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Comment by andrewljohnson | Hacker News Reader

I don't see the respondents as an angry mob. Are you lumping edw519 in with those people?

You aren't applying Occam's razor. The simple explanation is that this is the most relevant HN story in recent memory. It involves a startup, it involves a YC company, it's one of the most valuable startups in the site owner's portfolio, it's an international print news story, it involves tragedy, and the outcome will make us all think about what it means to be a successful start up.

That's why the stories all have traction. It's a fantasy to think it's an irrational mob.

Edit: I should say I see neither the respondents nor the upvoters as an angry mob.

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If you take a look at the front page of reddit you may change your mind about what Occam's Razor implies in this case. There is nothing more common than to find people reflexively upvoting stories about something they're agitated about.

You can see that's happening here from e.g.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2821399

which has no less than 275 points (so far), despite being a completely derivative article that adds no new information. People aren't upvoting it because of something they learned in it that engaged their intellectual curiosity.

Indeed - and frequently when I point out that a submission is of a derivative article that adds no new information I get down-modded. As of today, I'm giving up, especially in the light of this poll.

I've learned something new and disquieting about the current HN - and I'm fairly sure this has changed. I seem to remember seeing an earlier poll on this, and I'll go look for it later when I'm more awake.

Although it's correct that the article itself is completely derivative, the simple fact that the story is in the FT provides new information. The fact that this narrative can go mainstream is itself fascinating and new, and worth discussing.

Would that they were discussing the fact that it's in the mainstream media, but it seems that they're simply hashing over the same ground in the other items.

Seems to me that it adds nothing.

On the contrary, searching for "mainstream", "ft", "financial times", or "media" in the comments for the ft article suggests that people actually are discussing the fact that it is now in the mainstream media. It might not be the majority of the comments, but at least those subjects are broached in there, and much more so than in the other threads.

But regardless of whether people are discussing something new, my point is that the story reaching the broader media is an interesting information point in of itself. Whether HNers choose to discuss that in an intelligent manner is an entirely different thing.

That being said, like you, I am also bugged by the repetitive stories -- both in this instance and more generally. And although I think that sometimes multiple submissions are warranted and useful (when the story changes, or there are new sources, etc.), I think that often new threads add very little to the discussion.

I still love it here though. But I only lurk, so...

The original title for that submission was something to the effect of "AirBnB story now on the front page of the Financial times". It has been edited to be both more in lines with the traditional HN submission guidelines (i.e. the topic of the submission, no editorializing) and less representative of the actual point of interest.

This is a tragic story that many of us can relate to on both sides (as a homeowner and as a technologist/entrepreneur), for which the most current publicly-available information is completely contradictory. And unlike you we don't have the people who can give us the full story a phone call away. Can you really blame us for wanting to hear about all developments to this story until there is some kind of resolution?

Maybe its a design problem. Just now the first thing you see is the upvote link. People could be upvoting on the basis of the title (i dont, i always read the story then forget to go back and upvote if i like it). What if you put the upvote link for the story in the bottom right corner of the comments page. Then it's presented as something you act on after you've read the story/comments, which is how it should be acted on.

That story originally carried a title like "AirBnB scandal makes front page of the Financial Times". I thought it was interesting from the perspective of "How does bad press about a startup spread and what are the effects of various ways of responding?" rather than "Let's keep piling on AirBnB." This is the first big YC crisis management story I can recall; it's not surprising other founders would want to learn from it.

By what definition is AirBNB a startup?

Edit: downvote me all you want, but a if company with a $1,000,000,000 valuation is a "startup" the word has lost any meaning.

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