

Why is HN Suppressing all NSA related topics? - Alupis

This is not good. This information affects a large amount of HN users and is very relevant; new information is still coming out almost daily.<p>Here&#x27;s some examples from only the past few days alone:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8011461<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8010993<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8010692<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8009696<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8008449<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8008168<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8008041<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8007422<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8007161<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8006966<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8003864<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8003038<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8003035<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8000175<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7993883<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7993571<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7989555<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7988973<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7988253
======
dang
HN is not "Suppressing" all NSA-related topics.

Users are flagging these posts. The HN community is divided. Some people think
that there are too many NSA stories; others, too few. On any issue where the
community is divided, upvotes compete with flags, and stories rise and fall
according to the tug of war.

The HN software adds a small default weight to NSA stories. The purpose of
this is obviously not to suppress them. If we were trying to do that, it would
be a large weight and not a small one. Instead, it's tuned so that NSA stories
can still easily make the front page—and so they do. It's an attempt to strike
a balance between the different segments of the community who strongly
disagree with one another about how much NSA is the right amount of NSA.

The story last night about Muslim leaders was not much affected by the
software. If users hadn't flagged it, it would certainly have stayed on the
front page. In my view, users were right to flag it. I hope this site never
sees another thread where a large class of fellow citizens are accused _en
masse_ of being fifth columnists and rapists. If we do, I trust that users
will flag it again.

Some of you feel that such stories are so important that the flamewars around
them should just be allowed to burn. Our experience and observation suggest
the contrary: they are bad—existentially bad—for the site. Like fire in
general, they lead to more of the same. So the alternative to the current
policy is conflagration. The best aspects of HN, in our view, would not
survive this.

~~~
Alupis
Maybe I'm missing something... (I'm newerish here), but it seems to imply
there are more HN users who _do_ want NSA coverage more often and more
prominent, as evidenced by the need for any "weighing down" at all, no?

Why not allow it to be organic? If it's true that most are being flagged down,
then that will be the same regardless of any added weight.

I can understand the want to avoid obsessive flame wars, but simply
suppressing important articles isn't going to do that. I understand this
weight has been in place for a year now - perhaps the weight should be removed
as a trial, and see what happens...?

~~~
tptacek
(I don't care if the "NSA penalty" is removed from HN).

If the site were _solely_ moderated by voting, it would be Reddit. "No cat
pictures" is practically the founding charter of the site: it was started as
"Startup News", specifically to be a place that was germane to startup
founders that would not be overrun by flavor-of-the-moment content.

"Startup News" became "Hacker News", with a broader focus, but it didn't turn
into "Everything News", which is why the site has guidelines.

Obviously, NSA content is trickier than cat pictures, because much of it (even
I'll concede) is very relevant. However, the fifth or sixth game-of-telephone
take on every NSA story isn't relevant. Neither, I'd say, are stories about
the NSA that touch merely on the political implications of NSA surveillance.

This is one of the oldest arguments about moderation on the site. We had it
over TSA stories (when I was one of the people voting those stories up!), and
we had it (believe it or not) about Ron Paul. There's always a six-degrees-of-
startup-relevance to be played with any current events story. If you can't
make Justin Bieber's egging conviction relevant to startup founders, you're
just not being creative enough.

~~~
rmc
Wasn't it set up to be "what reddit was at the start, when it was all about
tech & startups?"

~~~
dang
No, it was set up to be more or less "what pg finds interesting", and that is
a lot more than tech and startups.

------
mbrubeck
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008168)

Despite "NSA" being penalized (along with some other high-volume topics, I
believe), there are still regular NSA posts that make it to the front page and
get plenty of discussion. For example:

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7983124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7983124)
(6 days ago)

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7989730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7989730)
(5 days ago)

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7991696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7991696)
(4 days ago)

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7993472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7993472)
(3 days ago)

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008025)
(yesterday)

Also note that the vast majority of posts on _any_ popular topic do not make
it to the HN front page.

------
tptacek
HN isn't suppressing these stories; they're getting flagged off the site by
users. (The mod has been at pains to point this out over and over again as NSA
stories fall off the front page and people complain).

~~~
napoleond
That's not entirely accurate, FWIW. It's pretty simple to prove that certain
topics get penalized without direct user/mod action (or at least, used to--
presumably via a keyword filter): [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-
news-ranking-really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-
really-works.html) (and discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854))

I built a version of the front page that calculated penalties "live" and
allowed the user to see what the front page would look like without penalties.
It was interesting, but I haven't had time to update it for use with the new
HN search API.

