Ask HN: Do posts that are potentially negative to China get flagged a lot on HN? - bad_ramen_soup
======
Someone1234
Are you sure this isn't the result of HK's "overheated discussion
detector?[0]"

Threads mentioning China often seem to bring out a lot of anti-Chinese
sentiment, which results in arguments, which results in heavy voting, which
may trigger the flamewar detector.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089)

------
dang
You can easily answer this for yourself instead of posting off-topic
metaflamebait (which please don't):

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china%20points%3E10&sort=byDat...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

~~~
bad_ramen_soup
Wanting to keep the forum honest isn't "off-topic", and I'm not sure what
"metaflamebait" is.. Thanks for the link to the query, but would it show
everything that has been flagged?

~~~
dang
Meta posts like this one (posts about the forum itself) are addictive: it
feels like they're interesting, but actually they are not. They're more like a
waste product of the community, consisting of the same half-dozen points over
and over. We've learned over the years that such discussions need to be
managed like weeds.

In this case the post added nationalistic flamebait (cruising for a fight
about China). That's close to the worst kind of flamebait we see, actually,
because it leads to flamewars where people bash each other's countries. Since
the post combined meta and flamebait I decided to join the words together.

As for that search query, it shows you that the countless active HN
discussions about China aren't for or against China as a whole.

------
DoreenMichele
The guidelines essentially say that anything deeply interesting is on-topic,
but there are inevitably people who will jump up and say that if it isn't Tech
or science, then it doesn't really belong here.

Articles are flagged by users, not moderators.

(I'm not a moderator here, just a long time member who likes talking about
social stuff.)

------
bad_ramen_soup
Most recently this was flagged, but not sure why..
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17633498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17633498)

~~~
minimaxir
That was more likely flagged due to the MeToo topic and not the China topic.

