
Ask HN: Why was “Harvard withdraws acceptances” dropped from the front page? - refrigerator
At the time of writing, [1] has 81 points, 200 comments, and was posted 2 hours ago, but is currently #43 on page 2 of HN.<p>Meanwhile, [2] has 14 points, 1 comment, posted 4 hours ago is at #14 on the front page of HN.<p>What&#x27;s going on here?<p>--------------------------------------------------<p>[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14487788<p>[2]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14485477
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dang
Please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

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novia
A post's ranking is penalized if it gets significantly more comments than
upvotes, because generally this indicates a flame war is taking place.

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Simulacra
That's a shame. I think many people honestly forget to upvote an article but
will comment.

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savanaly
I have no idea and for all I know, dropping it wasn't a choice of the
moderators but a mistake or an unforeseen outcome of some algorithm, but if
they did drop it on purpose I support the decision. There are countless other
websites to debate that stuff on, I would rather have fewer of the incendiary,
purely political discussions make it to the front page of HN.

Come to think of it, I do recall hearing something about how HN's algorithm
nukes topics with tons of commenting but not very many votes, so it is
probably that.

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Simulacra
Based on the numbers wound that signal a rather weak algorithm trigger?

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haburka
Sometimes moderators downvote posts that are inappropriate for HN even though
people may like the content. This is really important for keeping the
community decent because the crowd does not make good decisions for the future
of the community. My guess is the post encourages an anti Harvard circlerjerk
or something stupid about memes.

If you've been on Reddit for a while, you would understand that the moderators
having that power here is a good thing and that curating content is the only
way to keep an online community from becoming a sensationalist hellhole.

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Simulacra
I didn't see an anti Harvard bias in here. I think it was a useful discussion
on social media use and its impact on society. Certainly HN worthy.

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creaghpatr
agreed, even a little surprised, that it wasn't a Harvard pile-on.

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Simulacra
I can't put my fingers on it at the moment but I seem to recall this is not
the first time this precise scenario has happened elsewhere.

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unethical_ban
HN seems to do this with some regularity. I have made similar posts once or
twice, noting how a link that is less popular in all metrics is substantially
above another.

Mods almost surely have a weighting button, though I don't know if your
question is affected by it.

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DanBC
I think it's often users flagging the submissions.

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kiernanmcgowan
Huh, it appears this this tread has also been buried. Either there is some
algorithm edge case going on or that Harvard thread got _really_ toxic.

