Ask HN mods: Why are you killing Dropbox submissions?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7568330

by selmnoo • 12 years ago

28 18 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

As depicted here: http://i.imgur.com/qymKtS3.png (see http://hnrankings.info/ for actual page)

The submissions all have tons of comments (including by many of HN most prolific and high rated users). Sure the conversation is messy, but that is often the nature of important conversations. We have to talk about things which make us uncomfortable. We have to talk about events that involve gay right, human rights, etc. when they involve new technology companies. If we don't, we are not being responsible humans.

brudgers5• 12 years ago

Since several submitted articles remain on the front page, it appears that the downward movement is prompted by flagging from the community, not by explicit moderator action. I suspect that the flagging and any moderator action for each story is in response to the tenor and tone and scale and direction of the discussion in the comments, not for the story itself.

HN has implicit standards for discussions. There are many many places on the internet where this story can be discussed. Indeed, there are places which embrace opinions about the Bush Administrations, the Obama Administration, what is the proper nature of American patriotism, and what role the US and it's corporations should and do play in international affairs.

But for better or worse, HN is not really among them.

aalpbalkan• 12 years ago

That's a problem with the comments, not the story itself. If it's upvoted and legitimate content (in this case it is closely about startup world) , shouldn't it be staying where it is? Something with hundreds of upvotes probably should not go to the second page just because a few flagged the story.

thwest• 12 years ago

For worse, surely. As a startup employee and HN reader, I'm disgusted with the amoral money chasing culture we've grown. The attitude towards politics here reminds me of a child plugging his ears, squinting hard and shouting "la la la la la I can't hear you". For all the talk of disruption, the domain of problems we are allowed to apply that to is horribly small.

chomp• 12 years ago

Why do we have to be amoral money-chasers if we don't want politics on HN? Personally, I come here for tech and code discussions, and elsewhere for politics and current events. I don't feel politics is particularly interesting and is most often off-topic per the guidelines, so I flag all of those.

brudgers5• 12 years ago

The heuristics used in regard to article submissions that relate to political news events are not applied because the article submissions relate to political news events. They are drawn from experience and that experience is that it is particularly difficult to have a productive comment thread associated with such article submissions.

Case in point, the parent of this comment which infantalizes those whose view is that political stories are detrimental to HN.

sentenza• 12 years ago

I'm not touching this one with a ten foot stick. For me this is the perfect pairing of the Eich madness with the Bush years.

It would be funny if top brass at the NSA noticed this and decided to use it in the future as a tool to sow discord in the tech community. September 2014: Dick Cheney to advise Apple board...

gress5• 12 years ago

It's hard to believe that you say this with a straight face. Dropbox is an absurdly relevant company to the HN community. It is a tech company, and HN alum, highly competitive, and indeed a key example that people here look up to.

How Dropbox deals with ethics and political issues as it grows is clearly relevant to HN.

brudgers5• 12 years ago

So that we are on the same page, I want to distinguish between three different components of HN that tend to run together.

First there is the news event [1]. This is just the fact that Rice has been named to DropBox's board [or more abstractly that it has been reported as fact]. We both agree that this is relevant to the HN community.

Second there is a particular article [1] submission to HN [or several particular article submissions] related to the news event. Again we both probably agree that most or all of the various articles are appropriate for submission to HN because the news event is relevant and furthermore the news event is not likely to receive attention in other media proportional to its interest to the HN community.

The third component is the comments that are made on a particular article submission and it is by this third component that many in the HN community judge an article submission as a contributory or detrimental. When those members see an article submission as contributory, they may upvote it [yes, people upvote article submissions because the comments are good]. When they see one as detrimental, then they are likely to flag the article submission. And although there are members of the HN community whose experience leads them to flag article submissions the fear will lead to detrimental comments, they do not appear to be the majority.

[1] Using the word "story" tends to conflate both of these.

TheBiv• 12 years ago

Bc HN has a flamewar index, where if conversations begin a flamewar, then they disappear

gress5• 12 years ago

The Dropbox threads are actually well reasoned and collegial. The 'flamewar index' is failing spectacularly.

wglb• 12 years ago

I disagree.

rosem• 12 years ago

As of May 2013, Y Combinator had funded over 500 startups.[20][21] The number of startups funded in each cycle has been gradually increasing. The first cycle, in summer 2005, had eight startups. In the summer 2012 cycle, there were more than 80. Y Combinator has since reduced their class size down to less than 50 with their winter 2013 batch, but they expect to grow it again.[22]

Some of the better-known funded companies include Scribd, reddit, Airbnb, Dropbox, Disqus and Heroku.[20]

dang• 12 years ago

To my knowledge, no one has killed any of these stories. The two I believe you're asking about are both on the front page. Their rankings have been reduced by (a) massive user flagging and (b) moderation penalties we normally apply to political causes and internet indignation.

In the time that I've taken to write this, the current post was killed because users flagged it. I've unkilled it in order to post this response.

Update: We buried one of the stories and lightened the other. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7568823

Ask HN mods: Why are you killing Dropbox submissions?

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