The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

For posterity, here's a spreadsheet of all Daring Fireball submissions to HN, sorted chronologically: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1A7ljmWbHtFsB4VRJ1Q0d...

From first glance there's still some decent traffic on Daring Fireball submissions, even inside the times Gruber asserts deadweighting.

How then do you explain DF being #3 from 2007-2021 and #72 from 2021-2025? It’s clearly not blacklisted, but clearly is shitlisted, no?

Have you tried emailing hn@ycombinator.com and asking?

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

How are stories ranked?

The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.

Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.

I expect there's been an increase in user flags.

BTW "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

Same rule applies for submissions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

FWIW, I'm a regular reader of your blog and have not flagged any daringfireball submissions. But this article is asking to be flagged. It's a needlessly provocative title and not all that interesting to discuss.

I'd also like to point out a bit of hypocrisy on your part. You don't accept comments on your site. If you want folks to comment on your blog, maybe reconsider hosting the comments yourself?

https://shawnblanc.net/2007/07/why-daring-fireball-is-commen...

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/16/powazek-comment...

https://daringfireball.net/2010/06/whats_fair

I wonder can a submitted post be flagged without displaying the leading tag? Because there is definitively something preventing Gruber's posts from reaching the first page although most of his posts are not overtly flagged.

But as you say he should ask @dang for more informations.

One of the theories I read somewhere is that there may be a threshold number of user-flags before the title gets tagged as [flagged], but flagging that happens fewer than that threshold still serves to down-weight the article. So there could be a lot of user-flags burying the article before it shows up as [flagged].

It must work that way. When I flag articles and they don't immediately show as `[flagged]`. I would guess the number of flags is weighted by upvotes, maybe (but less likely) by the karma of the person flagging the article. The software must track who flags articles since you can lose flagging privilege if you do it frivolously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173809

As far as I know, once an article is flagged it cannot become unflagged by user action. Only dang can unflag articles he thinks the community deserves to discuss.

Articles can also become `[dead]` which I think happens automatically for submissions detected as spam. Per dang, users can vouch for such submissions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43268468

I think from the way stuff is getting flagged & the comments, it's really a change in the user base becoming slowly less techo-anarchist/libertarian and more rightwing/authoritarian curious.

Something really in the water the last few years in tech circles. Or maybe just disgruntled as the stock compensation infinite money printer has ended.

I'd love to see the results of some kind of sentiment analysis on HN comments over time. My hunch is that HN's user base has gotten deeply more rightwing over the years, similar to what's happening in many other online communities. Related to getting more rightwing: I'd also guess (without knowing the data) that the flagging:user activity ratio has steadily grown over the years. HN users are no longer willing to simply downvote comments/articles they disagree with and move on. We are becoming more interested in attempting to silence these comments/articles via flagging.