
Ask HN: Has the HN entry about Sam Altman running for office just been removed? - camillomiller
I&#x27;m sure it topped the home page ten minutes ago. I came back two minutes ago to see if there were any comments, and the entry is nowhere to be found. 
What happened?<p>This was the story: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2017&#x2F;05&#x2F;y-combinator-head-who-pushes-basic-income-is-reportedly-running-for-office&#x2F;
======
dang
I'll answer this in a few minutes. The answer is what it usually is (user
flags and/or dupe) but I suppose a bit more explanation might be helpful.

Edit: ok, here you go:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342198)
was flagged as a dupe because it points to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337507),
which at 109 points and 41 comments clearly passes the 'significant attention'
test for duplicates
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)).
Did that story belong on HN in the first place? Yes and no. On the one hand
it's sensational and super close to home. On the other, it's far from
substantive. All that happened is a gossip column published one side of a
conversation and then the click-starved trade sites farmed it out in their
usual fashion. If there's an 'interesting phenomenon' in HN's sense here, I'd
say it's that Willie Brown became an old-school, Herb-Caen-style society
columnist after his incredibly long political career. I had no idea.

A couple more points about standard HN practice. First, when a story hasn't
happened yet, there's usually little value in discussing it. Most stories that
haven't happened, never do happen. We call this category "announcement of an
announcement" and have learned over the years that it is the low-hanging fruit
of offtopicness. Some recent comments on this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14311910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14311910)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314105).
For HN purposes, there's no harm in waiting for the actual thing to occur.
Patience is a virtue i.e. a strength.

Second, when stories about YC are involved, we moderate HN less, not more.
That's literally the first principle of HN moderation:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20no...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment).
This case is a funny one though. What does 'moderating less' mean? If we mark
a submission about this as a dupe or penalize it as fluff, some say we're
moderating HN to suppress an unwanted story. But suppose it spent the day on
HN's front page instead—then others would say we were moderating HN to
stealth-promote a political career. That's a classic Bateson double bind:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind).

------
minimaxir
Also, in general when a story disappears while not being a dupe:

> Users flagged it. That's nearly always the explanation.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337524)

~~~
camillomiller
Ok, I'd love to understand why a perfectly regular piece of news was flagged,
then. Definitively something not transparent going on, on a very sensitive
subject for the community.

~~~
onewaystreet
But it's not a perfectly regular piece of news. It's a rumor. Hacker News
isn't a gossip site. If/when Sam announces he's running the announcement will
not get flagged.

------
yev
Maybe people flagged it as not all HN readers live in US and care about US
politics.

------
jswrenn
It was marked as a dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342198)

~~~
camillomiller
Which was flagged... Why? Said dupe was ON TOP of the home page, whereas the
other entry was definitively not popular. Result: the news has been buried. Am
I allowed to say I smell something foul?

~~~
probably_wrong
Of course you are allowed to say that, but at the same time, I would have
totally flagged that story if I had seen it for the same reasons I flagged
this one: I don't live in the US, I don't care about politics, and I have no
interest in random rumors.

~~~
joshmanders
> I would have totally flagged that story if I had seen it for the same
> reasons I flagged this one: I don't live in the US, I don't care about
> politics

Why flag though? Is it because parent threads don't have downvotes so people
opt to flagging?

Politics and rumors aside, I'm confused by why people flag something that they
just don't care to read, instead of going onto the next story. If a post makes
the front page, it's probably a good case that it's a subject people want to
talk about. By flagging it because you don't care for it, makes no sense to
me.

~~~
dang
> _I 'm confused by why people flag something that they just don't care to
> read, instead of going onto the next story._

It's because the front page space is so limited. Each story there takes a
place that could go to many other interesting things.

~~~
joshmanders
But "other interesting things" is subjective...

I don't know how many flags it takes for it to be taken down but if it makes
it to the front page, does the number of upvotes change how many flags it
takes?

~~~
dang
It's subjective in the sense that people disagree about specific cases and
that there's interpretation involved—that's true. But HN's notion of
'interesting' as described at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)
is narrower than you might think. For example, it is not the same thing as
'like'—not even close.

Of course people use upvotes to signal 'like' all the time. That's inevitable,
and one reason why both flags and moderation are necessary as counterweights.

~~~
joshmanders
Ah, makes sense. Thanks for clarifying, dang.

------
angry-hacker
All in all I hope we can see Thiel against him to balance it out.

