[horseLOGIC]

Wait, so it got the "mild penalty" (which resulted in its immediate disappearance from the frontpage) because it was a follow-up?

The post to which it was a follow-up also got flagged. Why? Because "users" flagged that as well? Who cares? Your reasoning is entirely unconvincing.

> How can a site be both a Church of SJWs and an alt-right shithole?

Disregard that, what arguments does the moderation have to hide this post? I see neither a flamewar, nor alt-right or SJW run amok in here, but I see that the moderation is hiding this post. That's the issue at hand.

[dang]

It's true that the original post ended up in a flagged state, but not before it got a big discussion, 200+ upvotes, and time on the front page. That counts as significant attention. When a post has had significant attention we treat follow-ups like dupes unless they add significant new information.

It's not uncommon for a topic to have a big discussion on HN, prompting media outlets to write about it, and then people post those articles back to HN. Those don't make great HN submissions, because the story is still the same. An interesting recent example was the BBC doing https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44561838 after https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645. The present case wasn't quite like that, of course, but it's close.

Intellectual curiosity withers under repetition; ideological combat thrives on it. Most people are here for intellectual curiosity, and since that's what the site is for (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), those readers take precedence over the ones who want to have the same fights over and over.

What arguments does moderation have to moderate HN? Well, HN is a moderated forum, it always has been, and it makes no claim to be anything but. If we didn't moderate HN it would be a quite different place. We try our best to be even-handed, and I hope you realize that our reward for that is to get slammed hard from both sides. We get accused of supporting white supremacism and misogyny just as much as the kind of things you guys are saying here. It sucks, and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it.

p.s. It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Please don't do that. It's not what this site is for, and it's incompatible with what it is for, as I explained above. This is in the site guidelines, which we'd appreciate it if you'd read and follow: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[horseLOGIC]

You have entirely sidestepped the question: Why did you flag the original post? It "got attention", but so do a lot of front page articles and they don't get flagged.

> What arguments does moderation have to moderate HN?

That wasn't the question, what's the argument for moderation to flag the original article? No arguments have been brought forth, not before and not now. Thank you for your reply, but it just doesn't address the point.

> We get accused of supporting white supremacism and misogyny...

That's the whole problem. I have never ever seen an actual white supremacist or a bona-fide woman-hater on HN (or most anywhere tech related). What I do see all the time is people of the "social justice" persuasion labeling most any criticism in such defamatory terms. Then, if somebody jumps in to defend someone's right to hold a different viewpoint, they too get attacked as "enablers" (or similar). It's dishonest and disgraceful and it needs to stop. The first step is to not ever pander to those people.

> ... just as much as the kind of things you guys are saying here.

What's wrong with what we're "saying here"?

> It looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle.

I disagree with that.

> This is in the site guidelines, which we'd appreciate it if you'd read and follow

Let me cite:

"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."

There is a strong need for this kind of open debate in the tech sector and it would be great if you didn't make an effort to push it under the rug, or even suppress it.

[detaro]

To my knowledge, flagging is entirely a user action, so asking moderators why they flagged something makes little sense.

EDIT: and re the "I've never seen", e.g. just in the last few days I saw a comment asking people about their coworkers and their skin colors, and if they really knew any "really dark and not just mocha" ones that were capable. "All muslims are violent terrorists" is also something occurring every now and then. On the other side of the isle, I've seen people being (IMHO correctly) banned for too aggressively defending "SJW" ideas.

[horseLOGIC]

Fair enough, I don't understand the technical details.

The posts were hidden from the frontpage, by moderators, through whatever mechanism. Why? Not as technical question, but why was decision made to hide it? What's the argument behind doing something like that?

If any users can explain why they are flagging this post, I'd be interested in knowing too. To what end, exactly?

[detaro]

Users flagging affects the ranking quite drastically on its own (even before it's displayed as [flagged]), without any further moderator action. The system trusts users to do "the right thing" for this.

[horseLOGIC]

It wasn't the user flagging that caused this, it happened from one moment to another: http://hnrankings.info/17399895/

The moderators do not deny being responsible for it.