Comment by i_cannot_hack
3 days ago
> "flagged" always means that users flagged it, not moderator action. And there are a lot of readers who will flag all submissions about US politics, no matter the polarity of the article.
The thing is that dang has generally not unflagged any posts about topics like these in the past, so there's little reason to think the flagging is only a result of temporary inaction by the moderation team. Rather it is a consistent pattern permitted to exist by said team.
If you're really curious, something more effective and productive than hypothesizing into the void is emailing hn@ycombinator.com. Dang et. al. have always replied and been helpful and forthcoming in answering my questions and concerns.
I have sent an email linking to this discussion, but I think it would be more constructive if the helpful and forthcoming answers happened in public rather than in sent in private email threads to everyone wondering.
Calling discussing something on HN "hypothesizing into the void" is a strange choice of words, either meant to be patronizing toward me specifically or toward all HN users.
> I think it would be more constructive if the helpful and forthcoming answers happened in public
You're in luck, because there are thousands of public answers and you can search them easily: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
If you take a look at some of those answers and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. But it would be good to familiarize yourself with the standard explanations, because they're nearly always adequate to explain what you're seeing, although they will probably leave you frustrated if you feel strongly about the politics of a story.
FWIW, here's a short version: users flag things for various reasons; we turn off flags on a few such stories, but not more; that's because HN isn't a political or current affairs site; which stories get flags turned off is never going to satisfy anyone's political priorities, because the community is in deep disagreement with itself and because moderation consistency is impossible.
People dislike it when a story whose politics they agree with doesn't get to stay on the frontpage, but since it's impossible for all such stories to be on HN's frontpage, this frustration is unavoidable.
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