“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

I'll read the article and reconsider. I haven't had time to even look at it yet. The moderation call here isn't based on agreeing, disagreeing, liking, or disliking. It just seems like an obvious interesting event, that's all.

Edit: Ok, I've read the first half and looked over the second half, and I think the moderation call was the correct one. Not saying this to pile on; I just wanted to report back.

If that's the case, then it's especially weird to me why the usual conventions on highly charge political stories wouldn't apply.

This is not in the same universe as say a piece on Trump’s relationship with Stormy Daniels or an article on Biden Hunter’s laptop.

The explosion had very real ramifications for the European continent outside the Western political context of the war.

So you haven’t read the article but are choosing to interfere with the ranking.

Why ?

Even more reason to ask for strong evidence to back up the claim that it absolutely was the US.

I've answered that question repeatedly in this thread already. If you read those comments and have a question I haven't addressed, I'd like to know what it is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713787

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713529

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713479

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34712496

In the future please at least look at an article before deciding to undo all the flags, many from actual readers.

The HN guidelines are clear about political topics.

Is there a change to the guidelines and should we expect you to not override the ranking system for opposing view points.

> The HN guidelines are clear about political topics.

I agree with that guideline. I don't want HN in general to devolve into standard tribal mudslinging.

But I don't believe this is the standard 'breaking news' chum of the day, mostly because of the reputation of the author, though I readily admit the sensationalist title is click-baity.

So far (7 hours after this was first posted) most comments seem to be complaining that the HN users can't flag this away. I found the story interesting, it makes you think about just what the USGov is doing, if it's true or not is somewhat immaterial...the story was an interesting read, whether it was a non-fiction story or not.

Of course I nearly always do, but in this case the moderation call didn't depend on it, for reasons I've already explained in several other comments in this thread.

The HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) entirely support the moderation call I've made here. If you think otherwise, you might want to take a closer look.*

It is neither desirable nor possible to exclude political topics from HN completely. At the same time, it's important that the site be protected from being overrun and dominated by political topics. Lots of explanation of how we handle this can be found at these links, if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....

* here's pg making the same point 10 years ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426

If the story isn’t true, then it isn’t just making you think about what the US government is doing. It’s making you fantasize about it based on an unknown person’s political agenda.

I read your decision as - it is worthy because Hersh says, that that is is the notable part and it invites curiosity to ponder. But are you aware that over the last 10 years he has published almost exclusively conspiracy theories that do not stand-up to scrutiny?

Well, Sandy Hook did happen. And while NS 1 was blown up, besides a repitition of all arguments we had when it was blown up, Hersh's blog post does not provide anything new, does it?

Thank you. There's such scant citations across the whole article. There are countless factual assertions with no note about the source for the assertion, and absolutely no way for readers to validate any of the new information here. There aren't even multiple anonymous sources, just mentions "some guy", and doesn't even directly attribute the vast majority of the claims to that guy.

I don't actually doubt the veracity of this information. But it's grossly irresponsible to publish "some guy's" claims as facts!!

I greatly appreciate your willingness to take a second look at it. Even though I would have made a different call in your shoes, it can't be emphasized enough that you do an outstanding job at a difficult and often thankless task. Thank you.

Try reading it instead of skimming

I read the first half and looked over the second half. Do you think I missed something that would change the moderation call here? If so, what?

factual errors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34714741

But also just look at what happened here in the comments. It's totally predictable. Those of us that read the article and flagged the post had prevented this. In this case flagging had worked and was not abused.

a) You didn't read the article.

b) You chose to override the will of this community who largely did read the article.

You didn't answer my question, so I will: there isn't anything in the second half of the article that would change the moderation call here.

You guys seem to be seizing on my saying I didn't read the whole article as if it were a horrifying gotcha. Let me try to disabuse you of that: it isn't necessary to read all of every article to make reasonable moderation calls, and that's lucky, because it would be physically impossible to do so. I can barely keep up with the titles.

I haven't overridden the will of the community because the community has no single will on this. It's divided along obvious political/tribal lines. It's not my job to align with any political or tribal view, including my own. The moderation principle on HN is simple and clear: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... Literally anyone with strong political views can expect to occasionally encounter something on HN that outrages them; if not, then we're doing a lousy job, because one thing's clear: intellectual curiosity ranges across political and tribal fences.

Whatever factual errors that comment claims to have found, they're not material to the moderation call here, which is the question I was asking.

I don't think the comments were as disastrous as you suggest. It's true that the majority were negative, but not all—and in any case, it's important that HN's front page not just be a product of majoritarian sentiment. If it were, then we would clearly be failing the core principle of HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).

Did I pick the right hill to die on at the hands of the majority? Maybe not, but (a) the sentiments would be the same if I had; and (b) we have to take some chances; if we don't, we fail for sure.

> I haven’t had time to even look at it yet.

Yikes.

Moderation is guesswork.