

Ask HN: How can a single person objecting get a post moved from the front page? - mike_tan

Recently, when a single person vehemently objects to a post, it disappears off the front page.<p>Liken a submission to Reddit, or call it over-hyped, and it's a goner.<p>I've noticed this trend recently, and it just happened with one of my submissions:<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5684770<p>Or do votes not count any more?<p>(I have a feeling this may mysteriously disappear)
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ColinWright
I have no official standing, but I've been here a while, and I pay attention
to community dynamics, so I may have an insight.

It doesn't take many flags from ordinary users to get an item off the front
page. Flags carry a heavy penalty, and it seems that just three or four will
take an item a long way down the rankings. If one person points out that they
think an item is inappropriate, or isn't really of "deep interest" to the
hacker culture/mentality, others will stop to wonder, and then they may also
flag. Thus a single comment like that will often result in enough flags to
take the item down quickly.

I've found a good predictor is the ratio of points to comments. The item you
mention has 23 points but 42 comments. People are replying without upvoting,
and that is a predictor of something that many will think is not really
contributing value to the site as a whole. Correlation is not causation, etc,
etc, but I've found it to be a good predictor of what I personally want to
read.

So those are my thoughts - they're probably worth about as much as you paid
for them.

~~~
mike_tan
Can I ask you a question, Colin. Do you think the subject of domains is
against hacker culture, or anti-startup in any way?

~~~
ColinWright
I can't comment on hacker culture, or what would be of interest to hackers, or
what the HN "community" might regard as being of "deep interest." For me, the
list was absolutely pointless, but I'm not looking for a domain.

And if I were starting a business again, I wouldn't care about three character
*.io domains. And go look at the discussion - is there anything there of
interest to hackers? Really?

Since you ask me personally, that entire thread feels like hackers shooting
the breeze over coffee, and it has no substance. You may disagree, I'm sure
there are many others who will, and I'm speaking for myself, from my
perspective, with my background and interests. I personally wasn't interested
in it.

But I didn't flag it - I am pretty parsimonious with flags, reserving them for
what I feel is of serious negative value.

~~~
mike_tan
> is there anything there of interest to hackers? Really?

codepen.io and card.io (who got acquired by Paypal) may disagree.

Or people using them for "playfully clever" things -- to use a term I've heard
Richard Stallman use to define hackers.

~~~
ColinWright
You're arguing with the wrong person in the wrong place. It got flagged, learn
from it. Sometimes it's not what you say, but how you say it. If you think
this is of interest then write a post explaining why, and include the data as
part of the post, don't just submit raw data and expect everyone instantly to
agree that it's interesting and of value.

I think I've pretty much said everything I have to say on the subject now. If
you have a question or comment that isn't already answered in one of my other
comments, fine, but otherwise I won't repeat myself further.

To quote Samuel Johnson:

    
    
        "Sir, I have found you an argument;
         but I am not obliged to find you an
         understanding."

~~~
mike_tan
>don't just submit raw data and expect everyone instantly to agree that it's
interesting and of value.

It was of value. People were taking action over the data.

You may not be looking to start a business, or do projects:

(To quote you from earlier) "And if I were starting a business again..."

But a lot of people on here are. And the very people who needed the data the
most had it taken away from them.

~~~
ColinWright
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685671>

------
onion2k
How many complaints should it take? What number represents a quorum on HN? If
a complaint is sufficiently strong, reasoned, and evidenced, then just one
_is_ enough. One person with an exceptional reason for a story to be removed
should be enough to remove it.

Your point should really that the complaints aren't justified properly rather
than there aren't a sufficient number of them.

~~~
mike_tan
The point is, it seems to only take one person to _vehemently_ object.

> complaints aren't justified properly rather than there aren't a sufficient
> number of them

it's not that they aren't "justified properly", it's that they aren't
justified at all.

From my submission: "I hate to be that guy who posts this sort of comment.
Especially on HN. But still: Someone has to say it.

Pointless hipster-TLD is pointless. Utterly pointless."

Is it pointless?

Tell that to codepen.io, or card.io (who got acquired by Paypal).

"But still: Someone has to say it."

Did someone have to say it?

Saying something is pointless over and over doesn't make it pointless. That
seems to be the basis of the argument.

~~~
ColinWright
If no one agreed with them then theirs would be the only flag and there would
be no effect. If several people agreed then there would be several flags, and
that's what appears to happen.

Largely speaking, and with few exceptions, this is a community moderated
forum. Enough of the community decided that the submission wasn't sufficiently
on-topic.

If you feel strongly that the data you presented is on topic then perhaps you
would fare better not simply to post a bare list, but write a blog post about
why short names like this are of value to startups, and how having a short
domain name can radically improve your chances, and how you wrote a script to
create the list, and now you're sharing it because you believe it to be of
value.

You claim the protester gave no reasons for claiming it's pointless, but
equally, you gave no reasons for why it is of value.

And just in case I need to say it again, I'm merely providing my analysis of
this situation through my model of how the community works. I personally am
passing no judgment on how HN works, nor on the community's interests and/or
actions.

~~~
markokocic
> If no one agreed with them then theirs would be the only flag and there
> would be no effect. If several people agreed then there would be several
> flags, and that's what appears to happen.

It would be good if users were given not only flag, but also unflag
possibility. As it is right now, it takes only a few users to flag an article
to disappear, although there might be hundreds users that would be opposed to
that that can affect the flagging process because there is no unflag option.

~~~
ColinWright
There is an unflag option, it's voting that can't be undone, and you can't
downvote a submission.

~~~
markokocic
There is unflag option where you can unflag your own flag, but it doesn't
counter other peoples flags, IIRC. I'm not sure about that now, since flag
right has been removed from my account some time ago, and I don't see neither
flag nor unflag links anymore.

~~~
ColinWright
Why should you ever be able to undo someone else's flag?

~~~
markokocic
Why would someone else's flag affect my front page?

~~~
ColinWright
I really, really don't understand your question.

Consider your front page. It's the same as everyone else's front page. The
ranking of the items is a function of how old each item is, how many points it
has, how many flags it's got, whether it's trip a filter, _etc._

Now I flag an item. That penalizes the item and causes its computed value to
fall. This in turn may cause its position in the rankings to fall, and thus
will affect the front page.

But _the_ front page is _your_ front page, and hence my flagging an item can
affect "your" front page.

How can you think it would be otherwise?

------
tokenadult
The top comment on that story explained why it was a dull, uninteresting
story.

Colin has very patiently reasoned with you about what may have happened (for
the record, I didn't flag that story, and I would never have visited it at all
but for the question I'm seeing in this thread). There is no reason to be
argumentative with Colin; he is just trying to help.

I agree that lists of three-letter domains, or four-letter domains, with this
or that top-level domain suffix make for dreadfully boring submissions. I
think some people massively overestimate the usefulness of a cute domain name.
Hacker News gets plenty of interest even with a domain name like

news.ycombinator.com

and other sites too have better eyeball-attraction value than their names
might suggest.

~~~
mike_tan
You edited your reply.

> Colin has very patiently reasoned with you about what may have happened

And I patiently reasoned back. It's a discussion. Yes, he has been somewhat
helpful, but it doesn't explain how, a seemly increasing, number of
submissions are disappearing from the front page.

> I agree that lists of three-letter domains, or four-letter domains, with
> this or that top-level domain suffix make for dreadfully boring submissions

People were voting it, people were using it to buy domains for projects. I
don't read 100% of the stories on the front page either, but calling
reasonable submissions out seems to be getting somewhat popular.

Are you saying, objectively you can't see how that list is useful to anyone?
Or is this about the submissions not being titillating enough?

