I posted this mostly in order to probe HN manipulation practices. After posting this link I refreshed rank list every 30s and observed score and position changes.
Few minutes after being posted this story appeared on the second page (~55 position). Then I was slowly accumulating votes and climbing up in the rank list. 30 minutes after it had 12 points and was on ~35 position. Maintaining current upvote rate, it would leap into the first page within the next 5 minutes. Instead, after next refresh of the ranking page, it disappeared completely. I checked the next 10 ranking pages and it isn't visible there either.
It wasn't flagged (if it was, I wouldn't be aple to post this comment). So some other mechanism of elimination of undesirable links must be in use here.
I flagged it before you posted the comment (I just unflagged it so I could respond to you), so yes, it was flagged. One person does not automatically kill a post; it takes a critical mass of users before people cease to be able to respond (and possibly moderator action - it used to be that 'flag' was just a signal for a moderator to look at the post and manually kill it, but I think HN now auto-kills submissions with a certain number of flags). And subcritical numbers of flags do impact rank - that's a known factor, so it's likely what may drag it down in the ratings.
BTW, I flagged it for title editorializing. With the original title and conclusions it could be a valid discussion target, but as submitted, it's just flamebait.
Did you not see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12845426? There's nothing new here. You posted an obviously bad story for HN and made it worse by editorializing the title, so users flagged it. Going from that to "HN manipulation practices" is rather a leap, don't you think? None of us even saw this post until 5 minutes ago.
> It wasn't flagged (if it was, I wouldn't be aple to post this comment)
That's incorrect. [flagged] simply means that many users clicked 'flag'. Note that a story can—indeed must be—flagged by quite a few users before the [flagged] annotation appears. [dead] means closed to new comments, and only users with 'showdead' turned on in their profile see [dead] posts.
OK, now it IS flagged. But when it disappeared from ranking, it wasn't. And here is the evidence:
All [flagged] stories becomes automatically also [dead], so they are closed to new comments (please check out another stories which become flagged, all of them are also [dead]). The fact that I was able to post the parent comment 10 minutes after story disappeared from rankings means that it wasn't flagged at that time and it must disappeared from rankings for other reason.
Moreover, you apparently removed [dead] from this story manually, in order to disprove my words that adding new comments to [flagged] stories in impossible. Please take a look on other [flagged] stories, all of them are also [dead]. This in the only one exception.
And the fact that you perceive the title as 'editorialized' (despite it ideally sums up this research findings, word 'tolerant' perfectly suits here [1]) is the best indicator of your bias here.
[1]:
> tolerant - Showing willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behaviour that one does not necessarily agree with.
Moreover, I don't believe that users flag all of these politically undesirable stories. Users have a mechanism of downvotes, which they can use to suppress stories which they think are bad for HN. However, most of flagged stories don't get many downvotes. It's rather the opposite -- flagging is used to get rid of stories which get many upvotes! Like this one.
If majority of users thought that these stories are 'bad for HN', they would get many downvotes and have zero or negative score, instead positive one. Therefore I think that flagging doesn't reflect the will of users and is used against their up/down-voting decisions.
There are factual errors here. I'll touch on a few.
Your submission fell in rank because users clicked 'flag' on it. That's what we mean when we say the story was flagged. The annotation "[flagged]" doesn't show up until the number of flags goes above a certain threshold, and a story's rank is affected well before that becomes visible. No moderator touched your submission, except to unkill it. I did that so I could reply to your comment—as mentioned, new comments aren't possible on [dead] posts.
It's true that most stories marked [flagged] are also marked [dead] because the threshold for those two things are similar, but it's definitely not true that they all are. For example, if a thread has many comments, it's considered too active to kill, in which case [flagged] appears but [dead] does not.
You're not allowed to rewrite titles to summarize what you think is important about a post. That's a form of editorializing, indeed the leading form of it.
The main reason why political submissions fall in rank on HN is because users click 'flag' on them. Users are right to do this because pure politics is off topic here. You're free to feel that's a mistake, but you're not free to keep violating HN's rules.
