Ah, that was the one I remember seeing. In such cases, if (a) article is substantive and (b) there is a chance of an intellectually curious discussion, we turn off the flags and (probably also) downweight the article as a counterweight to sensationalism, which always attracts extra upvotes. In this case (b) seemed hopeless, so I didn't.
Sorry, I kept editing, probably after you had already posted. And I should be clear that I don't have a strong opinion on whether this particular article is actually appropriate for discussion here. I do think it's an example, though, of how certain topics are "off limits" because a small group does not want them to be discussed. For me, it exacerbates my long standing worries that abuse of flagging (or the counter-reaction thereto) may be the eventual downfall of HN.
> I do think it's an example, though, of how certain topics are "off limits" because a small group does not want them to be discussed.
> For me, it exacerbates my long standing worries that abuse of flagging (or the counter-reaction thereto) may be the eventual downfall of HN.
It doesn't really worry me, but topics that I may have wanted to discuss on HN long ago and try to today on some posts, I usually spend more time elsewhere discussing them now and less time on HN doing so because they usually have a very short shelf because of the above and that's fine for me, but maybe not HN.
The typical ones are horrific, with many having been started explicitly for political battle.
The common tactic for something like "virus from a lab" would be to move the goalposts and hope the reader doesn't notice. Breeding coronaviruses in a lab actually happened, with scientific papers published about how genetically engineered cells with both human and bat traits were used to help the bat coronaviruses adapt to growing well in human cells. A typical fact checker tactic would be to purposely confuse that fact with the claim that the virus was created from scratch, modeled in a computer and assembled by a machine. Supposed experts say that this is impossible, and so the fact checker can claim that the fact was proven false... but it was a straw man.
The URL you gave is not quite so directly misdirecting, but still vague and IMHO just wrong. I've looked over the scientific papers, and I think the evidence is clear.
> In such cases, if (a) article is substantive and (b) there is a chance of an intellectually curious discussion, we turn off the flags and (probably also) downweight the article as a counterweight to sensationalism, which always attracts extra upvotes. In this case (b) seemed hopeless, so I didn't.
That's the point, in my opinion at least.
Above you say:
> This site may feel like a "consensus echo chamber" but in reality it is nothing remotely close to that. I think you may be running into the notice-dislike bias...
If a certain class of articles get flagged by a large number of people who have a strong dislike for the topic, and you as the moderator are ok with it because here at HN with the culture being the way it is you allow it to be removed because it won't generate "intellectually curious discussion", then how can you say that HN is not a "consensus echo chamber" when it comes to these particular topics?
It seems to me there are some very obvious errors in your explanation above. You can run this forum however you want, but being aware and transparent about what topics are and are not allowed seems like a better way to do it than disingenuously explaining away flaws. No person is omniscient, however it may seem that way. Just as you can observe flaws in other people evaluation that they themselves cannot see, is it not possible that you too may have some flaws that you cannot see?
It's more complex than just "what topics are and are not allowed". Threads are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. One thread might discuss a topic within the site guidelines while another thread on the same topic might turn into a massive flamewar. Subtle (or not so subtle) differences in article, headline, URL, site design, and who knows what else can make the difference too. The decision I made was based on the thread, not the topic. As I mentioned above, we reduced the penalty on one of those threads. We wouldn't do that if the topic were "not allowed".
Is it possible that I may have some flaws that I cannot see? That is beyond possible, it is certain. The trouble with these arguments though is that operating this place is a lot more complicated than people assume it is, and so they say oversimplified things like "aha, you are suppressing topic X so HN is an echo chamber after all" and I have to try to fill in the information gap before we can have a sensible conversation about what the actual flaws might be. I'm super interested in the flaws—but first we have to be talking about the same world, which unfortunately is already not so easy.
I am well aware that it is complicated. When a controversial thread is reported, a rather large number of variables are referenced by your mind - some of these you are aware of, some of them you are not.
But at the end of the day, in the aggregate, either there is zero slant (by topic) whatsoever, or there is greater than zero. Based on my anecdotal observations over a long period of time, my perception is that there are indeed certain topics that are less welcome than others, and the assurances I've read, while plausible, do not seem adequate. If we were able to see a log of removed topics it may be more reassuring.
I'd rather HN had more freedom of topic discussion at least occasionally as an experiment, and then perhaps we could see if some modifications to guidelines (perhaps just on those threads) could keep things a bit more civilized. If no site is willing to put some effort into finding a workable approach to this problem, it seems reasonable that the world is just going to keep becoming more polarized as people spend more time at sites that are designed from scratch to be information bubbles.
