
Ask HN: Why was the recent Wired article about Fox News and Wikipedia flagged? - connorspeers
^Title. Here’s the link to the flagged submission: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24129479<p>I read the article in the submission, and I‘m just curious why it was flagged? Maybe I don’t understand flagging in general, but the submission seemed pretty relevant for HN, objectively speaking. What am I missing?
======
dang
A user emailed with the same question. I'll copy the answer here:

Users flagged it. This is the usual tug of war between upvotes, flags, and
vouches.

We sometimes turn off flags if the article is substantive and we feel like it
can support a thoughtful discussion. In this case, I'm wavering. I'm not sure
how significant this information really is, given how many such things are
happening right now (lots of moderation thoughts on that at [1] and [2]). The
question is whether the resulting thread would be significantly different from
previous discussions or not, or whether it would just get sucked into the
nearest black hole, i.e. the nearest flamewar topic.

Wavering isn't a strong enough reason to override the community verdict so I
guess we'll leave it as is. Sorry to disappoint—there's lots of room for
disagreement about this stuff, and lots of interpretation involved. I'm not
saying we're right, and certainly not always right, but someone has to make
these calls.

[1]
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22significant%20new%20informa...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[2] [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=follow-
up%20by%3Adang&dateRang...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=follow-
up%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
connorspeers
Thanks for weighing in. Administering this stuff is undoubtedly exhausting,
and I appreciate the honest explanation here. I agree that community rule
should be rarely overridden, and to be honest, until I asked this question I
was under the false impression that flagging was a moderator action. If I had
done my homework and seen that it was the community who decided it wasn’t HN
worthy, I wouldn’t have posted this. But I’m glad I did! Live and learn.

The fact it got flagged is interesting all on its own. Maybe Wired is inviting
flame wars by simply saying Fox News in the title? I wonder if it would’ve
been flagged had they not. Food for thought.

Thanks, dang!

------
connorspeers
Here’s the wired article the submission linked to:
[https://www.wired.com/story/why-wikipedia-decided-to-stop-
ca...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-wikipedia-decided-to-stop-calling-fox-
a-reliable-source/)

I got the submission in my RSS reader (Feedly) which regularly shows me posts
that end up getting flagged for removal. After seeing the linked article
elsewhere, this seemed like an odd submission to remove.

~~~
DanBC
Click the time-stamp of the submission. You should have a [vouch] link. Vouch
for the post. If enough people vouch for the submission it should unkill
itself.

~~~
connorspeers
Could be mobile safari but I still don’t see a vouch button. :(

I have 4 karma, my guess is that HN admins restrict who can vouch, which would
help stem the tide of spam.

I’m not spam. If this is working as designed, I’d like anyone calling the
shots at HN (if they read this) to know that I am vouching in spirit and wish
I could vouch in reality. :)

Update: I’m dumb, this comment explains what I’m too lazy to search for:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24133425)

~~~
dang
You need > 30 karma to vouch, same as to flag.

------
waihtis
Maybe a lot of users flagged it because they aren’t interested in having
continuous political discourse also on HN.

~~~
connorspeers
This isn’t about political discourse. It’s about information reliability and
how websites are dealing with it.

Don’t flag important conversation starters about problems endemic to the
internet!

~~~
waihtis
'Fake news' stopped being newsworthy to anyone in tech probably many years
ago. I find the following HN guideline to apply well to this:

 _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they 're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV
news, it's probably off-topic._

~~~
connorspeers
Wikipedia questioning the reliability of a major cable news network is an
interesting new phenomenon.

Fake news is an incredibly important topic of discussion for anyone in the
social media side of the tech world.

I think you’re wrong. Debate me?

~~~
waihtis
You'd probably find me a disappointing debate opponent - my opinion of modern
news is loosely the following:

[https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/942367860709609472?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/942367860709609472?lang=en)

~~~
connorspeers
I totally agree with your opinion of modern news.

Your opinion of HN and what deserves to be on here is what I take issue with.
It felt initially like you argued that because Fox News was the subject of the
link, it would start a shitstorm of garbage talk and therefore shouldn’t be on
here. While it may start a shitstorm of garbage talk (it totally would, no
doubt), I think this particular headline is interesting because it’s a move
made by Wikipedia, one of the most widely used references on the internet.

I would argue that despite the shitstorm, we should still be allowed to talk
about it on HN because it’s relevant to policy makers at various internet
companies. We can see that Wikipedia did something they haven’t done before,
and it might influence how others move forward. i.e. “If the good folks at
Wikipedia doubt Fox News’ credibility as an information resource, maybe we
should too? Let’s talk about that.“

It wouldn’t matter to me if it was Fox or CNN or MSNBC or what have you. What
matters (to me) is that it’s Wikipedia, and I would love to know what people
smarter than me think about this situation.

But how can I get their opinion if posts about this get flagged to oblivion?

Edit:

For example, if I could poll what information overlords at companies thought,
here’s what I’d ask:

\- At what point does a particular information resource deserve to have its
reliability status revoked?

\- What is a good summary of some of the internal discussions happening at
Wikipedia regarding this problem and it’s surging importance?

\- How do you, as a company, respond when the mob attacks with something along
the lines of “Leftist/Rightist bad people at company XYZ told me my favorite
news entertainment network wasn’t truthful, let’s cancel them!” (Personally,
my answer to this one would be: nothing.)

\- What do sociologists say about this, given historical context of
misinformation and the cults that grow to protect it? How do we bridge
existing knowledge about combating bad info with the instant-communication age
we are in?

Honestly, I could go on forever. Might not be the kinds of discussions you
personally want to see on HN, but as a long time lurker, these are _exactly_
the kinds of discussions I’m looking for, and it’s disheartening to see that
other people think they shouldn’t happen just because it ruffles feathers.

~~~
waihtis
Why not write a blog post about this yourself? It would be well received over
here. It is obvious this is a topic you care about and have thought about
through different angles, which is the type of thing HN folks love.

------
mrunkel
I clicked on "vouch" and it removed the flag, but maybe just for me?

~~~
connorspeers
Not just you! I’m just HN illiterate. Had no idea that was a thing.

Thanks!

~~~
gus_massa
You need a minimal amount of karma to get the "vouch" button, probably 200 or
500.

~~~
onyva
I have 800 and I don’t see such an option. Also, it’s still flagged.

~~~
dang
The threshold is > 30, same as for flagging. 'vouch' links only show up when
an item is [dead], though.

------
gadders
Because it would turn into a dumpster fire argued along party political lines.

~~~
non-entity
Then why don't we flag all political articles? I have yet to see what you
describe _not_ happen on any political threads and many of those make it to
the front page with hundreds of upvotes.

For better or worse, there seems to be enough people who want these
discussions on HN.

