We don’t ever kill things unilaterally unless it’s blatant spam or troll content. We rely on community flags. That’s the case regardless of the topic.
What I’m saying about this post isn’t on our radar as it had barely any votes or discussion and no front page time. It effectively doesn’t exist except for people using it to prosecute this meta-debate about past threads.
> There were dozens of times when articles about Israel were unflagged by mod team
Please list the “dozens of times”. There have been a small number of times when major breaking stories about Israel/Palestine have been discussed here. They got into our radar because they were already large numbers of upvotes and comments, and also significant numbers of flags, but based on what we saw in the story and discussion, it seemed to have enough gravity to warrant turning off the flags so the topic could be discussed.
> Articles that 100% of time turn into circlejerk about Israel in which all dissenting opinions and facts (backed with links) are flagged away in order to suppress them
In those threads I personally unkilled and preserved plenty of comments that were making the pro-Israel case, even in the face of complaints about those users via email. I also flagged (helping to kill) plenty of comments that were attacking the Israel position in ways that broke the guidelines.
My hope with topic like these is that, if they are major stories in the media that are being talked about globally, due to having something “new” about them, then HN should be the best place to discuss them, because unlike a subreddit dedicated to a topic, we’re not talking about it daily or weekly; we can save our time and resources for when it really matters.
As moderators, we can’t determine in advance if a story is “true”, or if something like a U.N. committee’s declaration is fair; that’s what the discussion is for - to get into the details and let the truth emerge and the best arguments prevail. I learn much from seeing arguments put by either side in these discussions. That’s the entire purpose of vigorous debate - to understand both sides of a topic in detail so you can make the most informed judgement about it.
HN is not the reason these stories are major topics in the world; they’re major topics in the world before they make it to HN, and as much as we sometimes wish we could be an isolated cocoon that is quarantined from what is going on elsewhere, we’ve learned we can’t be that; we can’t always act as though these events and topics don’t exist.
What we can do is make HN a place where everyone who cares about the topic can present the facts as they understand them and present the arguments they believe in, and let the most sound arguments win out, and that’s what HN’s ethos and guidelines exist to facilitate.
What you and mhb seem to be advocating is that we should make an upfront judgment that a story is false or a U.N. committee’s declaration is unfair, and overrule the community’s (and world’s) feeling that it’s an important topic to discuss. In our experience, that kind of pre-judgment and unilateral action is the fastest way to destroy community trust, and community trust is the only thing that keeps us going.
The phrasing of the guidelines led me to believe that the "significant new information" was intended as a secondary or clarifying guideline. Otherwise why not just list it as one of the on-topic criteria?
This clarification of the exception is relevant: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." If I watched TV news, I'd expect to see many of the posts we're discussing on it.
"New information" is an essentially tautological fig leaf that could justify the inclusion of anything that shows up in the eponymous news. If I need to, I can find numerous examples of flame wars incited by posts that violate all the guidelines except, possibly, this one about significant new information. Which seems to make this into a discussion about what is "significant". I think a community-trust enhancing action would be to eliminate this criterion.
Some examples of posts which violate all the guidelines except, perhaps, being new information and also, perhaps, significant. Although, arguably, if they are new and significant would be covered by TV news.
‘No Other Land’ consultant Awdah Hathaleen killed by Israeli settler (latimes.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44731958
How Israeli actions caused famine in Gaza, visualized https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45447699
IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites (haaretz.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44402896
Israel, Hamas reach ceasefire deal to end 15 months of war in Gaza (reuters.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42716440
We haven't said it is. In fact, we haven't really looked at the article. This submission got effectively no attention or engagement on HN. It spent zero time on the front page, and most of the discussion is this meta subthread. So, there's no aberration from the guidelines in the case of this item.
> here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45659046, you have "new phenomenon" . why won't you unflag it?
We also haven't seen that one. It also spent no time on the front page and had little discussion. Nobody has contacted us asking us to unflag it and making a case for it containing "significant new information".
> also, in general, you can broadly apply "they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon" to any given article
That's false and is the most important point to recognise about HN. Most of what is in the mainstream news is not "new". It's mostly the same story with different details (i.e., most day-to-day political drama, celebrity news, crime stories, etc). Or they're notable for being unusual (e.g., person who wins the lottery three times) but not any kind of interesting new phenomenon.
Sometimes a mainstream news item really is about an interesting new phenomenon, and that's when it qualifies for HN.