

Ask HN: Why are some topics automatically down ranked? - PythonicAlpha

As it seems to me, some topics are automatically down ranked by the system or by moderators.<p>Today some very important person won a rather important prize (I don&#x27;t tell the names to prevent automatic down ranking of the system). I and (as I saw later) at least one other person posted the news that was in the press.<p>But just one or two minutes later, both posts where vanished. I also looked 100 or so posts deeper, gone!<p>I also posted a similar message again, since I thought that it was a system error. The same effect -- after less than one minute, the post vanished from the list. It is very unlikely, that the post aged so fast by the normal ranking mechanism. The other post also got one up vote from me, so it is even more unlikely that it vanished from aging.<p>I don&#x27;t know, why such posts are suppressed and what is going on. It is at the border of censorship in my opinion. Of course it could be some mistake, because similar news where around for some time ago -- but this news, I am talking about was definitively new and relevant!
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nkurz
I found both of your posts alive in the new list with no votes. They were at
about 230 and 270 when I looked, so perhaps you just didn't look deeply
enough. My guess would be that your posts "vanished" simply because they got
no upvotes. I also found a slightly earlier post that (at this point) has 6
up-votes:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8361341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8361341)

It is true that some topics are penalized by the system, and some are
automatically killed. Browsing with "showdead: yes" will give you a feel for
which these are. Most of them are straight up spam, although some are good
posts from 'hellbanned' users. The moderators kill or penalize things as well,
but more commonly it's flagging by regular users that pushes hot topics off
the front page. Yes, this can be viewed as a form of censorship, although
"active moderation" might be more exact.

I'm less certain about the silent hellbanning, but I think overall the degree
of moderation is a positive. While there are costs, it's done an admirable job
keeping HN usable and readable as it's grown. Not all news needs to be on the
same site. If a post is divisive and unlikely to create useful discussion,
perhaps it's better to keep the flames down by keeping it off the front page.
While I'm sure there is some moderator prejudice toward specific topics (both
conscious and unconscious), I think this standard gets applied fairly
evenhandedly.

Email sent to "hn@ycombinator.com" will usually get a quick response to
questions about specific situations.

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mindcrime
What prize? Was it the Fields Medal or the Nobel Prize for Physics, or the
Turing Award or something? If so, then that would be weird. But there are
quite a few other prizes that would not be particularly relevant here, given
the guidelines and the cultural norms.

Anyway, as far as I know, the HN mods manipulate the story list and rankings
to try to keep the site focused on the things that the site is meant to focus
on. Whether or not it is correct to call that "censorship" and whether it's a
Good Thing or a Bad Thing is up for debate I guess.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
When Snowden gets the "Alternative Nobel Prize", I think it is really relevant
for the IT sector. I find it sad, that three posts just vanished undiscovered
by anybody.

I find such a thing much more relevant, as when some president gets the peace
nobel prize for things, he intended to do (and never did).

