

Ask PG: Why did the JustFab post get killed? - karterk

Not looking for conspiracies, but the post about JustFab[1] just disappeared off the front page suddenly. This was noticed and discussed in another thread[2] here. It would be great to understandt why this happened. Was it in violation of some HN protocol or was it simply killed by the algorithm?<p>[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6455391
[2]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=6467393
======
ColinWright
In the first case I suspect it simply got flagged by enough people that it got
penalised. Here's its ranking history:

[http://hnrankings.info/6455391/](http://hnrankings.info/6455391/)

The discussion you link to shows the usual conspiracy theories, but this seems
to me to have all the usual hallmarks of enough people thinking the item is
inappropriate and just flagging it.

If you hang around long enough, and pay really close attention, you start to
see the dynamics at work. Most people just throw up their hands and shout
"Conspiracy! Conspiracy!" and demand answers from TPTB. But frankly, this just
looks normal to me.

------
jgrahamc
It was most likely killed by people hitting the 'flag' option on the story.
After a certain number of flags the story gets penalized heavily and drops in
rankings very suddenly.

~~~
brudgers
I've observed that systematic flagging as analogous to voting rings does not
appear to be penalized, and to a degree that makes sense.

The other specific aspect of the JustFab stories was that the first one I saw
was a complaint submitted as "Ask HN:..." based on what happened to an HN'ers
girlfriend. The piece was long enough that it should have been a blog post. In
my opinion, it seemed to record a remarkably high number of upvotes rather
quickly.

Given the timing and those two other unusual features and the rather mediocre
quality of the post, someone may have figured out how to game the HN
software's voting ring detection. That would also possibly account for the
rapid fall.

I ask myself how many stories about series B funding make the front page of
HN? And what are the odds of multiple stories doing so?

To me, the story just didn't seem to have the legs to justify their position.
Of course, others who felt similarly may have flagged them, and so the
flagging theory for their fall remains a reasonable plausibility.