~~~
tptacek
There is a small penalty, "the second smallest on the site", for NSA topics.
But 'dang has been pointing out that it's flags that are knocking these
stories down the rankings, not that small penalty; the point of that penalty
is that it is supposed to be easy for important stories to overcome it.

The NSA penalty could not exist at all, and the stories we're talking about
here still wouldn't have ranked.

~~~
napoleond
Right, but that seems like a different statement than "HN isn't suppressing
these stories"\--HN _is_ suppressing the stories, both as a community (via
flags) and through its administrators (via software).

The "second smallest" penalty on the site has a pretty substantial impact,
FWIW (I'm not complaining).

EDIT: I created this comment and grandparent purely in the context of this
subthread, after reading 'tptacek's parent comment. In future I'll check the
overall context first--it strikes me that my attempt to inject interesting
commentary and correct what I viewed as a minor piece of misinformation about
how HN works might actually be adding fuel to a fire that I'd rather not feed
--I am grateful for the level of moderation that 'dang and the gang exert, and
even more grateful for community members who know how to use the flag button
and then actually use it in an appropriate fashion.

------
freehunter
One of your links answers this very question.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008168)

Links with NSA in the title get penalized because of the massive number of
stories submitted about the NSA. This is Hacker News, not NSA News. While news
about the NSA is important, historically it has flooded the site and
completely dominated the front page with mostly duplicate stories. The penalty
was put in place to counter the effects of this.

~~~
Alupis
There are already systems in place to weed out duplicate posts/links.

The NSA news has "flooded the site and completely dominated the front page"
because there is a flood of news.

~~~
freehunter
I don't control HN, so you don't need to convince me. It's not uncommon, and
the NSA isn't the only topic like this. Check that link that you and I both
posted.

~~~
Alupis
I think the argument is the "penalty" applied to posts related to the NSA, is
a little overbearing and is suppressing posts that shouldn't be (ie. unique
posts with new information).

Such as:

AMA: G. Greenwald on the Muslim-American leaders spied on by NSA and FBI
(reddit.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009696)

~~~
dangrossman
"Unique posts with new information" is not the standard of relevance on a
startup news site. Lots of things that are interesting but not startup-related
make it into the list, but it wouldn't be appropriate for the front page to be
full of NSA stories even if there's a "flood of news". This isn't CNN.com.

------
1457389
You are already greyed out, someone is keeping an eye on posts like this,
clearly.

~~~
mbrubeck
"Text" posts on HN are always displayed in gray. pg said this was to
discourage making long text posts directly to HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468231)

For example, the text in this post by pg is also gray:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304)

~~~
krapp
Hacker News is one of the best online communities i've come across so far.

But some of the passive-aggressive and condescending 'features' baked into to
the forum to discourage participation on the premise that engagement ===
entropy are really getting kind of annoying.

He could have simply added a character limit, or a word limit, if he wanted
text posts to remain brief. Or just told you as you posted to keep it simple.
But nope - he chose instead to make every text post difficult to read as a
form of operant conditioning, because the only way the plebs will learn is
through pain.

~~~
tptacek
The site has worked this way for many many years; you aren't arguing about
something the moderators are doing so much as trying to litigate the basic
functions of the site. That's unlikely to be productive.

~~~
krapp
Probably not, although the devs are currently working on some tweaks here and
there, and so might consider adding "not making text posts illegible by
default" to the list.

~~~
tptacek
There's a reason for that too: text posts aren't meant to create privileged,
sticky comments. You can see that here: the poster didn't just ask a question,
but tried to answer it (proposed answer: "it's just wrong that these weren't
on the front page, and here's evidence").

If the poster wanted most of that content to be prominent in the thread, they
could have added a comment to their question.

~~~
krapp
But clearly the legibility penalty didn't help them to realize this subtle
distinction before posting. Any number of alternatives (limiting the post
length, auto-commenting after a certain length, limiting the number of links
in a post, giving posters the chance to revise if a post is too long, reducing
legibility as a factor of length, or just letting people downvote the posts,
etc) might well have resulted in better behavior. But all the current solution
seems to accomplish is penalizing everyone else.

~~~
tptacek
What distinction _would_ prevent someone from abusing "Ask HN"? The poster
penalized their own content, by hoisting what should have been a comment ---
were this post appropriate for "Ask HN" at all, which it isn't --- into the
text of their question.

Anyways: it's not worth the argument to keep pushing this thread. I just think
it's interesting how many aspects of HN that annoy some users turn out to have
an important role in how the community regulates itself. Note for instance how
the site isn't flooded with bogus text submissions, the way sites with sticky
comments get.