Please stop making false claims about HN being manipulated for political purposes. You've done this at least half a dozen times (probably more), and we've given you several clarifying responses. I always start by assuming people are mistaken in good faith, even when they claim we're sinister, but at some point this behavior crosses into abuse. We can't reply to all these comments or even see them all, and you harm your fellow users with them by undermining the integrity of the community.
If you need any further information I'm happy to provide it, but first please absorb the facts I've already given you, so we don't keep repeating ourselves.
7 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 15.2 ms ] threadFew minutes after being posted this story appeared on the second page (~55 position). Then I was slowly accumulating votes and climbing up in the rank list. 30 minutes after it had 12 points and was on ~35 position. Maintaining current upvote rate, it would leap into the first page within the next 5 minutes. Instead, after next refresh of the ranking page, it disappeared completely. I checked the next 10 ranking pages and it isn't visible there either.
It wasn't flagged (if it was, I wouldn't be aple to post this comment). So some other mechanism of elimination of undesirable links must be in use here.
BTW, I flagged it for title editorializing. With the original title and conclusions it could be a valid discussion target, but as submitted, it's just flamebait.
It always did that; the only change was that we started displaying more info (e.g. the [flagged] annotation).
> It wasn't flagged (if it was, I wouldn't be aple to post this comment)
That's incorrect. [flagged] simply means that many users clicked 'flag'. Note that a story can—indeed must be—flagged by quite a few users before the [flagged] annotation appears. [dead] means closed to new comments, and only users with 'showdead' turned on in their profile see [dead] posts.
All [flagged] stories becomes automatically also [dead], so they are closed to new comments (please check out another stories which become flagged, all of them are also [dead]). The fact that I was able to post the parent comment 10 minutes after story disappeared from rankings means that it wasn't flagged at that time and it must disappeared from rankings for other reason.
Moreover, you apparently removed [dead] from this story manually, in order to disprove my words that adding new comments to [flagged] stories in impossible. Please take a look on other [flagged] stories, all of them are also [dead]. This in the only one exception.
And the fact that you perceive the title as 'editorialized' (despite it ideally sums up this research findings, word 'tolerant' perfectly suits here [1]) is the best indicator of your bias here.
[1]:
> tolerant - Showing willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behaviour that one does not necessarily agree with.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/tolerant
Moreover, I don't believe that users flag all of these politically undesirable stories. Users have a mechanism of downvotes, which they can use to suppress stories which they think are bad for HN. However, most of flagged stories don't get many downvotes. It's rather the opposite -- flagging is used to get rid of stories which get many upvotes! Like this one.
If majority of users thought that these stories are 'bad for HN', they would get many downvotes and have zero or negative score, instead positive one. Therefore I think that flagging doesn't reflect the will of users and is used against their up/down-voting decisions.
Your submission fell in rank because users clicked 'flag' on it. That's what we mean when we say the story was flagged. The annotation "[flagged]" doesn't show up until the number of flags goes above a certain threshold, and a story's rank is affected well before that becomes visible. No moderator touched your submission, except to unkill it. I did that so I could reply to your comment—as mentioned, new comments aren't possible on [dead] posts.
It's true that most stories marked [flagged] are also marked [dead] because the threshold for those two things are similar, but it's definitely not true that they all are. For example, if a thread has many comments, it's considered too active to kill, in which case [flagged] appears but [dead] does not.
You're not allowed to rewrite titles to summarize what you think is important about a post. That's a form of editorializing, indeed the leading form of it.
The main reason why political submissions fall in rank on HN is because users click 'flag' on them. Users are right to do this because pure politics is off topic here. You're free to feel that's a mistake, but you're not free to keep violating HN's rules.
Please stop making false claims about HN being manipulated for political purposes. You've done this at least half a dozen times (probably more), and we've given you several clarifying responses. I always start by assuming people are mistaken in good faith, even when they claim we're sinister, but at some point this behavior crosses into abuse. We can't reply to all these comments or even see them all, and you harm your fellow users with them by undermining the integrity of the community.
If you need any further information I'm happy to provide it, but first please absorb the facts I've already given you, so we don't keep repeating ourselves.