Ask HN: Why are all the submissions about Bill/Melinda Gates being killed?
It looks like about half of the submissions on /newest are about Bill and Melinda Gates divorcing. All of the submissions are flagged/dead. Why is this? I'm not looking to discuss the substance of the articles in this post — just trying to understand how the divorce of one of the biggest names in tech is not allowed on HN.
By contrast, there are many non-flagged/dead articles about Jeff Bezos' divorce.
71 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadMy personal opinion is I wouldn't want HN to turn into a mainstream news discussion board. It's not only pretty boring, but will also eventually attract other people interested only in that and the good stuff will drown.
Many people envy them for their wealth, power, access, health, etc. But apparently having all of these things does not secure marital bliss. And perhaps having access to everything under the sun actually makes marital happiness and security harder to come by.
This raises the question: if this is true for the wealthiest people, is it also true for 'mere' hundred-millionaires or millionaires? What are the actual impacts of achieving high levels of wealth, and should we actually be happier having less money/power because it means that we are more likely to have better relationships?
I don't think there's any difference at all between having a net worth of $100m, or tens or hundreds of billions. Once you're at a point where you know that you'll never worry about money, you have enough estates, you can do anything within reason, you're not that sensitive to the number of digits on your bank statement. Scope insensitivity.
Of course it did!
Among other things, on the stock market, on the Forbes list of riches people, and then afterwards, she donated a lot of money.
Source: you.
In the same vein, HN has had very little postings on COVID. THANK YOU !!!!
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
I don't know that there's much here that's intellectually interesting. This is probably one of those moments where HN can distinguish itself by not paying attention to a story.
Regarding priors, the argument "$X1 got attention so why shouldn't $X2" doesn't work on HN, because there's a power-law dropoff in interestingness along any predictable sequence. So if Jeff and MacKenzie got a lot of attention, that's actually a reason why Bill and Melinda wouldn't.
I'm not really sure that was the case to begin with though—these threads look pretty uninteresting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18868713, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865291
People are not discussing the underlying article here — it is just a meta-discussion about what is allowed to be discussed on HN. It's a little surprising that this is being suppressed (either by community members or mods).
But flags affect the ranking of a story long before they reach that fatal threshold. That's the case here. Moderators haven't done anything.
In this case, it seems a reasonable compromise would be to keep the post on /ask, but let it fall off of the main front page. This is a respectful discussion about HN/moderation, and that seems appropriate for Ask.
Ok, it's on /ask now.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27030283
Is there somewhere that the inner workings of HN upvoting, flagging and moderation are detailed so that people can understand how it all (or most of it) works?
I understand that some things you'd want to keep mum about to avoid vote manipulation.
In any case, I hope you have a great week.
HN gets plenty of opportunities to discuss universal topics like marriage/divorce, parenting, and so on. But because those topics are so generic and so emotional, as you say, they tend to slide quickly into the unsubstantive-sensational sort of discussion rather than the thoughtful-curious kind that we want.
We've learned over the years that discussion on such universal themes tends to be better when the initial submission has a lot of information in it, and also is alloyed with something unexpected rather than entirely generic. I don't think the current story has those qualities. In the first place, there's literally only one bit of information—already fully communicated by the title—so there's almost nothing to discuss; and in the second place, the story type is billionaire-blockbuster, which is about as sensational as these things get.
Previous comments on this point, if anyone cares:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8348372
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23087737
There's also the old pg phrase "intensely but shallowly interesting", which I think probably describes this story, no?
The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting: gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
More explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27031522
I say this as a very long-time critic of Microsoft and Gates, including on recent issues (patents as applied to vaccines).
Reader flags are a useful indicator, but can still reflect a minority quashing of a discussion that seems to badly want to happen.
Flagging also prevents tools such as Algolia from returning results of those discussions. That's sometimes merited, but not, I'd argue, in this case.
The case of Warrent Buffett. It was the death of his wife, and a sense of his own mortality, which inspired his own philanthropic bent.
There's the question of whether or not oligarchic philanthropy itself is a net good. There's much criticism of this, not the least of which comes from within the NGO sector. (See the Tiny Sparks podcast for significant discussion.)
Events are a foil. Life transitions become an opportunity to focus on what has been and what may be. Divorce isn't obituary, though it functions similarly, with the notable distinction that the principles aren't dead yet, and may yet do more.
(Uninformed speculation on why and wherefore does tend to be tedious, I'll grant that. I'm tugging out of that particular wallow, if possible.)
Could you please stop posting flamewar comments? Between this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26939564 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849805, you've been doing it way too much lately.
brilliant quote. is there a name for this, or did you just make it up on the spot?
Related concepts, if anyone's interested:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Maybe now is a good time to give the community the benefit of the doubt?
It's an improbably clean example of the conflict between modern and traditional religious views of marriage and money, and whether wanting divorce to be less traumatic can actually make it less traumatic. The symbolism is off the charts.
[Churches] all regard divorce as something like cutting up a body, as a kind of surgical operation. Some of them think the operation so violent that it cannot be done at all; others admit it as a desperate remedy in extreme cases. They are all agreed that it is more like having both your legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership or even deserting a regiment.
What they all disagree with is the modern view that it is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever people feel they are no longer in love with one another, or when either of them falls in love with someone else.
-- CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
We don't try to avoid divisive topics altogether, but we do to try to wait for solid opportunities - the ones where the odds are less skewed to flamewar. Threads are sensitive to initial conditions, the most important of which are the title and the article (in that order). If we start off with something substantive, where there's enough information for the mind to sink its teeth into [1], we're more likely to get reflective responses rather than reflexive ones [2]. In other words, it's best to play the good hands and fold the bad ones.
A blockbuster billionaire story with a sensational title and no additional information will probably produce discussion that burns hot, fast, and shallow. People will react reflexively with their pre-existing associations about the personalities involved and the generic topic (divorce, in this case). That is the sort of discussion that HN is not for. We want the kind that burns slower, goes deeper, and wends through unexpected places.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
It's so very sad every time there is controversial topics, out come the bot armies and flag/down vote them into oblivion. How can HN have such strong. encroaching censorship?
There doesn't even seem to be many people disagreeing that this is very much on topic.
Just because it's about Gates doesn't mean it's interesting or relevant for this site.
BUT when I got to the bottom of it (possibly the reason for divorce is to evade the new Biden's tax) - it is actually quite interesting.