
Hacker News Transparency - staunch
https://hn.0x2237.club/
======
ocdtrekkie
One thing I would point out here is that things marked [dupe] are listed in
the "deleted" list. These are probably not deleted to remove discussion,
but... because they're duplicates. If someone is looking at this list they
might believe certain submissions are being deleted to censor them, rather
than them just being oversubmitted topics/articles.

------
gus_massa
In the titles change, you should add some kind of highlighting, because most
changes are minor.

(My favorite: "American Airlines Accidentally Let Too Many Pilots Take Off the
Holidays" -> "American Airlines Accidentally Let Too Many Pilots Take the
Holidays Off")

The section "Recently deleted posts" should be "Recently killed posts". Also,
the number of comments in each post is wrong, many have more than 0 comments.

~~~
tptacek
It's crazy how much work they're putting into the titles. Of the 10 most
recent title changes on this site, I count 7 that are grammar and wording
fixes done solely to make the titles more readable and consistent, with no
component of damping down editorializing or promotion --- in other words, with
no "policy" objective, but just to quietly make the site better.

------
jacquesm
Cache (site is down):

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://hn.0x2237.club/)

~~~
freedomben
Still down 7 hours later, but the cache works

------
gnicholas
Couldn’t be more timely. There have been a couple of front-page stories that
were flagged into oblivion just today. Look forward to seeing how external
tools will help us keep track of these stories.

~~~
scottmcdot
Do Flagged posts fall under "Recently deleted posts"?

~~~
gnicholas
Some have said the categories aren’t properly named and I’ve not been able to
access the site due to the HN hug of death.

------
pmoriarty
Speaking of transparency, one thing I've often wondered is if HN algorithms or
admins ever downvote links to competitors such as Reddit.

I've sometimes submitted links to Reddit discussions and they virtutally never
get upvoted. In the past I've just assumed this was because HN's readers
themselves didn't want to see such links, but now I wonder if HN's algorithms
or admins downvote or otherwise bias the site against them.

~~~
dang
Some sites are penalized because they have been the source of many lightweight
submissions. You may not be surprised to learn that reddit.com is one.

However, there are many ways for such penalties to get overridden. For
example, if the submitter is known to have posted many fine submissions in the
past, the penalty doesn't count. Your account is one of those. Thanks for
posting fine submissions to HN!

By the way, it's not hard to get answers to things like this that you're
wondering about. You simply need to ask us at hn@ycombinator.com.

~~~
nsomaru
How is a submission considered to be "fine?" Looking at @pmoriarty's history,
it seems that his submissions are not highly upvoted...

~~~
dang
A combination of what the community has liked in the past and what moderators,
plus a small number of story reviewers, think it might find intellectually
interesting.

> _it seems that his submissions are not highly upvoted_

This ebbs and flows. But see
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:pmoriarty%20points%3E10&sor...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:pmoriarty%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

------
hartator
Kind of creepy that pro-repeal of net neutrality and anti-YC posts had being
deleted.

~~~
gus_massa
Deleted is a bad characterization. I guess your comment is about these
articles. They are marked as duplicates and hidden.

\---

* Why Ajit Pai Is Right (Pro-Neutrality, Anti-Title II) (stratechery.com) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15800851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15800851) (14 points, 29 days ago, 3 comments)

First comment is:

> _Is this not a repost? I could of sworn I saw this posted an hour or two
> ago._

> _edit: It is! Here 's the discussion from the previous post..
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15798960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15798960)
> ._

the linked post is an exact dupe and has 211 points, 29 days ago, 295 comments

\---

* Y Combinator Quietly Ends Relationship with Peter Thiel (gizmodo.com) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15726550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15726550) (21 points, 40 days ago, 1 comment)

First comment is:

> _Dupe; more comments
> here:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15725108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15725108)
> ._

the linked post is very similar and has 185 points, 40 days ago, 147 comments

~~~
hartator
My bad, you were right, was just a coincidence.

~~~
im3w1l
I don't think it's _just_ a coincidence. I think certain topics are more
likely to get dupes.

------
gthtjtkt
Now if only you had some way to show how many people are shadow-banned or have
their posts automatically buried.

People seem to think this place is better than Facebook, Reddit or all the
other vote-based, algorithm-driven discussion forums that encourage
groupthink, but that's probably because they've never been guilty of posting
an unpopular opinion.

It might be eye-opening if they could see how heavily manipulated these
discussions really are.

~~~
justaduder
I'm away on Christmas vacation, but my home IP has been banned. Never been
clear why, except that I have expressed some views about banking, Tesla and
some well-known posters who like to bully people that aren't part of the
Hackernews hivemind.

I enjoy the site as a news aggregator, but this place is an echo chamber.

~~~
megous
The same thing happened to me sometime in the last week. My computer was off
for several days (christmas), and when I turned it on, I had an IP ban. Using
proxy works, but it's a needless hassle. If I delete the cookies, everything
is ok, until I click the login link. From then on all I get is 403 on all
pages. Annoying to say the least is, that there doesn't seem to be any auto-
unban timeout.

