
Ask HN: Was my submitted post nerfed / hidden / shadowbanned? - bredren
I don&#x27;t submit a lot of content, but this morning I submitted this link to a WaPo article on e-cigarette addiction.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20535474<p>It looks like it has been hidden from the front page &#x2F; subsequent pages despite what appears to be a ranking upvote.<p>I don&#x27;t really care about the visibility, but I am curious about the moderation that might have resulted in this content getting shadowbanned.
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minimaxir
It likely triggered the flame war detector. (usually when comments > points)

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bredren
Hm. It does not appear to be a flame war, but I do not know the algo.

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sp332
The actual HN source is not open, but some people have reverse-engineered the
ranking algorithm and I think the threshold is getting 40 comments before 40
upvotes = automatically sunk.

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dang
An early version of HN is bundled with
[http://arclanguage.org/install](http://arclanguage.org/install).

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sp332
The best way to ask about that kind of thing is to email hn@ycombinator.com
(the Contact link at the bottom of the page here).

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bredren
Okay, I'll email and see what happens.

I also note, that this question was also nerfed.

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dang
I don't know what 'nerfed' means, but on HN, a post that doesn't get any
upvotes doesn't go anywhere. That's suitable in this case, since the post was
off topic and broke the site guidelines. It wasn't moderated, nor did the
software do anything to it.

