HN Explorer

Ask HN: Why has my post disappeared?

9 points by Dasync ↗ HN
I have just realised my Show HN post: Show HN: Demanjo news preparing to take on Google news has just disappeared from the homepage. Can anyone provide reasons for this? Does the moderator determine which post stays on frontpages? Thanks.

6 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 22.8 ms ] thread
ColinWright
When was it posted? What was its ID? Did it make the Front Page? Or are you asking about something else? What have you done to investigate it? Did it have a URL?

With so little information, how do you expect us to help you? Do you want us to do all the work?

Added in edit: It appears that it's an identical URL to the one you posted just under 3 weeks ago, but with a different title. Perhaps the mods detected it as an exact duplicate and killed or penalized it.

Added in further edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8221248

It still exists, but I suspect it has dropped down the rankings because it's an exact duplicate and has attracted a "duplicate penalty."

Dasync
Thanks Colin, it was posted about an hour ago. It was on front page and also on Show HN page. Then in a twinkle of an eye, it has just disappeared. I don't have the ID and didnot keep the url.

Added in edit: It is not a duplicate post. They all have Show HN as titles. The first time I posted, there was no news section. The news section was just added this weekend. Does that make it duplicate post?

Added in further edit. I see this post has also been taken of the front page.

ColinWright
It is an exact duplicate - the URL is identical. It doesn't matter if the content of the page changes - HN does not fetch the page and compare contents, it compares the URL. That was the same.

And this post will have been hammered by flaggers - it's meta, and it will be perceived as complaining about flags, down-votes, or rankings. As such, it's regarded by many as "noise", detracting from the main point of "articles of interest."

buro9
I see it still: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Dasync

It likely dropped off the front page due to:

1) Not enough upvotes

2) Lack of comments may be a factor in the scoring

3) Upvotes look suspicious, like a vote ring, so you have been penalised

For the numbers of votes (5) in the time given (an hour) on what is a working day across most of the world... it's actually surprising you got onto the front page.

dang
This post was killed by user flags.

The previous post dropped in rank because it set off the voting ring detector, hard. Users also flagged it.