HN Explorer

Ask PG: Can you do more to make it difficult for political articles to reach front page?

10 points by technoguyrob ↗ HN
Over the past few days, I've seen more inflammatory articles on politics, global warming, and so forth. While in moderation this may be fine, I think my peers on Hacker News will agree: that does not qualify as "Hacker News." Could you guys adjust the algorithms in any way to make it harder for these articles to reach front page?

6 comments

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ilamont
I haven't noticed too much of this, but I definitely don't want the HN front page to go the way of Reddit.
pg
I haven't noticed any difference either.
TrevorJ
the upmod arrow is there so you can upmod stories you like so that they make it to the front page, my assumption would be that the stories you see are on the front page because multiple people did want them there. Or am I totally missing the point? Not sure.
tlrobinson
I doubt the algorithm has anything to do with the actual content of the articles. Short of tagging posts as "political" I'm not sure there's much that could be done.
ojbyrne
Tis the season... As I recall, way back before we had social news, mailing lists (even the most technical) would end up filled with political discussion in the runnup to the US presidential election. Because even if you're a geek, you're affected by politics. And even if you're in the Antarctic, you're affected by US politics.