And I don't comment all that much. Last month it was a comment every three
days or so.

It made me think about the value of commenting for me and I decided to stop
posting and lurk. Most of the value for me is in the lurking anyway.

------
jitl
Receiving 500 Internal Server Error

------
ziikutv
Please pardon my ignorance. What is the point of this? How does it help?

~~~
spaceseaman
Hacker News has a libertarian leaning ideology among both its community and
site-runners. As a result, things like deleted posts, changed thread titles,
etc could be seen by folks with such leanings as an impingement on their "free
speech" by the site's moderators.

Thus folks want a way to check what has been deleted, changed, or modified by
the folks in charge. I imagine this exists to help satisfy that desire.

For an example, note this comment and its corresponding thread
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018978)

~~~
dang
No, the phenomenon is rather that HN readers with strong ideological feelings
tend to see the site as dominated by, and the mods in cahoots with, their
ideological enemies. This has to be some kind of cognitive bias since the
claims people make about HN, and us, are so comically contradictory. If you
don't believe me, here are a few typical examples:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730)

Plenty more here:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%2013110004&sort=byDate...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%2013110004&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment).
It is perennial.

By the way, that thread you linked to shows exactly the opposite of what you
say, if you read it to the end. This too is typical, except for the part where
the original commenter admirably accepts the correction. That bit is
surprisingly rare!

~~~
spaceseaman
> the phenomenon is rather that HN readers with strong ideological feelings
> tend to see the site as dominated by, and the mods in cahoots with, their
> ideological enemies.

I agree, but I don't think that's why this is a popular piece. Such a post
would not resonate as well on NeoGAF or ResetERA or even Reddit, but the
political leanings of this site propelled this to the front page. There's more
to it than just seeing the mods as being in cahoots with enemies. It's the
ideology that any moderation is inherently untrustworthy and that the power
must be constantly kept 'in check'.

You can find endless examples of folks who feel they are pariahs. I still
think that Hacker News has a severe idealogical bend, just like any online
community. And I don't think it's a stretch to say that bend matches the
mindset of many programmers - techno-libertarianism.

To be clear, I'm not claiming that the moderators have some idealogical bias -
I've never come across that. Simply that certain trains of thought are very
popular here, and the notion of "free speech" being impeded by aggressive
moderation is something that has been rehashed on this site time and time
again.

I realize you may have taken issue with my comment because I said "site-
runners" in my claim of an ideology. I realize that this was poor word-choice,
as I actually meant the YC, not Hacker News - they got conflated in my mind
and I apologize for the mistake.

~~~
Fej
I have seen far more examples of liberals on HN (in the American sense) than
libertarians.

~~~
olfactory
It's a mix of ideologies. But the moderation ideology is largely
authoritarian, which is enjoyed by both the left and right.

~~~
dang
You've entirely imagined that.

Actually your comment is a textbook example of what I described. HN makes this
easy, because no matter what you believe about HN, you can always find
examples that appear to support it. Not that most people bother to try, or
even make the simplest effort at factual truth
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16019042)).

~~~
olfactory
Based on what I know about moderation, the penalty on the story may have been
overruled by upvotes or reversed by moderators. This does happen occasionally.

And by authoritarianism I do not mean politically authoritarian views, simply
authoritarianism applied to moderation decisions (having iron fisted idea
police ensuring the quality of HN discussion).

------
chris_wot
Nice to know who is rate limited. The HN mods don't say why.

~~~
frik
This shadow rate-limiting is so disgusting. The user doesn't know about it,
she writes a comment or submit a news and sees a info message "slow down"
which makes no sense at all (2 comments per day displays it, yah). A rough mod
rate-limited my account, some years ago to only 2 comments per day. And there
is no way to recover the account.

HN doesn't support free speech, very unfortunate that pg isn't around anymore
to sweep up. It turned from startup, SV and VC news to a popular but unfocused
news site, sponsored by whoever.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Found this interesting:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15959986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15959986)

Generally though, isn't it obvious that YC-backed companies will get some
extra perks on HN? I don't see what you were hoping to gain by your
'sockpuppet' investigation.

For what it's worth, based on your recent comment history I do think you've
been unfairly targeted. Hopefully this can be resolved over email.

~~~
dang
YC-backed companies get precisely two perks on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs) and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/launches](https://news.ycombinator.com/launches).

------
hueving
Does this offer any visibility or insight into the rate limiting of
undesirable accounts such as mine?

Do all undesirable accounts get the same rate limit?

Do rate limits expire?

Is there a way to tell if an account is muzzled without trial and error?

(Site is currently down otherwise I would check myself.)

------
wickedOne
you might want to consider ignoring removal of query parameters for the
"recent url changes" section...

------
lainon
Is it meant to be that the last listings are 28 days old?

------
olfactory
This story was live for < 1 hour before it was killed.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Except it’s still on the front page five hours later.

------
goofballlogic
Also get 500s trying to link

