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Re:Poll: Are there too many NSA stories on HN, or not enough? by sinak2 on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @05:15PM (#6370164)
Interestingly, this post appears to have been flagged or relegated in some way. It has 141 points in one hour at 10th place, while the Steam Family Sharing post has 150 points in first place and is two hours old.

Certainly some of the discussion on other threads should be filtered. But the moderation on stories themselves appears to be heavy-handed right now. Many significant new stories aren't making it to the home page (see above).

A proposed solution: If the reason for this in fact flagging, and not moderation by admins, then perhaps showing the guidelines and possibly requiring users to give a reason for flagging might reduce the number of wayward flags. The official guidelines for flagging are: "If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link"

Re:Poll: Are there too many NSA stories on HN, or not enough? by timr on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @05:22PM (#6370227)
HN has had a long-thread penalty (since well before the NSA scandal) to prevent flamewars from taking over. That's probably what's happening here.
Re:Poll: Are there too many NSA stories on HN, or not enough? by sinak2 on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @05:36PM (#6370299)
91 comments doesn't seem like that many, but that's definitely a possibility.
Re:Poll: Are there too many NSA stories on HN, or not enough? by timr on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @05:37PM (#6370301)
I think there's a rate calculation. It wouldn't make sense to just arbitrarily penalize long threads. It's postings per unit time or somesuch.
Re:Poll: Are there too many NSA stories on HN, or not enough? by DanBC on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @05:38PM (#6370304)
This thread is meta, and is thus discouraged by the guidelines.
Re:Poll: Are there too many NSA stories on HN, or not enough? by jacquesm on Wednesday September 11, 2013 @06:54PM (#6370712)
There is a much simpler explanation: it's a poll, they're weighted differently.