
Ask HN: Stallman resignation story disappeared from front page - MichaelMoser123
This story was on the HN frontpage and then disappeared after a few hours. Why did it get off the frontpage so quickly?<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20990583
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krapp
There is no new or intellectually gratifying ground to cover with this. People
have made up their minds, joined their tribes, drawn their lines in the sand
and are just throwing bottles at one another at this point. If the subject of
these threads weren't Richard Stallman, but some other celebrity, they would
all be flagged as mainstream news and flamebait and rightly so.

Let me save everyone the trouble and condense 90% of the state of these
threads now and in the future:

\- Richard Stallman did nothing wrong, this is just character assassination by
the feminist media complex.

\- Richard Stallman did nothing wrong, this is just an attack on free software
by corporate interests.

\- Richard Stallman did nothing wrong, insert tedious, pedantic argument about
age of consent and assault here.

\- You can't prove Marvin Minsky did anything wrong either.

(...)

\- Richard Stallman was actually a sexist creep who had no concept of consent
and the many, many stories about his behavior towards women finally caught up
with him.

    
    
      - Richard Stallman did nothing wrong.
    

The story is worth talking about, but it doesn't deserve more coverage than
it's getting here.

~~~
buboard
i think the bigger story is about deplatforming and the freedom to speak your
mind. its intellectually gratifying unless we ve given up on free speech and
willing to give a pass to every mob

~~~
krapp
The freedom to speak your mind is also the freedom for others to criticize
what your mind says.

People can circle their wagons around RMS and attempt to delegitimize anyone
who takes issue with his behavior and opinions as merely an angry mob if they
want, but their right to express that issue is as valid as his.

~~~
buboard
and i m criticising the mob. the mob didn't lose it s job, rms did

------
shkkmo
My best guess is that the slightly quicker drop-off was caused by the number
of comments exceeding the number of upvotes triggering the "flame war"
detector.

There are a number of posts that talk about how HN ranking works, here are the
few I could find:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426040)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018430)

~~~
gitgud
Interesting, I thought there was a flame war detector on here. I've seen it
happen to a few extremely polarising articles before.

Is there a way to view hacker news in "flame war" mode?

~~~
ryacko
Go to page 2 of the home page.

------
potta_coffee
The discussion became a dumpster fire / flamewar and was probably repeatedly
flagged.

------
caspervonb
Twitter was up in arms over how "toxic" HN is with several high profile people
"nice people" taking screenshots and implicitly urging people to flag and call
people out.

So, that's likely why.

------
hacknat
I looked at the comments briefly, then flagged it. The politics of the FSF's
decision is relevant and interesting to this community, but that was not what
was being discussed, which didn't surprise me at all.

------
dangxiaopin
Watch this one disappearing too

------
nabla9
It didn't get off quickly.

It's over day old and has 1665 points. HN news gradually get lower in the rank
as they get older.

------
doubleunplussed
It cracked 2000 comments. Anyone know what the most commented threads of all
time on HN are?

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eaandkw
I am just waiting for a representative backed by big business to fill the void
that RMS left.

------
ecmascript
Because it's controversial and HN seems to remove/kill such discussions.

I wrote in such a thread and after 4 posts I couldn't post anything for over 3
hours.

~~~
nabla9
Or maybe because there is constant stream of Stallman resigning posts. Few
every hour. Latest is 23 minutes old when I'm writing this. The fsf.org linked
was the main post with lots of good comments and it's now over day old.

~~~
ecmascript
Yes but a few was more popular, like the one who OP linked. Stories like that
usually exist on the front page (or at least page 2) for more than 1 day.

This is also not the first time I've experienced that controversial topics
simply disappear. Maybe you're right but it just seems like it happens too
often.

~~~
nabla9
> like the one who OP linked.

It was the fsf link.

~~~
ecmascript
Yes? It is not currently even on page 3 or 4 even if it got almost 2000
points. This is probably due to moderated behavior or else it would still be
on the frontpage since it's such a big story.

~~~
nabla9
The old HN ranking algorithm is roughly:

    
    
        (votes - 1) / ((item_hour_age+2)^1.8)
    

The current ranking might have some tweaks, but there is exponential decay.

It meas that using the old algorithm, the article with 1667 points and 1 day
old (24-48 hours) has score between 4.5 and 1.5. Currently the last item in
the front page has 242 points, 11 hours ago, so it would have 2.5 points.

~~~
ecmascript
I think you are correct in this case. I found the link on page 4, I just
searched badly before but in my defense HN can be pretty hard to read
sometimes.

------
buboard
It's called deplatforming / cancelling / damnatio memoriae by someone called
Selam Jie Gano. Every system of power needs executors.

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rowanG077
Ridiculous. HN censoring important news... I guess the best time is over for
this site and it's time for something new.

