposefully override the downweighting and flagging to ensure the topic gets adequate attention.
And yes, I've observed a strong bias against political submissions, particularly those that cover well-trodden ground and are highly likely to devolve quickly if not immediately into flamewars.
'dang had a comment in response to a member the other day that I thought had a lot of truth to it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13507993#13509167)
> I want HN debating politics because of how HN debates.
That only works because HN mostly isn't about politics. There must be a name for this paradox.
From what I've seen, the HN community highly values the quality of its discourse and is fiercely protective of it, and rightly so, in my opinion. Figuring out how to maintain a vibrant, useful, civil, online community is very hard. While there's always room for improvement, I think HN manages a pretty good balance.