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Comment by gentleman11 | Hacker News Reader

This is getting flagged every 2 minutes. What is going on?

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Presidential election results of a major nation is extremely relevant despite being political, thus the qualifier most.

Relevant to what?

Maybe I'm wrong here but if a there were a new Russian President of Queen or England I'd want to be informed, as we all have to interact with each other.

But again, maybe I'm wrong and it's just me. I never flag and can't downvote so maybe the people that do are correct.

edit- spelling.

> a new Russian President of Queen or England

I'd say you are wrong, yes. HN isn't supposed to be your source of news, it is supposed to be a source of interesting topics to discuss. Hence "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic" (from the guidelines).

This rule is one of the main reasons HN hasn't gone down in flame wars yet - topics like these routinely result in people losing their temper and the rational discourse goes out the window.

edit: looks like the mods decided to save one canonical thread on this subject after all (with a big plea to stay calm at the top): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967

Probably upset Trump supporters (if the election went the other way, it'd likely get flagged by Biden supporters) - HN is a diverse group.

The HN guidelines do say politics should be considered off-topic: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."

There's a ton of duplicate (even if separate URLs) submissions.

Lets be realistic, the comment threads on this site almost always lean right.

I don't know that I'd agree, but the point is, we don't have to care. Whether the comments are left or right, we don't want HN to become a political comments free-for-all. There's plenty of places on the Internet (as in, everywhere that isn't HN) for that.

The title is an opinion it's an opinion piece

HN has a double standard. One from 2016 election night not flagged, and the other flagged.

Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12907201

[flagged] Joe Biden is the president-elect of the U.S. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25015967

Yes, but during that time, there was a TON of submissions that were flagged. In all likelihood, HN admins will pick ONE article to remain. "Duplicate" submissions should be flagged.

It's sort of premature to call this "decided." Georgia is likely to do a recount and three states seem to still be outstanding (when I checked moments ago).

That may be why.

Biden doesn't need Georgia to win. Pennsylvania gave him enough electoral votes that he can lose Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia (assuming he wins the other states the media says he won)

Yes, I'm aware. And Trump is talking of suing (claiming election fraud) as well, or so I understand.

My best understanding is this is not really settled yet. I'm guessing this may be a contributing factor to why some people -- not me -- are flagging these articles.

Articles get flagged by users. Unless someone doing the flagging is willing to speak up, speculation is all we really have and even having some people speak up doesn't mean we know all the reasons why people choose to flag a piece.

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