

Ask HN mods: Why are you killing Dropbox submissions? - selmnoo

As depicted here: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;qymKtS3.png (see http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hnrankings.info&#x2F; for actual page)<p>The submissions all have tons of comments (including by many of HN most prolific and high rated users). Sure the conversation is messy, but that is often the nature of important conversations. We <i>have</i> to talk about things which make us uncomfortable. We <i>have</i> to talk about events that involve gay right, human rights, etc. when they involve new technology companies. If we don&#x27;t, we are not being responsible humans.
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brudgers
Since several submitted articles remain on the front page, it appears that the
downward movement is prompted by flagging from the community, not by explicit
moderator action. I suspect that the flagging and any moderator action for
each story is in response to the tenor and tone and scale and direction of the
discussion in the comments, not for the story itself.

HN has implicit standards for discussions. There are many many places on the
internet where this story can be discussed. Indeed, there are places which
embrace opinions about the Bush Administrations, the Obama Administration,
what is the proper nature of American patriotism, and what role the US and
it's corporations should and do play in international affairs.

But for better or worse, HN is not really among them.

~~~
thwest
For worse, surely. As a startup employee and HN reader, I'm disgusted with the
amoral money chasing culture we've grown. The attitude towards politics here
reminds me of a child plugging his ears, squinting hard and shouting "la la la
la la I can't hear you". For all the talk of disruption, the domain of
problems we are allowed to apply that to is horribly small.

~~~
chomp
Why do we have to be amoral money-chasers if we don't want politics on HN?
Personally, I come here for tech and code discussions, and elsewhere for
politics and current events. I don't feel politics is particularly interesting
and is most often off-topic per the guidelines, so I flag all of those.

~~~
gress
Dropbox hiring Rice is at the intersection of Tech and Politics/Ethics. It's
clearly relevant to the tech community.

If you want to exclude the story because it has political content, you may not
be personally amoral, but you are pressing for HN itself to be amoral.

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dang
To my knowledge, no one has killed any of these stories. The two I believe
you're asking about are both on the front page. Their rankings have been
reduced by (a) massive user flagging and (b) moderation penalties we normally
apply to political causes and internet indignation.

In the time that I've taken to write this, the current post was killed because
users flagged it. I've unkilled it in order to post this response.

Update: We buried one of the stories and lightened the other.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7568823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7568823)

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TheBiv
Bc HN has a flamewar index, where if conversations begin a flamewar, then they
disappear

~~~
gress
The Dropbox threads are actually well reasoned and collegial. The 'flamewar
index' is failing spectacularly.

~~~
wglb
I disagree.

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rosem
As of May 2013, Y Combinator had funded over 500 startups.[20][21] The number
of startups funded in each cycle has been gradually increasing. The first
cycle, in summer 2005, had eight startups. In the summer 2012 cycle, there
were more than 80. Y Combinator has since reduced their class size down to
less than 50 with their winter 2013 batch, but they expect to grow it
again.[22]

Some of the better-known funded companies include Scribd, reddit, Airbnb,
Dropbox, Disqus and Heroku.[20]

