Ask HN: I'm trying to understand flagging a submission

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40650528

by Spod_Gaju • 2 years ago

1 13 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

So I submitted an A Substack article that I wrote and I understand this could be misconstrued as promotion, but it was not promotion. Just an idea I wanted to share with people. It seemed like it was getting some traction when suddenly it was flagged.

I don’t know who to reach out to or ask why this would happen and I don’t know if this was done by, hacker news done by people who saw the article.

Thanks for any info.

pwg• 2 years ago

why this would happen and I don’t know if this was done by, hacker news done by people who saw the article.

Flagging is done by regular users. So it would have been regular users who saw your submission and then flagged it.

Why? -- well answering that requires a mind-reading skill we don't have.

talldayo3• 2 years ago

I think people flagged it because it is considered extremely poor-taste to share medical research not furnished by a doctor. It's fine to open a topic for discussion, but this is not a site staffed by trained medics or anything; most of us are nerds, we'll just be arguing over something inconsequential anyways.

So, I think your submission was good-faith but people were right to flag it. It's not really the sort of discussion that ever ends well online, especially when it's not a medical forum staffed by professionals that can mediate the discussion.

Spod_Gaju5• 2 years ago

OK, I can understand this, but I think it’s short sighted.

I mean, shouldn’t information stand on its own despite where it comes from? Because this argument is kind of a logical fallacy, attacking the messenger. I mean, I get it. There’s a lot of people saying some really stupid stuff and it frustrates me as much as it frustrates most people.

But one comment there said they wouldn’t even read the article because I wasn’t a doctor. But they don’t know the work I put in or what I understand or the amount of researchers and doctors I talk to you. For instance, I helped a Stanford researcher design, a clinical trial looking at manganese deficiency for people with chronic fatigue syndrome.

And besides, look at the research papers that are coming out now they’re all being retracted and we’re supposed to trust them?

I don’t know I guess this is just kind of frustrating because breaking through dogma needs an open mind and I’m afraid because all of the bullshit noise that people with good ideas who are thinking outside of a dogmatic Ideology just het shut down.

Anyway, thanks for letting me know.

talldayo3• 2 years ago

But they don’t know the work I put in or what I understand or the amount of researchers and doctors I talk to you.

I mean, that's really the root of the problem. When someone has a doctorate in a topic, you can generally trust the quality of their research since they had to pass a rigorous routine. Not always of course, but that's why peer-review exists. With your Medium article, we're taking everything you say with the hope that it's correct and if you're not... who's going to retract your article for you?

The medical journals aren't all perfect, but the reason why journals exist at all is to avoid situations like this. I admire your commitment to researching interesting things, but speculating on medicine feels best left to the qualified people.

JohnFen• 2 years ago

shouldn’t information stand on its own despite where it comes from?

In an ideal world, sure. But the reality is that nobody can know that information is any good without confirming it, and nobody has the time to do the research necessary to confirm all of the information we get.

So it's necessary to take shortcuts, and one of the most common shortcuts is to rely on a trusted expert to have done that research for us.

But then, how do you know someone is a trusted expert if you don't personally know or have researched them?

So it's necessary to take a shortcut for that, as well, and one of the most common of those shortcuts is to rely on credentials and professional reputation.

When someone who I don't know is giving me (for example) medical information, and they have no appropriate credentials in the field, I will tend to ignore them. To do otherwise can be a ticket to kookytown.

(I doubt I would have flagged that article, personally, though. When I flag an article is it almost always because it's just a transparent ad with no additional redeeming value.)

troydavis2• 2 years ago

I don’t know who to reach out to

If the other answers here don't answer your question, there's a contact email address on https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Spod_Gaju5• 2 years ago

Thanks!

Spod_Gaju5• 2 years ago

I can’t see the contact Email on that page. Is it because I’m on a Smart phone?

troydavis2• 2 years ago

No, it’s because you need to read closer :-) Find for “hn@“

That said, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40650590 answered your question as thoroughly as anyone can.

sickofparadox• 2 years ago

FWIW I was following your thread the other day and through it was interesting. I look forward to hearing about whatever ADHD stuff you alluded to in the comments.

Ask HN: I'm trying to understand flagging a submission

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