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by CaptainMorgan 5808 days ago
"Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I'm not an Israeli, but I would have to assume that maybe the poster thought Israeli hackers might find this intellectually curious. Also, there are and were plenty of topics on health care legislation in the US, so this doesn't appear to be outside the scope of HN rules, but I could be wrong.

Flagging, in my opinion, is what killed the HN post - not a policy or moderator decision. Correct me if I'm wrong.
1 comments
Jun8 5808 days ago
I just looked at the article and actually found it to be quite interesting, somehow I missed it at NYT website.
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RiderOfGiraffes 5808 days ago
"Interesting" is not the same as "gratifying one's intellectual curiosity." More specifically, and again quoting the guidelines about on-topic:

    Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
    That includes more than hacking and startups.  If
    you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might
    be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual
    curiosity.
The audience is clearly intended to be hackers. It could be argued - and I believe and use as my guidance - that this particular paragraph is referring to things that satisfy the intellectual curiosity of hackers more than it would of non-hackers. In other words, the articles should not only be interesting, but they should be such that non-hackers would not find them as interesting.

On the margins there will always be articles that don't get killed which perhaps should, and articles which should probably survive, but don't. There will be random fluctuations akin to turbulence around the edges.

The Economist article about prisoners ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541942 ) might be regarded as something biased in interest towards hackers because people can argue about how to change the laws, or the meting out of punishments - hacking justice. The NY Times article about Jewish conversion is perhaps less biased to hackers because there's nothing for hackers specifically to argue. It's of broad interest to intelligent and politically aware people, and not specifically biased towards hackers.

Personally I'd wish for more clarity on exactly what happens, because then there'd be fewer people speculating and asking the same questions over and over. Also personally, I'd wish for more deeply technical submissions.

But here is a certainty: navel gazing, questions about policy, complaints about submissions being killed, and general moaning about karma, flags and moderators are getting killed faster than I've seen since I arrived. Not everyone shares your exact interests, and if your submission gets killed, move on.

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