Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

Read the guidelines, they're very clear:

> 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.

See also the very clear guidance in the welcome guidelines:

> A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting. Stories on HN don't have to be about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking, but they do have to be deeply interesting.

> What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, then perhaps it could be.

> The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter.

What's the point of posting "police should not murder citizens" posts? Anyone who isn't a vile human being agrees; and those posts always drag out the vile human beings who will blame the minor criminal who gets murdered by police.

There is no constructive discussion to be had from them. See also discussions about Israel / Palestine; abortion; gun control; etc.

Having said all that I didn't see the link and if you feel it was unfairly flagged you should email hn and ask them to tweak it. I think they do un-flag-kill some stories that they think should be here and I know of at least one that was about diversity stuff.

thanks for revisiting the posting rules. it's been awhile since i read them and i neglected (my bad) to reread them when i finally got up the nerve to start posting. i will definitely keep this mind when i submit something in future. however, most of the time, i do submit non-mainstream stories instead of the "duhhh" everybody w/ half a brain should know or have this figured out already... unless of course, the news item-in-question pertains to emergent technologies, like the blockchain or AI and the like.

however, let me ask you this: do you think hn has reached the point where it is practically impossible to consume all of the content that is posted each day? and the fact that titles+urls i submit -- don't get upvoted or flagged -- is not due to an overzealous gatekeeper but because they fall through the cracks. no one sees them. and perhaps it is time that yc updated their submission form so that the content can be more nuanced (classified) and say, if i, for example, want to look at breaking news in an emergent field like cryptocurrencies i click on that page, the way that i can look at the jobs or show sections.

or if that is not feasible, do you think the hn community will continue to fracture with new hn clones being set up -- like coinspotting, cryptoanalys.is, data tau, growth hackers, inbound, python hacker news, etc. -- to provide for and appeal to a more specialized userbase.

> and the fact that titles+urls i submit -- don't get upvoted or flagged -- is not due to an overzealous gatekeeper but because they fall through the cracks. no one sees them.

Other people's submissions are getting upvoted or flagged, so its probably not that no one is seeing yours (though there are potential timing issues that might make that the case), its probably just that no one is either interested in or objecting to them.

> and perhaps it is time that yc updated their submission form so that the content can be more nuanced (classified) and say, if i, for example, want to look at breaking news in an emergent field like cryptocurrencies i click on that page, the way that i can look at the jobs or show sections.

I think YC specifically does not want to be maintaining something like Reddit that covers everything under the sun, and limiting the classification breadth and depth is a tool to encourage that.

> if that is not feasible, do you think the hn community will continue to fracture with new hn clones being set up

I think new discussion forums, including ones that are generally similar to HN and target some segment of the same audience, or going to continue to get set up no matter what HN does. And that's a good thing.

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