Comment by i_cannot_hack

3 days ago

> 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;

I think you have misunderstood the request. The request was not to clarify the general moderation policy, but rather clarify the reasoning why this specific story was not considered as one of the few stories where such action was taken.

I have already clarified my specific concerns regarding flagging and this specific story in another post in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46745562

People are curious to hear the reasoning for keeping the flag on this specific post, since thought has obviously been put to it and a decision to keep it was made after thoughtful consideration. I.e. which of the several different policies you highlighted had the most weight in this decision, and which mitigating circumstances were considered as reasons for bypassing this policy and removing the flag (even if they were discarded in the end).

It is precisely because consistent moderation is not possible that this is needed (otherwise it would be easy to just refer to the consistent guidelines). The quality of the moderation depends on the judgement and reasoning of the moderators, and the only way for the users to form their own picture (good or bad) of this judgement is to ask to hear how it is applied to specific scenarios where it is ambiguous.

I am very sympathetic to the fact that it must be tedious and sometimes repetitive, but if the decision is controversial I think it is an important part of moderation and important for the community as a whole.

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i_cannot_hack

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93po  3 days ago

> but rather clarify the reasoning why this specific story was not considered as one of the few stories where such action was taken.

i think if you read more past discussions around moderation (including one dang directly linked) the reason for this would be obvious. read the search results for flags being turned off.

moderators try, as they said, to let the community moderate itself. they try to impress very little bias into the system. but they do try to promote constructive and interesting conversation, and the more things deviate from that mission, the less likely it is to be actively encouraged to be on HN

the likelihood of the conversation around this news post is very unlikely to be interesting and constructive. people have very entrenched beliefs and no one's mind is going to get changed from emotionally loaded comments on this post

additionally, this is now also the third post of this nature to be on HN in the past weeks, and there's unlikely to be anything new to the conversation added this time that wasn't covered by the previous thousands of comments on previous submissions

they are not actively reducing the visibility of this post. they're just declining to artificially inflate its visibility above the same criteria 99% of submissions also have

dang  3 days ago

My post contains all the information you need to answer that question. The current story is obviously a flamewar topic, a political battle topic, and a repetitive topic. I'm not saying it isn't important—of course it's important, far more important than most things on HN's front page*. The issue is that HN's frontpage is not optimized for importance but for something else (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15948011 (Dec 2017)

  • i_cannot_hack  3 days ago

    I think the unease many people feel here is that this strict bureaucracy taken to its extreme conclusion would become something akin to a tragicomical farce: "No posts about the controversial nukes raining over Europe allowed, such flamewars would destroy our valuable forum for discussing the really interesting and intellectual political topics".

    Clearly there must be a line somewhere. It was not here and today, but when and where is it? Trying desperately to cling onto normality at every cost when the actual reality is far from normal becomes a destructive endeavour in the end.

    I have been a regular visitor on this site for 14 years, and have have never spoken up about this before. In fact I have always stood by the moderation policy and appreciated it. But I have a line where avoiding "inflammatory discussions" simply becomes obstinate and clueless, and harmful in the way that it gives convenient cover for the actors committing the real inflammatory acts, counting on people not caring enough to give them grief for it. And for me, that line has been crossed.

    I'm curious: Have you not noticed any increase in people saying "this time it's different", or that different kinds of people are saying it now? Is it really just the same old people repeating the same old phrase to you?

    > a repetitive topic

    Small note: It has never been a repetitive topic, since all discussions about ICE performing extrajudicial killings have been quickly flagged of the front page and never (as a topic) discussed by the wider community.