

Ask HN: why are some (political in nature) posts censored while others are not? - justinY

I recently posted a well written piece about Prop 30 (via Pando Daily) on HN: http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/13/proposition-30-yet-another-way-california-screws-entrepreneurs-over/. It was quickly censored by the mods.<p>I then looked at the HN guidelines which stated that most "political" articles are considered "off-topic." I considered it to be "on-topic," since it directly affects entrepreneurs and their companies based in CA. But fine, their forum, their rules.<p>But how is this TC article on Ron Paul any different (which has rec'd 100+ upvotes)? http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/16/ron-pauls-farewell-address-the-internet-can-stop-big-government/
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gyardley
Are you sure you were censored? Perhaps you just submitted the exact same URL
that I submitted six days ago, here (which, incidentally, you commented on):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4781004>

When you submit the exact same URL as one that's been submitted before, the
previous article gets a point, but a duplicate entry isn't created.

To get the article to show up again, you'd have to do something with the URL
to fool HN into thinking it's a distinct submission. I wouldn't recommend
doing this except under rare circumstances - perhaps years have passed and the
old article has become suddenly quite relevant due to current events.

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hooande
Here is the deal with politics on hn, as I understand it... As _hackers_ , we
like to learn about complex systems and figure out how they work. Politics can
be very complicated and there's a lot going on behind the scenes. Any story
that explains how something works as opposed to advocating for a political
position will probably not get censored.

Of course there are exceptions. Anything related to the technology of
politics, patents and topics of interest to the tech community (like net
neutrality). To answer your question specifically, Ron Paul is personally
popular with many members of the tech crowd. He's a big deal on reddit and
with many members of our community, so he kind of gets a pass.

~~~
justinY
I personally think Ron Paul is bad*ss, but that was what I was implying...(him
getting pass while others don't)!

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brudgers
Like startups, the vast majority of HN submissions will fail to gain traction.
Even those that gain a little may get squashed by flagging. All get squashed
by time.

The rise of the Ron Paul submission is an unusual data point - as is that of
the current one implying that Republicans are rejecting copyright. I suspect
social media campaigns are being tested. HN is somewhat of a hardened target.
During application cycles, however, its moderators might be preoccupied.

The important point is that when a crappy submission gains traction, it
doesn't lower the bar in general to justify other crappy articles.

The way to contribute is by submitting good content unlikely to be encountered
elsewhere. California politics probably doesn't make that cut.

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mooism2
Flagging can be done by anyone with enough karma, so there's an inherent lack
of consistency.

