> Seriously mods, this is taking things a little too far.

No moderator touched your post. It fell in rank because users flagged it.

It's against the HN guidelines to turn questions like this into Ask HN threads. Please don't do that. As the guidelines say, you should email [email protected] instead.

Also: when a post is flagged, a repost counts as a duplicate. Otherwise flags wouldn't mean anything.

Define flagging. I've been a member of HN for almost 5 years with low to medium activity and all I get is upvote/downvote capabilities. As far as I can see, there were minimal downvotes from me watching (or at least equivalent to upvotes), so the flagging seemed to be a group effort near instantaneously.

Things immediately went from good to bad in the matter of seconds, so there's alot of power in whatever ranking is required to "flag".

Comments can be downvoted, with sufficient karma (the down arrow next to the post does that.)

Stories cannot be downvoted (they have only an up arrow for upvotes). They can, however, be flagged (there is a "flag" link to do so between the time and the comment count.) Comments can also be flagged, as well as downvoted.

Flagging is when you click the link that says "flag". Like I just did for this thread.

You're funny. Upvote for you.

It looks from the comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985678, that mod(s) thought it was a deceptive post that was more like an advert than a story.

What technically, or in context of startups, is notable about the site/offer? Perhaps you'd be better blogging about pop.co's setup and submitting that if you want to use HN for promotion.

The post title was literally our selling point which was the exact features offered. I'll have to reply to the mod.

My guess is an upvote collusion algorithm got tripped somehow. The post is obviously being penalized for some reason.

To the point on upvote collusion, I think the mods really need to rethink things a bit. I utilize HN on a daily basis and check it periodically throughout the day. If I see a post of a friend's site, I upvote it. The notion of being flagged because friends or acquaintances familiar with your startup being happy for you is by no means a reason to degrade a post.

What the OPs are really saying is they'll let it slide for their friends and network, but not for those they're unfamiliar with. This is outright unacceptable behavior and I think methods of accountability should be added. If a startup didn't have friends, fans, and followers, than what do they have guys? Nothing. And I'll be damned if I don't work for an awesome startup doing awesome things that earned it's spot on the front page. It's a shame.

> What the OPs are really saying is they'll let it slide for their friends and network, but not others.

OP? Usually, when I've seen that in a forum, it means "Original Poster", the submitter of the post to which the comment thread is attached -- but clearly that's not what you mean here. Do you mean the mods?

And, no, the voting ring detector is, from everything that has been said about it, algorithmic, so its just as wrong for anyones "friends and network" as for anyone else's.

> This is outright unacceptable behavior and I think methods of accountability should be added.

I'm sure if you ask nicely, YC will refund 100% of the HN membership fee you paid if you are unsatisfied.

> If a startup didn't have friends, fans, and followers, than what do they have guys?

The idea of HN is that things should be promoted in visibility based on the interest to the community at large based on the content, not based on collusion of groups to promote them. Hence the voting ring detector. There's plenty of venues for promotion that don't work that way, but I don't see why anyone (other than YC) is entitled to demand that HN change.

Correct on mods, I was ranting too fast. I'll maintain my rights to rant on occasion if something smells fishy. The post had legitimate interest, a comment chain, and votes in both directions. The algorithm seems to be at fault but I won't know for sure without some feedback. I sent an email out, so I guess we'll wait and see.

Hold on folks, it's now #181. It seems as though some form of exponential decay has been enabled by moderators.

I'd like to propose formal explanations whenever things like this occur. Accountability should be the name of the game. I want to know who performed the action, what action was performed, and why.

> Hold on folks, it's now #181. It seems as though some form of exponential decay has been enabled by moderators.

Time-based exponential decay is the norm. Per the FAQ [1]:

How are stories ranked?

On the front page, by points divided by a power of the time since they were submitted.

Also, from the guidelines [2]:

Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to [email protected].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

While I understand this, we had a direct comparable front page item I mentioned that goes entirely against the decay. This is a case of accelerated decay enforced by an OP IMO.

I know you're probably pissed off but HN is a free service and they have no duty to you. Having said that, mods are usually upfront about things like this.

I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed for an answer.

The HN moderators have been very transparent about things like this. I expect you'll get an honest answer before long, without any need to lobby for one.

By my manual count, 6 of the 16 comments in the discussion are by you and you are also the person who submitted the piece. I have tried to tell others this and people think I am being a bitch when I do so, but commenting too much in your own submission seems to not be a good idea.

I wrote about my own experience/observations here:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/so-you-made-...

Can't be bothered to read it? The main take away is: Submit your piece, allow yourself between one and three GOOD comments, then stfu and let other people talk about your thingamajig.

>Can't be bothered to read it? //

Your realism and pragmatism, in offering a digest, is appreciated.

I'll have to take your advice on this one in the future. This crowd is getting as rough as /r/.

You know, I am female and I used to really be given hell at times on HN. It took me a long time to understand why that was (most of which is not relevant to this discussion) but I don't think it helps you at all to talk about "this crowd is getting as rough as..." etc type stuff. If I had just been looking to blame people here, I imagine I would have ended up banned. Instead, I took some time off, figured some things out, and was eventually able to return to a much more successful experience. As far as I can tell, that means I am currently the highest ranking (in terms of karma) actively participating female member. And this is a forum that is fairly notoriously unwelcoming of women. So I think I speak from both a place of success and the school of hard knocks on this one.

From what I can tell, there is some sort of algorithm that drops you off the front page if you comment too much in your own submissions. Most likely, the mods have good reasons for that. If you want to do well here, it helps to understand the technical environment as well as the social environment. If you don't want to understand it as a path to improving your performance, if, instead, you just want to blame someone and complain, well, it's been nice knowing you. You won't get far here. That kind of thing does not play well anywhere and it seems to play especially poorly here.

Mods responded via email and said it was from users flagging the post. I won't elaborate further, but thanks for the words of advice!