Comment by testfrequency
17 days ago
Do you have admin notes on the back end for removal decisions by chance?
If you want a sample, a month ago I wrote on an article about a public art installation of a quirky home in England, I wrote:
“The concept of doing things for the sake of art and fun is lost on most Americans”
I realize i’m complaining about HN on HN now, but this is just one of many cases where I feel like moderation on HN never makes sense (to me).
Looks like this is the comment you're referring to? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44206044.
It was flagged by users, not moderators. Users were correct to flag it, because it's an unsubstantive flamebait comment. (Pejorative generalizations about groups of people, especially large groups like a country, usually count as flamebait.)
Btw, nationalistic flamebait is particularly inflammatory. It sounds like you didn't intend your comment as a provocation, but such effects happen regardless of intent.
That’s the one. I do really appreciate you taking time to check and clarify.
I see where you are coming from, and will absolutely keep this in mind going forward on HN. That in no way was an intended bait (as you also presume) - purely just my observation as a designer who lives in the US and often has to travel abroad to have these sort of whimsy public art experiences.
I also saw just yesterday a comment I replied to had been flagged where the user said ““..the EU was being left behind due to AI regulation..”” - that comment was also flagged and removed…but it came back hours later. I suppose again that may have been user flagged, though a mod reviewed it manually and decided to approve it?
Again, I appreciate the work you and the rest of the mod team are doing - I imagine it’s only gotten more and more challenging over the years to maintain civility here - though I am often left with a fragmented user experience as I never get notified when comments are flagged, what the flagged comments even were, and even worse - entire threads become extremely confusing due to lack of hierarchy of context missing.