

Ask HN: Does HN not cover breaking news? - daveloyall

There is a current news event I am interested in.<p>As a discerning consumer of news, I was interested to see what the HN community has to say about the subject.<p>But, there are zero live posts about the topic.<p>I know that HN doesn&#x27;t cover politics...<p>But, doesn&#x27;t a news story cease to belong to any one category once it becomes the number one front-page headline across the USA?<p>Was I wrong to look forward to reading comments from Baltimore hackers this morning?
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gus_massa
From the guideline:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _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._

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ColinWright
This exact question turned up in reference to the Sandy Hook school shooting.
A few of us asked why it was so prominent on HN given then guidelines, and in
particular I said:

    
    
        Yes, this is important, yes, it's newsworthy.
        No, it's not "Hacker News".  It's all over the
        news, and there's nothing specific about hacking,
        or start-ups.  It's not even of "deep interest"
        in any real sense. It's tragedy, pure and simple,
        and then it becomes politics.[0]
    

PG replied (in reference to the guidelines you quote) with:

    
    
        Note those words most and probably.
    

Another accused me:

    
    
        Try on a little human emotion and sensitivity for
        size: this isn't your site to police.  Even pg has
        pointed out the precision of the wording which you
        seemingly ignored.
    

I usually stay out of discussions about on-topic/off-topic now. There's
nothing to be gained. I just flag things according to my own criteria and move
on.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922380)

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bvrlt
Link to HN front page:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451652).

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blueflow
If you think it belongs here, just submit it.

Please consider that things highly specific to a single country or non-
technical/non-scientific links may be downvoted.

~~~
ColinWright
Submissions cannot be down-voted, only flagged.

~~~
blueflow
Another name for a similar mechanism.

~~~
ColinWright
Similar, perhaps, but not identical. For example, on comments, flagging has a
much more drastic effect than a simple downvote, so keeping the conceptual
difference clear is useful.

