HN Explorer

Ask HN: Where did the MoveLoot submission go?

5 points by pbreit ↗ HN
A (negative) MoveLoot (YC W14) article reporting its demise is nowhere to be found despite ostensibly having sufficient numbers (9 points & 3 comments in 25 minutes) to be on the front page. I'm not even that cynical but seems curious. Are submissions like this "spikeable"?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12005354

5 comments

[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 27.1 ms ] thread
rcarrigan87
Seems as though the story has been spiked. Kind of disappointing from YC, considering they promote learning from failure.
dang
Why do you assume that? No one at YC touched that post or probably even saw it; I certainly didn't.

It's the #1 policy of Hacker News moderation not to censor stories because they happen to be negative about YC or YC startups. We moderate such posts less, not more, than we otherwise would. This is literally the first thing pg explained to me when I started working on HN, and I think he did it before I even had a chance to grab a chair.

rcarrigan87
It just seemed odd that a story with 12 upvotes and 4 comments couldn't be found in the top 200 within 2 hours of posting. I see now it's made it to the front page. I'm assuming maybe this had to do with too many ppl posting the article or the specific user who posted or some kind of sandbox period.
rcarrigan87
nvm, just saw your note. Good deal, happy you caught it!
dang
Users flagged it. I don't know why, but will look at the data. (Edit: I asked one user and he reported that it was a misclick.)

Obviously (<-- or should be) no moderator touched the post. I've turned off the flags and rolled back the clock on the story so that it appears on the front page.

If we had known about this sooner we could have fixed it without having to roll back the clock. I wish people would follow the HN guideline that asks them to email hn@ycombinator.com about things like this instead of posting them on HN, where the odds are we'll never see them.