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Thanks for unflagging it Dang, I wish I could have seen it yesterday.

dang 504 days ago

I didn't see it yesterday either, otherwise I would have turned the flags off sooner.

But thanks for the kind reply—I confess I was expecting something else!

Edit: incidentally, (and not directing this at you personally!), if even one of the commenters spending their time complaining about flags on HN had let us know about this submission at hn@ycombinator.com, this would probably have happened earlier. I say "probably" because I haven't processed all the emails from the last 12 hours yet.

dredmorbius 504 days ago

For those sending emails:

- Include the post item in your subject line. That would be "42922647" for this particular story.

- Include some idea of what the problem is. For example, for a flagged story I'd have "vouch" as the first word of my subject, followed by the article title.

- I typically include the full article link (in body) and title (in subject) as insurance against my own fat-finger-fumbling.

- A brief description of the problem. E.g., "I'd like to vouch for this article".

My own typical emails are for titles (frequent), link indirection, preferred sources, and occasional mentions of flagrant violations of HN comment guidelines (flagging tends to pick those up most of the time).

For the latter, you can use the "replies" endpoint to see if a mod has previously responded to a given userID, e.g.:

For dang replying to me: <https://news.ycombinator.com/replies?id=dredmorbius&by=dang>

(Yes, there's an admonishment in there if you dig back far enough, and I remember it.)

Addition: Comments also have IDs (and are essentially the same as posts), and if you're referencing a specific comment or thread, that should similarly be highlighted in the email subject.

AnimalMuppet 504 days ago

dang, for my clarification, why are you so clearly in favor of this being unflagged?

I haven't been flagging these topics, but I have defended those who do, on the grounds of "not politics" and "leads to flamewar discussions". On the politics front, you have deliberately allowed more politics recently (or at least that's my perception) when you thought it was of general interest, or of tech interest. But the discussions are, perhaps less flame-full than expected, still somewhat incindiary (not least the discussions around flagging, with accusations up to being full-on fascists aimed at those who just don't want HN to be overrun by this).

So: What made it clear to you that this was something that should not be flagged?

<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>

HN's guidance is that most but not all politics is off-topic:

It may have come to your attention that 1) there's been a fair bit of political activity of late 2) with impacts on YC, startups, and many of HN's readers, and 3) involving some notable individuals within the tech world.

Much of that argues to facilitate some discussion of at least a sampling of these stories. And this particular item has garnered a large number of both votes and comments. Slightly over the "flamewar" threshold (> 40 votes, comments > votes), but not in the extreme. The flamewar-detector heuristic is surprisingly accurate (I've gone through much of HN's front-page archive a couple of years ago), but not perfect. High-profile political discussions are among the more notable exceptions. Self-discussion of HN is the other (and AFAIR the most highly-ratioed high-placed story was one such item early in HN's life).

dang 503 days ago

I turned off the flags on this one because there hadn't been a thread specifically about DOGE personnel and there is a clear intersection between the people in the article and the interests of HN. I mostly mean the type of people, not the specific individuals, but at least one of them (the Vesuvius prizewinner) did work which was the subject of major threads here.

I would rather the article had been more neutral and more informative, but beggars can't be choosers.

Btw, you do realize that not all politics is off topic on HN, yes? I'm pretty sure you must have seen some of my explanations about this over the years, but if not, please take a look at some of https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....

All of the following can be (indeed are) true at once: (1) most political stories are off topic here; (2) we don't want the frontpage to be dominated by politics; (3) some political stories are on topic; (4) significant and interesting things are going on right now, even though it's hard for most people to stay curious about them.

Have I clarified sufficiently?

AnimalMuppet 503 days ago

Yes.

That is, for the moment. You're trying to walk a balance, and I tend to drift, over time, off on one side or the other.

nailer 503 days ago

Heya! You had some excellent points earlier:

> What we're looking for includes: is the article not too repetitive of recent discussions? does it contain significant new information? is there a reasonable chance that it could support a substantive, thoughtful discussion, or is it too flamebaity/provocative?

This article is a personal attack on individual engineers that are evidently very talented.

There's now a bunch of people using HN for personal insults in the comments.

I think the flags were warranted and turning them off was unnecessary.

fragmede 504 days ago

that's not gonna salve their persecution complex, unfortunately

Was anything in my comment untrue?

fragmede 504 days ago

was anything in mine untrue?

No, you might even be right that I have a "victim complex", given that my country is currently being victimized by the current US administration's pointless desire for a trade war. I'm especially hot under the collar at the moment.

But I would still maintain that this site's culture reflects the Silicon Valley finance culture it came from, and it's not a pretty culture.

dredmorbius 504 days ago

Flags are applied by users in virtually all cases, not mods.

Contentious topics, regardless of how merited a discussion might be, tend to draw flags inordinately. But again, you generally can't blame mods for this.

(HN does systemically penalise, or outright ban, numerous sites. I strongly doubt Wired is in either category, though if you want to know for certain, you can email mods. For a number of fairly evident reasons the full list isn't publicly disclosed, though pg provided some lists and extracts early in HN's histoyry, notably <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4984095>. There were 38,719 banned sites as of the end of 2012, a number which has doubtless increased.)

I didn't even mention mods in my (admittedly flamey) comment, I actually don't think the moderation of HN is a problem as much as the larger culture that comes with being tied to a SV finance company. But thanks for the info.

Fair enough. The topic engenders much confusion.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37130147>

Follow-up: There were 67,000 banned sites as of August 2023: