
Ask HN: Mods: why is every story about a major news event getting flagged? - anigbrowl
I&#x27;ve seen 5 different stories about the fact of the Russian ambassador being shot dead get flagged off HN in the last hour despite many upvotes. If this isn&#x27;t considered suitable for HN, then a little guidance to that effect would be welcome.
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niftich
HN Guidelines [1]:

 _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._

 _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they 're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic._

This assassination falls squarely within politics and crime, and it's
definitely something that'd get covered on TV news (and is). Clearly, some
people felt that for these reasons, it's off-topic, and likely because it
would be exceedingly difficult for such a story's HN comments comments to not
pivot back to politics, geopolitical speculation, and the like. While stories
like this have trended on occasion, there's not much substance here. While the
event may or may not turn out to be relevant for all of us on a world sphere,
it's more likely than not to be off-topic for this particular forum.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
anigbrowl
The last NYT story I saw had ~20 upvotes, suggesting it is in fact of interest
to hackers. I've been here about 7x longer than you, I don't need you to tell
me what the HN guidelines say. Non-tech stories of global significance are
frequently discussed here and always have been.

~~~
DanBC
> I don't need you to tell me what the HN guidelines say.

And yet three people posted a link to the guidelines, probably in response to
"If this isn't considered suitable for HN, then a little guidance to that
effect would be welcome."

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detaro
Not a mod, but the rules are pretty clear on this

 _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they 're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV
news, it's probably off-topic._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Also, if you want an answer from the mods please e-mail them:

 _Please don 't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us
questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you
want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com. _

EDIT: and here is @dang calling this explicitly OT:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13213437](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13213437)

------
tlb
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html),
2nd paragraph.

------
internaut
Some things don't change Anigbrowl.

[http://imgur.com/a/sj98U](http://imgur.com/a/sj98U)

I'll be in the HNchat.

