Can someone explain what is going on with this? Some recent examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904200
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903336
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42895453
You can mail such questions to hn@ycombinator.com although this one has been addressed in some of the recent mod comments.
The reason such things get flagged has less to do with Musk but with the fact that HN isn't really a current events/news discussion site. It's porous - some things are big and/or interesting enough to get front page coverage but the tick tock of everyday news stories is mostly offtopic and people tend to enforce that with their flags.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
Most things are in some way connected to politics and power and they're regularly discussed here, along with their political implications and power dynamics. That still doesn't mean every news story is worth discussing here given that it's a forum with the explicit goal of not discussing most news stories.
Look away from what? Musk and his antics show up in threads regularly. But it can't be on the front page 5 times a day. There's an article discussing current admin shenanigans on the fp right now.
Does anyone have anything new to say on these topics? We're going around and around in circles. Is there a substantial discussion? Do we learn anything new?
Maybe so. But I still don't have to talk about it here. There's lots of places to talk about politics, and Musk, ad nauseum. HN is supposed to be about something else.
Politics may be destroying a large number of things right now; I don't want it to destroy this site too.
> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon
I guess the second coming of Nazism to an unprecedented scale and without any serious opposition anywhere is 1/ uninteresting and 2/ absolutely irrelevant to tech.
I mean, it does seem that Musk stories get flagged way more rapidly than other Trump misbehaviour stories; in practice I suspect that a certain amount of the user base is comprised of his weird sycophants.
As said elsewhere about aversion to some current events topics etc, it's also not entirely flagging off the face of the earth. In some of those examples you shared, they had a hundred upvotes and numerous comments - that's not nothing. That's hundreds of ppl that saw the story and/or engaged, before maybe the discussion devolved leading to more flagging. Other examples with high activity current event stories are just duplicates and there are other submissions of the same/similar story that are getting eyeballs (and maybe also eventually being flagged but they're there anyway). Stuff moves fast around here, but all is not lost.
1. HN's readers perform most of the site moderation, directly through votes, flags, and vouches, and indirectly through discussions on posts. Somewhat counterintuitively, posts which gather a high number of comments may get penalised if comments exceed votes, by an automated "flamewar detector" heuristic. This (and flags) can be turned off by HN's mods if requested. Such requests (and other meta / moderation questions) are best directed by email to hn@ycombinator.com. See guidelines here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922791>. More: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.
2. There are a few additional automated adjustments, most notably site penalties and "Major Ongoing Topics" (MOCs) which attract a large number of submission may also have a penalty applied. Frequently dang will make mention of this, though you can email queries as well. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011>.
3. Where mods do get actively involved, it's generally to reverse or disable such automated actions, or user-applied flags. The automated systems work well most but not all of the time. (It's taken me some time, and a fair bit of analysis of HN, to reach this conclusion. The system's not perfect, but it's pretty good.)
4. On account of 1) above, there are topics which HN has difficulty discussing reasonably, and many of those are political. Generally, if a topic strongly divides a large fraction of readers, you'll find that posts and many comments tend to get flagged and/or downvoted (comments only). If you suspect this is abusive or is preventing cogent points from getting made, email mods.
Keep in mind too that there may be people who find any discussion of Musk on HN to be tedious and flag on that basis. Reading intent on flagging is at best a highly approximate pastime.
I didn't flag those articles. Discussions of Musk devolve into partisan hyperbole. I'm indifferent on him generally. Many of the discussions become unhinged and absurd. When I attempt to illustrate how extreme some of the hyperbole is, my own comments are generally flagged or downvoted into oblivion. Those who make extreme claims without substance are celebrated. This suggests that a reasonable discussion is not possible on some of these contentious topics.
I also understand that the HN algo has a feature where flamewar-esque threads can trigger flagging of the entire article.
The reason such things get flagged has less to do with Musk but with the fact that HN isn't really a current events/news discussion site. It's porous - some things are big and/or interesting enough to get front page coverage but the tick tock of everyday news stories is mostly offtopic and people tend to enforce that with their flags.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901248
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901317
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42896490
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42776410