

Ask HN: is the pushdown of TSA backscatter stories algorithmic or manual? - jedwhite

Just curious. I noticed in the last 24 hours that stories with lots of up votes have been getting pushed down the page and off very quickly, way below stories with way lower votes and more time.<p>Note this is not a criticism if it is editorial judgement. I can see arguments either way for these stories being included on HN. But there are clearly reasonable arguments that this is an interesting issue with a strong technology angle that the community here is expressing interest in.<p>At the same time no one wants to see the site hijacked.<p>So my question is out of curiosity rather than complaint. If it is programmatic, it would be interesting to know if HN is modifying based on content topic profile or the karma of up voters or some other system.
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noodle
its probably a byproduct of flagging. if enough people flag it, it'll die or
it'll get reviewed and get killed. the TSA stuff is more political than
hackery.

~~~
tzs
Considering the number of people on HN involved in startups, though, I'd
expect a lot of people here regularly have to travel by air, and so the TSA
stuff would be of interest.

~~~
patrickk
" _To hackers the recent contraction in civil liberties seems especially
ominous. That must also mystify outsiders. Why should we care especially about
civil liberties? Why programmers, more than dentists or salesmen or
landscapers?

Let me put the case in terms a government official would appreciate. Civil
liberties are not just an ornament, or a quaint American tradition. Civil
liberties make countries rich. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs. civil
liberties, you'd notice a definite trend. Could civil liberties really be a
cause, rather than just an effect? I think so. I think a society in which
people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the
most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most
influential people. Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries
become poor; and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a Laffer
curve for government power, just as for tax revenues. At least, it seems
likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out.
Unlike high tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out to be
a mistake.

This is why hackers worry. The government spying on people doesn't literally
make programmers write worse code. It just leads eventually to a world in
which bad ideas win. And because this is so important to hackers, they're
especially sensitive to it. They can sense totalitarianism approaching from a
distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.

It would be ironic if, as hackers fear, recent measures intended to protect
national security and intellectual property turned out to be a missile aimed
right at what makes America successful. But it would not be the first time
that measures taken in an atmosphere of panic had the opposite of the intended
effect._"

\- from pg's essay: The Word "Hacker".

<http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html>

It seems to me (as a non-American) that America's default response to
terrorism is to deprive itself of ever-more civil liberties. This is why I
believe some on HN deem TSA articles HN-worthy material.

EDIT: Link

~~~
ygd
_"It seems to me (as a non-American) that America's default response to
terrorism is to deprive itself of ever-more civil liberties. This is why I
believe some on HN deem TSA articles HN-worthy material."_

It's not just how America would respond. Almost any country would up security
measures and, as a byproduct, deprive itself of civil liberties.

~~~
irons
_Almost any country would up security measures and, as a byproduct, deprive
itself of civil liberties._

That's exactly wrong:

[http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---
israelifi...](http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---
israelification-high-security-little-
bother?sms_ss=twitter&at_xt=4ce0361af7973d2e,0)

~~~
hga
Except that it sure doesn't look like the Israeli system could scale to US
traffic volumes.

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alex_c
Was just about to ask something similar. I personally feel that most of those
stories did not belong on the front page, but such stories usually end up
[dead], not lower on the list than other (older) stories with fewer votes and
comments.

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smanek
I could be wrong, but I seem to have noticed that articles with a high comment
to upvote ratio fall off the top more quickly. If that's true, it may be the
case in those articles.

~~~
jedwhite
The ratios were highly variable - while on home the couple of stories in
question got a lot of up votes quickly, but varying levels of comments. It
doesn't appear from that to be the case that the ratio impacted the rate at
which they dropped down.

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jedwhite
It appears this will remain a mystery, as this question itself also appears to
be about to drop off the home page.

It is one of the great challenges with any ranking system - how to moderate
based on topic within a community of interest - so I thought it was worth
raising.

