Thanks for that. I hadn't seen it. But, now that I have, I'm puzzled by the moderator reasoning given that essentially every Israel/Gaza post violates all the guidelines.
Is interpreting guidelines literally or narrowly worth it? The word itself suggests that might be a mistake.
Engagement (or not) is the ultimate judge here I'd suggest. I regularly view the "new" category and see countless examples there that could be considered off topic. Quite often this is true for those that make it to the front page. Hulk Hogan's death being a recent prime example.
I personally believe the Israel/Gaza subject is important enough and on topic enough, but can understand the opposite perspective too.
There are already forums in which engagement is the key metric. The reason this place is valuable is because it has guidelines that prevent it from becoming that. I used to think that that was also the aspiration of the moderators - that they were happy to sacrifice "engagement" for encouraging the audience to which they wanted to appeal. This certainly seems to be their revealed preference when admonishing commenters not to be snarky or mean. Unfortunately, though they see these specks of sawdust clearly, they have no real explanation why the log of divisive, political posts are not dead at submission. Behold the triumph of tone over substance.
Maybe my memory is faulty or maybe I was less interested in the off-topic posts, but I thought that, in the past, there used to less bending the knee to the mob and more appealing to the stated guidelines.
It is not a community-enhancing action to publish guidelines and make exceptions because it's what a mob wants. That's not what moderating is. If the overriding guideline is engagement, then fine; say that and eliminate the other superfluous ones. It will save a lot of space on the Guidelines page and people coming here will understand that it is r/hn.
So: 1. Disallowing posts like these is worth it in order to promote the goals often expressed by the moderators for this site and 2. It does not require a narrow interpretation of the guidelines to conclude that posts similar to these violate all the guidelines. Let's see what happens with this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45681400
And it turns out your latest comments are on the same topic, which is fine, I'm happy to keep responding.
On this:
- “there used to less bending the knee to the mob”
- “make exceptions because it's what a mob wants”
"Mobs" have nothing to do with it.
The answer is in your root comment: "unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon". When a politics story makes the front page, it's because it contains "significant new information". That's literally the acid test we think about, that we use internally when discussing it and that we often use in comments explaining our reasoning.
When we think about these stories we're not thinking about engagement at all. That's never a consideration. And we're not thinking about appealing to the "lowest common denominator", which is what the term "mob" implies.
All we're thinking about is:
- does this story contain “significant new information”?
- will many of the most positive contributors to HN think that this is an important topic to discuss here?
If it's yes to both then we'll turn off flags and spend the day trying to keep the thread healthy. If not then we'll let it disappear.
Search 'Trump' and you'll see plenty of submissions that should be removed according to your interpretation of the guidelines.
Seeing something and objecting to its presence doesn't mean it has suddenly appeared, nothing has changed other than your sensitivity for whatever particular reason. It's how you are applying your perspective that is the difference I would suggest.
Fine. All this stuff should be removed notwithstanding your enthusiasm for it. Whether or not I previously noticed it or objected to it is beside the point. Either the guidelines mean something or they don't. This isn't a subtle issue.
> and how exactly this post is "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon" ?
We haven't said it is. In fact, we haven't really looked at the article. This submission got effectively no attention or engagement on HN. It spent zero time on the front page, and most of the discussion is this meta subthread. So, there's no aberration from the guidelines in the case of this item.
We also haven't seen that one. It also spent no time on the front page and had little discussion. Nobody has contacted us asking us to unflag it and making a case for it containing "significant new information".
> also, in general, you can broadly apply "they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon" to any given article
That's false and is the most important point to recognise about HN. Most of what is in the mainstream news is not "new". It's mostly the same story with different details (i.e., most day-to-day political drama, celebrity news, crime stories, etc). Or they're notable for being unusual (e.g., person who wins the lottery three times) but not any kind of interesting new phenomenon.
Sometimes a mainstream news item really is about an interesting new phenomenon, and that's when it qualifies for HN.
>So, there's no aberration from the guidelines in the case of this item.
as other guy wrote, this article essentially violates all rules. and there is no "new phenomenon" described in it. Why it's not flagged/killed by you ?
