Comment by Xeamek
8 months ago
Can any1 explain how HN algo works that this post, which at time of writing has 355p, 180comments while being posted 1 hour ago, isn't even on first page (ranked 31)???
8 months ago
Can any1 explain how HN algo works that this post, which at time of writing has 355p, 180comments while being posted 1 hour ago, isn't even on first page (ranked 31)???
It set off the flamewar detector, got flagged by users, and got downweighted by a mod.
The 'customer support of last resort' genre is common and not usually a good fit for HN [1]. If people feel this story is unusually relevant and interesting, I'm not sure I agree—long experience has taught us that one-sided articles like this nearly always leave out critical information—but I also don't mind yielding in an occasional specific case, so I've rolled back the penalties on this thread.
The issue from our point of view is not about story X or company Y—it's a systemic one: the most popular genres of submission (especially the rage-inducing ones) get massively over-represented by default, so countervailing mechanisms are needed [2] if we're to have a space for the more intellectually curious stories that the site is meant for.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I would be very happy to hear Cloudflare's actual side of this. (Or - it would have been great if they had given their side to us before getting into this mess). The only critical information from our side that I'm aware of is that we're a casino with multiple domains - which is why I put that right at the top. But most of the info should be relevant to any business interacting with CF.
I do admit that I originally drafted this article as a "customer support of last resort", since that seems to work well for CF specifically. But it's too late for that anyways by now - the problem is "resolved" by fire and we don't plan to move back.
I purely posted it now as a precautionary tale for other people because of all the pain it has caused us. So the audience is tech people in most companies of small size that will hit more traffic at some point in the future.
My experience with Cloudflare is that anytime “Trust and Safety” are involved, no one will ever be told anything. Even if it’s a totally benign or even good situation. Even if they find a case in your favor or resolve an issue for you.
Whoever runs that team really, really gets off on being withholding, as Buster Bluth would say.
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Yes and I didn't mean you'd omitted critical information intentionally. It's in the nature of these incidents.
> The 'customer support of last resort' genre is common and not usually a good fit for HN
They're already off Cloudflare, I would see this story more as "Dealing with tech company X is a business risk" cautionary tale.
Those are variations of the same thing from an HN systems point of view. The problem is that there are way too many of these stories to be interesting and/or to all be on HN's front page, but they tend to attract upvotes anyway.
As I said above, we're happy to make exceptions for the occasional thread that is genuinely of interest, but sometimes the process for idenitfying those is "apply standard penalties -> generate howls of protest -> eventually find out about community pushback (e.g. in this case someone emailed hn@ycombinator.com) -> restore post".
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if you check sites that track HN's rankings, it was ranked #1 for a while, then it suddenly dropped to #27 and continued declining https://hnrankings.info/40481808/
thanks for sharing. I didn't even know this was a thing! Comparing to 4 or 5 others, this definitely looks more like a step function into obscurity unlike the other lol
yes that's pretty blatant isn't it
My guess for why this would be flagged: its a gambling website so people are unsympathetic. Definitely an abuse of the flagging system.
Maybe HN needs a flagging ring detector as well as its voting ring detector.
You can always email the mods if you believe you’re witnessing an attack on either a single article and/or the site; they have many more tools to reveal concerted group assaults than we do.
Wonder how many of the people flagging it work for Cloudflare?
I though flagged content showed a "[flagged]" in the title?
It's progressive. 1 user flagging it doesn't mark it [flagged] but probably contributes to the ranking
Flags below the [flagged] threshold are invisible but still act to downweight the post.
I've noticed that cloudflare complaint threads get flagged with surprising and unwarranted regularity.
Almost, like … maybe one of the “protection” providers might have ways to suppress bad media?
puts on tin foil hat and looks around nervously
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They’re boring, repetitive, and uninteresting with surprising regularity. It’s no surprise that many of them get flagged as a result.
Yeah I commented, refreshed and was shocked to see it disappear. It's ironic that we're (reasonably) asking for transparency about a post which is kind of about non-transparency.
It could have flags on it or maybe the flamewar detector got tripped.
Moderator action seems unlikely because it’s still on the second page.
Remember, on HN there is such a thing as commenting too fast
If a thread is too interesting, it gets penalized, can't have too many people commenting on an exciting topic