Since I have routinely kept showdead on in my HN user profile, I have developed some sense of which stories are autokilled on submission (almost always because they are from banned domains) and which quickly die after submission (because multiple users with flagging privileges flag them). It looks like gawker.com stories are dying rapidly, perhaps being autokilled on submission, without regard to topic.

On my part, I think that most news about Michael Arrington is probably relevant to this community, but I don't count a story about someone's personal life as "news" until it comes from a reliable source. (After all, even Wikipedia tries to maintain this standard for biographical statements about living persons.) Having just searched Google News, I haven't seen any uptake of any reporting about Arrington in professionally edited news sources. If that kind of story is developed, it MIGHT be worth discussing here. (Meanwhile, we have plenty of other things to discuss here.)

I think the lack of "official" news sources that have covered this so far will itself become a topic of discussion. In the meantime, I think the fact that someone has put her name forward and is herself a part of the startup community is notable -- this isn't just the rumor mill. If the allegations are completely false, then libel suits are in order...but I don't think it's trivial for someone to make an accusation like this in public and continue to stick to it.

Betabeat is the only other news site that has covered it, and it's mostly covered it by recapping Gawker's reporting. Someone submitted a link to a BetaBeat before but it was flagged off:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5492145

Most controversies related to personal conflicts and allegations are usually flagged, not just in this particular case (many of the Adria Richards-related submissions, for example). I wouldn't chalk this up to a conspiracy to protect Arrington or being anti-Gawker as much as HN's editorial stance on these topics in general.

And the whole "donglegate" story didn't go against that same stance?

Many of the donglegate stories were flagged off the front page. That story was broader, involving behaviours at tech conventions, responses to that behaviour, Internet bullying and mobs, etc.

Donglegate was still lousy for HN. Most threads had little useful discussion, a lot of entrenched opinion, and a lot of heat. ("shallowly, but intensely, interesting").

This? This is nothing useful.

100% agree. That story had too much crap being thrown around. On the other hand, this is a serious issue/story involving a very influential person in SV, tech-media and tech-investing. It shouldn't be ignored that easily.

It did, which is why almost all of the stories where removed. The few that survived tended to talk about the issues in a general, timeless fashion and use "donglegate" as an example.

There's obviously no clear litmus test here...so I don't think the editorial decision is an easy one. In the Adria Richards case, HN mods couldn't ban all the submissions, nor would it be in their best interests to do so, because that controversy raised tech-related issues worth discussing.

Anyway, I don't know what the best mix of discretion and freedom is...but HN would lose some of its allure if its policy was: "Only allow links that are explicitly technical/entrepreneurial in nature" Because how many times do hackers need to learn that success in life and business is sometimes (or, rather, often) not based just on technical merit?

How is a story killed after a few minutes (not the auto-dead filters)? Does it happen when a story receives a certain number of flags? Does it require moderator intervention?

No we're not. Gawker has been banned for years.

LATEST links in this topic:

http://gawker.com/5993695/techcrunch-founder-michael-arringt...

http://www.inquisitr.com/605219/the-michael-arrington-abuse-...

http://betabeat.com/2013/04/new-allegations-emerge-against-m...

http://www.policymic.com/articles/32719/michael-arrington-ra...

I'm fairly sure Gawker.com links are auto-killed. That's the issue here, that no one other than Gawker is covering the story.

Same with BuzzFeed.

Why is this getting voted up so much? The article is tabloid garbage. Let's not raise the specter of "censorship" (HN is not a nation-state) over an article that fails to meet the most basic editorial standard.

I have no problems with censoring in this case. These are pretty serious allegations. But they are just that: allegations reported to a blog(not a court of law or cops). The alleged victim should file an official complaint or take other official steps. Purely on what has been shared so far, Arrington stands innocent in my book.

Absent of her going to the cops, I think allowing allegations of this nature to surface on HN set a poor precedent when unaccompanied by appropriate legal complaint.

Good. I'd pay money for these types of story to be actively censored.

I highly doubt they are censoring the story. It's much more probable that Gawker.com is banned. While the story of Arrington might be notable to the HN community, Gawker is traditionally a tech tabloid. Most of their content can only serve to harm the startup community.

The less Silicon Valley e-drama on HN the better.

Is gawker.com on the list of banned domains?

At the very least, anything written by Adrian Chen probably should be.

Because of facts?

I submitted a gawker story two years ago: ""Alien Life" in this Meteorite was already published in 2004 and 2007" (gawker.com) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2294142 (761 days ago, 1 point, 0 comments) [dead]

It was autodead. I still think that my story was interesting, at that there were a few threads about "new" "aliens" were "found" in meteorites. But whatever, I didn't want to start a war for this.

It was quite technical and not about some internet celebrity. I suspect that gawker.com is banned.

I think so. I've had a deadspin story I submitted disappear, even though it was on-topic. (It was a story about satellite feeds glitching under certain conditions.)

Not all gawker-related domains are banned. There was a frontpage story from i09 a couple days ago:

https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=io...

And Kotaku is still allowed as well: it was the top story (regarding LucasArts shutdown) a couple days ago:

https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=ko...

Yes, I can confirm this. I just tried submitting a link and it died.

Another post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5492145 was flagged and killed after not even 10 minutes on the front page

If that were true, wouldn't this post be censored too? It's not, so it's not true.

Gawker.com and Deadspin are banned from HN? I don't mind that at all.

I doubt it was censored. Stuff just gets flagged by users, and personal allegations tend to among flagged stories.

But I'm curious if HN really shows different stories when logged in and logged out, which is what this particular post is alleging. I've never noticed that happen, but maybe I just didn't notice.

(This comment is not aimed at you, but at newer users who are not aware of HN's banning system for users.)

Some people are hellbanned. They post a link. They can see the link. They log out. They cannot see any of their posts. That's not because that URL is banned, but because none of their posts are visible unless a logged in user has 'showdead' turned on in their profile.

Ah! Makes sense. And explains why I never would have seen it happen! :-)

i find it interesting that some users on here think stories are being censored; it happens about once or twice a month.

why?

i believe paul graham and any moderators know full well the damaging effects censorship has on a community. why do some of you guys or gals constantly think there is some conspiracy?

I find the denial interesting.

It's quite obviously happening, and pg & co have regularly confirmed it. HN is heavily moderated, and the moderation is not particularly transparent.

You can argue that it's a good thing and it keeps HN nice and clean, but denying it is... kind of scary really.

When there reports that Adria had been fired, stories about it were actively removed because it wasn't yet clear whether it was true or a hoax. So it's already a given that censorship of some type takes place.

They seem to be censoring scandalous gossipy stuff like this and the Donglegate story. Out of good taste or some other motivation, I don't know. The problem is when you start doing that you open yourself up to accusations of vote-rigging, getting your buddies on the front page, etc. It's a bad road to go down but they're definitely on it.

I doubt this is censorship, HN has exhibited similar behavior for me in the past when linking to friends' blogs and self-hosted pages, seems to me that it's just a simple bug, no big conspiracy