[dang]

Users are flagging them. I don't think it's hard to understand why: it's a divisive and flameprone topic.

Two positions that people urge us to take (different people, obviously) are (1) treat it as off topic and flag everything; or (2) have no limits, which means letting it dominate the front page. Neither of these positions are viable for HN. For reasons why I say that, see past explanations at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... - these are general explanations, not specifically about Gaza, but they apply to that also.

HN has had at least two major related threads so far:

The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 - Dec 2023 (1673 comments)

'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38616550 - Dec 2023 (1309 comments)

Here are some explanations I posted the last time this question of flags came up, in case helpful at all:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657829

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527

Obviously we want commenters to have thoughtful, respectful, open conversation with each other rather than just fighting a war on HN. Equally obviously, it's pretty hard to avoid the latter. These things can only be 'graded on a curve', i.e. moderation has to shift somewhat, relative to the topic - not to do that would be expecting people not to be human, which is a losing proposition. But that does not mean the rules somehow switch off. Accounts that break the HN guidelines egregiously (such as by getting aggressive or posting in the flamewar style) are going to get warned and/or banned, regardless of who they're battling for or against. More than that, I'm not sure what we can do.

[user982]

Have you noticed any patterns or organization in the flagging and voting of this subject, or does it all look organic?

[dang]

I haven't looked closely, but based on what I have looked at, plus prior experience, I believe that flags of this kind are a coalition between two subgroups of user: those who dislike the content of an article for political or ideological reasons, and those who are more concerned about the content being bad for HN (e.g. because they're worried about flamewars).

[arp242]

> because they're worried about flamewars

Huh? I've never seen a flamewar on this topic?

I wish HN was more granular about measures for users, e.g. by marking these highly contested topics and just giving people topic-bans. Some people just completely lose their shit, and then other people lose their shit in response, and these people post a million messages by the time the rest of us managed to actually read the article and perhaps some relevant background info. It just craps up everything.

That's what Wikipedia does. Works reasonably well.

Of course it'd have to be programmed.

[oefrha]

> I've never seen a flamewar on this topic?

What? Do you have showdead on?

I flagged this one, because “discussions” on this topic are mostly hot garbage, they are dominated by extremely motivated people shitting canned flamebait all over the place, especially early on. Indeed by the time I saw and flagged this there were already like four or five people doing exactly that, and by keeping it up, more of this type of users are invited. They are largely flagged by now, leaving an entire page of flagged stuff and more interwoven in the somewhat visible page; must be one of, if not the lowest signal-to-flag stories on HN. I can only see like 20% of 352 comments so far without showdead.

[arp242]

> What? Do you have showdead on?

I was joking – "woosh" as I believe the kids say.

And this is why I'd be in favour of a "topic ban".

[rightbyte]

The problem with topics bans is that you can sabotage topics you don't like to silence them. E.g. Rust evangelicals could have been silenced quite easely by flame baiting their posts.

[morkalork]

What if it was organic? It would suck wouldn't it eh?

[cratermoon]

Thank you dang for allowing this discussion. Our profession needs to wrestle with issues like this openly, and do so in a respectful way in the spirit of John Milton and John Stewart Mill.

[anigbrowl]

The pro-Israel information war - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38572675 - Dec 2023 (1673 comments)

I posted that one, and while it went somewhat well by the standards of such a controversial topic, it was still contentious and had a lot of bad feeling. I submitted it because there was a nexus to both the dynamics of influence operations and individual movers and shakes in the SV community.

In general I think submitting on a topic like this requires some sort of hacker-specific angle - involving people in the industry, or the impact of technological change, or a new dynamic emerging from some unexpected source (eg cheap consumer-tech drones in the Ukraine conflict).

It's not that other topics shouldn't be discussed on HN, anything sufficiently unusual to be news cn be worth a look. But we should also be mindful that if the community can't provide more than baseline insight/expertise on a trending news topic, the resulting discussion will probably be shallow and have little value.

[verse]

> posting in the flamewar style

What is the flamewar style?

[dotnet00]

Presumably aggrssively calling people names, spamming the replies with insults and trying to provoke others into an argument without actually expressing any ideas.