Ask HN: How can a single person objecting get a post moved from the front page?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5685482

by mike_tan • 13 years ago

7 29 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Recently, when a single person vehemently objects to a post, it disappears off the front page.

Liken a submission to Reddit, or call it over-hyped, and it's a goner.

I've noticed this trend recently, and it just happened with one of my submissions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5684770

Or do votes not count any more?

(I have a feeling this may mysteriously disappear)

ColinWright12• 13 years ago

I have no official standing, but I've been here a while, and I pay attention to community dynamics, so I may have an insight.

It doesn't take many flags from ordinary users to get an item off the front page. Flags carry a heavy penalty, and it seems that just three or four will take an item a long way down the rankings. If one person points out that they think an item is inappropriate, or isn't really of "deep interest" to the hacker culture/mentality, others will stop to wonder, and then they may also flag. Thus a single comment like that will often result in enough flags to take the item down quickly.

I've found a good predictor is the ratio of points to comments. The item you mention has 23 points but 42 comments. People are replying without upvoting, and that is a predictor of something that many will think is not really contributing value to the site as a whole. Correlation is not causation, etc, etc, but I've found it to be a good predictor of what I personally want to read.

So those are my thoughts - they're probably worth about as much as you paid for them.

mike_tan12• 13 years ago

> It doesn't take many flags from ordinary users to get an item off the front page. Flags carry a heavy penalty, and it seems that just three or four will take an item a long way down the rankings. If one person points out that they think an item is inappropriate, or isn't really of "deep interest" to the hacker culture/mentality, others will stop to wonder, and then they may also flag. Thus a single comment like that will often result in enough flags to take the item down quickly.

So the one person, plus a couple of others is all it takes to surpress a story!

> I've found a good predictor is the ratio of points to comments. The item you mention has 23 points but 42 comments. People are replying without upvoting, and that is a predictor of something that many will think is not really contributing value to the site as a whole. Correlation is not causation, etc, etc, but I've found it to be a good predictor of what I personally want to read.

Or it could be a good talking point. On a subject people are interested in -- hence the votes to get it to the front page in the first place.

mike_tan12• 13 years ago

Can I ask you a question, Colin. Do you think the subject of domains is against hacker culture, or anti-startup in any way?

ColinWright12• 13 years ago

I can't comment on hacker culture, or what would be of interest to hackers, or what the HN "community" might regard as being of "deep interest." For me, the list was absolutely pointless, but I'm not looking for a domain.

And if I were starting a business again, I wouldn't care about three character *.io domains. And go look at the discussion - is there anything there of interest to hackers? Really?

Since you ask me personally, that entire thread feels like hackers shooting the breeze over coffee, and it has no substance. You may disagree, I'm sure there are many others who will, and I'm speaking for myself, from my perspective, with my background and interests. I personally wasn't interested in it.

But I didn't flag it - I am pretty parsimonious with flags, reserving them for what I feel is of serious negative value.

onion2k• 13 years ago

How many complaints should it take? What number represents a quorum on HN? If a complaint is sufficiently strong, reasoned, and evidenced, then just one is enough. One person with an exceptional reason for a story to be removed should be enough to remove it.

Your point should really that the complaints aren't justified properly rather than there aren't a sufficient number of them.

mike_tan12• 13 years ago

The point is, it seems to only take one person to vehemently object.

> complaints aren't justified properly rather than there aren't a sufficient number of them

it's not that they aren't "justified properly", it's that they aren't justified at all.

From my submission: "I hate to be that guy who posts this sort of comment. Especially on HN. But still: Someone has to say it.

Pointless hipster-TLD is pointless. Utterly pointless."

Is it pointless?

Tell that to codepen.io, or card.io (who got acquired by Paypal).

"But still: Someone has to say it."

Did someone have to say it?

Saying something is pointless over and over doesn't make it pointless. That seems to be the basis of the argument.

ColinWright12• 13 years ago

If no one agreed with them then theirs would be the only flag and there would be no effect. If several people agreed then there would be several flags, and that's what appears to happen.

Largely speaking, and with few exceptions, this is a community moderated forum. Enough of the community decided that the submission wasn't sufficiently on-topic.

If you feel strongly that the data you presented is on topic then perhaps you would fare better not simply to post a bare list, but write a blog post about why short names like this are of value to startups, and how having a short domain name can radically improve your chances, and how you wrote a script to create the list, and now you're sharing it because you believe it to be of value.

You claim the protester gave no reasons for claiming it's pointless, but equally, you gave no reasons for why it is of value.

And just in case I need to say it again, I'm merely providing my analysis of this situation through my model of how the community works. I personally am passing no judgment on how HN works, nor on the community's interests and/or actions.

tokenadult• 13 years ago

The top comment on that story explained why it was a dull, uninteresting story.

Colin has very patiently reasoned with you about what may have happened (for the record, I didn't flag that story, and I would never have visited it at all but for the question I'm seeing in this thread). There is no reason to be argumentative with Colin; he is just trying to help.

I agree that lists of three-letter domains, or four-letter domains, with this or that top-level domain suffix make for dreadfully boring submissions. I think some people massively overestimate the usefulness of a cute domain name. Hacker News gets plenty of interest even with a domain name like

news.ycombinator.com

and other sites too have better eyeball-attraction value than their names might suggest.

mike_tan12• 13 years ago

"Pointless hipster-TLD is pointless. Utterly pointless."

So pointless that GitHub and codepen.io use them.

edit: You edited your reply...

mike_tan12• 13 years ago

You edited your reply.

> Colin has very patiently reasoned with you about what may have happened

And I patiently reasoned back. It's a discussion. Yes, he has been somewhat helpful, but it doesn't explain how, a seemly increasing, number of submissions are disappearing from the front page.

> I agree that lists of three-letter domains, or four-letter domains, with this or that top-level domain suffix make for dreadfully boring submissions

People were voting it, people were using it to buy domains for projects. I don't read 100% of the stories on the front page either, but calling reasonable submissions out seems to be getting somewhat popular.

Are you saying, objectively you can't see how that list is useful to anyone? Or is this about the submissions not being titillating enough?

Ask HN: How can a single person objecting get a post moved from the front page?

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