There were dozens of times when articles about Israel were unflagged by mod team. Articles that violate all guidelines. Articles that are not even news but speculations. Articles with quality of sourcing that will be typically laughed out of the room here. Articles that 100% of time turn into circlejerk about Israel in which all dissenting opinions and facts (backed with links) are flagged away in order to suppress them (how does it goes with "important topic to discuss here")
quoting you
>- does this story contain “significant new information”?
>- will many of the most positive contributors to HN think that this is an important topic to discuss here?
>If it's yes to both then we'll turn off flags and spend the day trying to keep >the thread healthy. If not then we'll let it disappear.
This is laughable
And i won't say that this forum becomes reddit. it worst than reddit. at reddit mods of subreddits are honest enough with putting in guidelines "no zionists are allowed here". you hide behind "significant new information" and "important to discuss"
> as other guy wrote, this article essentially violates all rules. and there is no "new phenomenon" described in it. Why it's not flagged/killed by you ?
We don’t ever kill things unilaterally unless it’s blatant spam or troll content. We rely on community flags. That’s the case regardless of the topic.
What I’m saying about this post isn’t on our radar as it had barely any votes or discussion and no front page time. It effectively doesn’t exist except for people using it to prosecute this meta-debate about past threads.
> There were dozens of times when articles about Israel were unflagged by mod team
Please list the “dozens of times”. There have been a small number of times when major breaking stories about Israel/Palestine have been discussed here. They got into our radar because they were already large numbers of upvotes and comments, and also significant numbers of flags, but based on what we saw in the story and discussion, it seemed to have enough gravity to warrant turning off the flags so the topic could be discussed.
> Articles that 100% of time turn into circlejerk about Israel in which all dissenting opinions and facts (backed with links) are flagged away in order to suppress them
In those threads I personally unkilled and preserved plenty of comments that were making the pro-Israel case, even in the face of complaints about those users via email. I also flagged (helping to kill) plenty of comments that were attacking the Israel position in ways that broke the guidelines.
My hope with topic like these is that, if they are major stories in the media that are being talked about globally, due to having something “new” about them, then HN should be the best place to discuss them, because unlike a subreddit dedicated to a topic, we’re not talking about it daily or weekly; we can save our time and resources for when it really matters.
As moderators, we can’t determine in advance if a story is “true”, or if something like a U.N. committee’s declaration is fair; that’s what the discussion is for - to get into the details and let the truth emerge and the best arguments prevail. I learn much from seeing arguments put by either side in these discussions. That’s the entire purpose of vigorous debate - to understand both sides of a topic in detail so you can make the most informed judgement about it.
HN is not the reason these stories are major topics in the world; they’re major topics in the world before they make it to HN, and as much as we sometimes wish we could be an isolated cocoon that is quarantined from what is going on elsewhere, we’ve learned we can’t be that; we can’t always act as though these events and topics don’t exist.
What we can do is make HN a place where everyone who cares about the topic can present the facts as they understand them and present the arguments they believe in, and let the most sound arguments win out, and that’s what HN’s ethos and guidelines exist to facilitate.
What you and mhb seem to be advocating is that we should make an upfront judgment that a story is false or a U.N. committee’s declaration is unfair, and overrule the community’s (and world’s) feeling that it’s an important topic to discuss. In our experience, that kind of pre-judgment and unilateral action is the fastest way to destroy community trust, and community trust is the only thing that keeps us going.
I emailed as you suggested, and that's fine, but I thought I'd add a comment from the email since it seems relevant.
The phrasing of the guidelines led me to believe that the "significant new information" was intended as a secondary or clarifying guideline. Otherwise why not just list it as one of the on-topic criteria?
This clarification of the exception is relevant: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." If I watched TV news, I'd expect to see many of the posts we're discussing on it.
"New information" is an essentially tautological fig leaf that could justify the inclusion of anything that shows up in the eponymous news. If I need to, I can find numerous examples of flame wars incited by posts that violate all the guidelines except, possibly, this one about significant new information. Which seems to make this into a discussion about what is "significant". I think a community-trust enhancing action would be to eliminate this criterion.
Some examples of posts which violate all the guidelines except, perhaps, being new information and also, perhaps, significant. Although, arguably, if they are new and significant would be covered by TV news.
