←back to thread

“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

(seymourhersh.substack.com)
688 points hunglee2 | 3 comments | 08 Feb 23 12:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.638s | source
Show context
dang ◴[08 Feb 23 18:31 UTC] No.34712496[source]▶
All: Whether he is right or not or one likes him or not, Hersh reporting on this counts as significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), so I've turned off the flags on this submission.

If you're going to comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on the site guidlelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." We don't want political or nationalistic flamewar here, and any substantive point can be made without it.

replies(21): >>34712914 #>>34712943 #>>34712970 #>>34713108 #>>34713117 #>>34713129 #>>34713157 #>>34713159 #>>34713244 #>>34713412 #>>34713419 #>>34713491 #>>34713823 #>>34713938 #>>34714182 #>>34714703 #>>34714882 #>>34715435 #>>34715469 #>>34716015 #>>34724637 #
davesque ◴[08 Feb 23 19:08 UTC] No.34713108[source]▶
I'm honestly really shocked by your stance on this. Regardless of whether or not this information is credible, this seems like text book flame war kindling. In the past, I've thought HN's policy of "you can discuss things like this in other forums" was wise and I've been corrected by it myself many times. Why wouldn't that apply in this case?
replies(2): >>34713177 #>>34713479 #
dang ◴[08 Feb 23 19:28 UTC] No.34713479[source]▶
Because it's interesting. Hersh reporting on it is an interesting story in its own right. Is what he says true? I have no idea. We don't have a truth meter here.
replies(3): >>34713678 #>>34713729 #>>34713816 #
threeseed ◴[08 Feb 23 19:48 UTC] No.34713816[source]▶
> Because it's interesting

No. It's interesting to you.

replies(3): >>34713898 #>>34713996 #>>34714310 #
1. dang ◴[08 Feb 23 20:17 UTC] No.34714310[source]▶
Yes and no. Yes in the sense that you can't take the human being out of the moderator, nor would it be good to try. No in the sense that I'm not moderating HN just according to my personal interests—it would be very different if I did. As a matter of fact, I spend every day denying my own preferences about HN. That doesn't make me objective (far from it), but I do at least have a lot of practice.

It's a matter of striking a balance: holding space for what the community finds interesting* while allowing for a certain amount of idiosyncracy and unpredictability, but not too much. Without that, things would be more humdrum and therefore less interesting. There are tradeoffs along every conceivable axis with this thing.

* (note: community is not the same as commenters because most readers don't comment)

replies(1): >>34715347 #
2. TechBro8615 ◴[08 Feb 23 21:19 UTC] No.34715347[source]▶
> community is not the same as commenters because most readers don't comment

Do you have stats on what percent of regular HN readers have ever commented on any story? Or are stats more like, for every 100 readers of a story, 1 will comment on that story? To put another way: if I read 100 stories and comment on 1, would I be counted as lurking 99 times and posting 1?

Basically, I'm curious if engagement is lopsided toward lurking because some users never comment, or because most users never comment on every story they read.

replies(1): >>34715457 #
3. dang ◴[08 Feb 23 21:27 UTC] No.34715457[source]▶
Yes, I looked it up a couple times over the years and it was astonishing close to whoever's law that says 1% of users produce 90% of UGC.

I think it was something like 1% of total readers and 5% of logged-in readers but I'd have to check again to be sure.