HN Explorer

Ask HN Moderators: Why did my submission suddenly drop off the front page?

18 points by rquantz ↗ HN
I don't mean to seem like sour grapes, I'm genuinely curious what happened here. The post was on the front page, gathering upvotes pretty steadily, and then suddenly disappeared from the rankings entirely. Was it flagged? Did it trip some filter I'm unaware of? Did I refresh the page too many times because I was somewhat embarrassingly excited that something I submitted actually got on the front page?

The submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10515961 The HN rankings graph: http://hnrankings.info/10515961/

22 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 53.7 ms ] thread
cryptoz
I am also curious why this post disappeared so quickly. It is a common theme among climate change posts on Hacker News; they rarely stay alive for more than about 30 minutes. Usually the cause is repeated user flags, but I don't know for sure if that's what happened here. The last time I submitted a popular climate change post, it was never allowed on the front page because the source was considered low-quality (Rolling Stone). However, this article was published in the New York Times, a source considered very high-quality by this community. So my best guess is user flags.

Any comment from dang or the other mods?

rquantz
So HN can't discuss climate change because there are a few people who reflexively flag any climate change related articles? It seems like there needs to be a way to guard against that.
cryptoz
Yes, that is my hypothesis, and I've observed this pattern for years now. I agree, something needs to be done about it. Discussion of climate change on HN has been systematically suppressed, and any discussion that does happen here is often steered in a direction of "climate change doesn't matter, so we shouldn't talk about it" or other denialist attitudes.

It's my current life goal to spur more entrepreneurs into building startups that help solve the big issues in climate change. It would be awesome to discuss more of that on HN.

nkurz
While I agree with you in this particularly case, in partial defense of the current system (or what I perceive it to be), perhaps there really are some topics that are so toxic that they cannot be discussed productively on this site without causing damage to the overall level of discourse. HN has remained usable for more years and more doublings in size than most such sites.

One shouldn't take for granted that this will continue. Maybe the current "canary" flagging approach has helped to preserve a better quality discussion about the technical issues than a more provocative approach. And maybe that's a better purpose for this particular site than allowing one more venue for important though contentious topics.

lewisl9029
This sounds like an abuse of the flagging system. Shouldn't users who repeatedly use their flags on legitimate stories like this eventually lose their ability to flag?
hguant
The problem is that there is no objective means of determining a "legitimate story". That's why we have votes and flags and whatnot. The assumption is that the community will follow the rules and use those tools to promote "legitimate" content, however, "legitimate" or good is inherently subjective. You can punish people for having an opinion and using the tools provided by the site to express that opinion.
lewisl9029
By legitimate, I meant "not off topic" as defined in the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The guidelines also state clearly that flagging should only be used for something that is spam or off topic, not for expressing disagreement. And I think users who consistently flag stories about climate change (if such users do in fact exist) are clearly using flags for the latter purpose which it was not intended for, and deserve to be penalized.

brudgers
My understanding based on anecdotal comments over the years is that people who overuse the flag link sometimes see it disappear for a while.
brudgers
I didn't flag this story. I didn't see it either. I have flagged similar stories after looking at the comment thread and seeing the behaviors that are exhibited in the comment thread of this story.

Thinking about this particular story, it's not really about climate change. It's not new research findings. There's no science at all. It's a story about the politics of climate change: even if Exxon is successfully blamed by an elected prosecutor, there won't be less CO2 in the atmosphere or more. Personally, that makes it less surprising that it elicited the behaviors in the comment thread that it did.

DanBC
HN should be able to discuss climate change. When I see a climate change thread I don't flag it until the comments have collapsed into bad natured bickering. They almost always do, so I almost always end up flagging those submissions.

eg for the thread in question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10516225

I suspect that post is suggesting the world would be better if the HN member littletimmy was dead. (Although the parent post has been deleted, so maybe I'm wrong. I apologise if I am). That's clearly not acceptable, and stuff like that attracts flags for the comment and the submission.

rquantz
That is an unacceptable post, but why not just flag it, instead of the whole submission? The discussion was split into two rather interesting topics, one about why corporations drag their heels and resist change instead of using their leverage to capture the market in emerging technologies, and another about whether corporations should be held accountable for climate change. These are important topics that are of interest to the HN community. It seems like it would be worth it to try to rein in the bad actors, rather than ban the topic.
DanBC
for clarity: I didn't flag that thread.
rquantz
Oh I didn't think you did, I was speaking generally.
nkurz
If you don't get an answer here, write a short email to "hn@ycombinator.com" and ask. That's the "officially correct" approach. I've asked some similar questions myself, and feel I've always gotten honest (and reasonable) answers.

The other big variable (that is sometimes the answer to my questions) is the "flamewar detector". I don't know the algorithm, but stories that are receiving more comments than upvotes are sometimes penalized in a way that is hard to distinguish from the outside from user flagging.

For this story, user flagging does seem like a likely explanation. I think it would be good to have some more discussion on whether the current system works, whether it will continue to work in the future, and how it might be modified to do so better.

rquantz
And now I see that on dang's profile. Thanks for the info.
nkurz
Please post the answer here if you get one.
kspaans
Ahhh interesting, I had noticed a comment thread being "throttled": I could post new replies until about a 15 minute delay. I guess it was "flamewar": more comments than upvotes. :) Thanks!
rquantz
The official response is that it was flagged heavily. dang notes that climate change submissions have tended to lead to flame wars in the past, so those posts tend to get a lot of flags now.

It's a shame, because I thought the discussion on the post was fairly constructive, and it was an interesting angle. I suppose there are other places to discuss the many many issues surrounding climate change, but I don't know of anywhere with as knowledgeable a user base. I'd like to see HN find a way to keep the topic available for discussion while keeping the discussion civil.

brudgers
To a first approximation, the conversation was fairly constructive compared to the rest of the internet and compared to the rest of HN fairly non-constructive. There's a lot of undesirable behavior for HN by my reckoning. My take is that certain topics attract people who are hell bent on exhibiting a set of undesirable behaviors. It's unfortunate, but HN's smart people are still people. On the bright side there are many amazingly good conversations here.
dustingetz
Did you put it on Twitter? There's a vote ring detector
rquantz
I didn't. The one thing I thought I might have done wrong was I commented with a link to an article with some additional background information, and then decided to submit that link as well.
brudgers
I strongly doubt that that had anything to do with it. Submitting more interesting content is typically encouraged.