This is called "burying" and it is unremarkable. (This story is likely to be buried.)
The stories that are buried are not appropriate for the front page. The reason you come to Hacker News is because it has a better front page, with better comments under it, than other places. You experience the benefit of this editorial intervention each and every day.
The quality of the comments was inordinately low and it didn't look like it would be improving, which is the reason it was buried.
No complaints from me around this. You can email the moderators if you want to know their reasoning. (I'm not one.)
People here need to understand and be thankful for the extraordinary and ongoing work that the moderators do every single day to keep this place an appropriate place for interesting, deep discussion along the editorial lines chosen. It is not a democracy (see: reddit) but I find the moderators generally extremely fair.
As far as I understand the moderators bury tons of stories (often political, link-bait, etc), which do however get traction quickly until they do so. It is easy to get traction through click-bait.
Generating serious discussion is harder. For example, this title promises "the stories that Hacker News removes" -- but is not really about the stories that Hacker News removes. For example the author does not analyze the comments under them or see why it derails or is not a good contribution to HN.
It is more of a click-bait title is bait-and-switch, and is designed to generate easy outrage.
There's nothing remarkable here despite the traction this story is getting. It is part of the hidden workings that keep HN great. Dan and Scott (the moderators) do an extremely good and thankless job keeping the principles of this place alive.
You have no idea how hard they work and I've seen them make difficult and intricate decisions. (Sometimes as simple as detaching a thread that was derailing an important discussion.) In my opinion this story does not belong on the front page.
That's not what flamebait means, you likely mean clickbait. There's nothing to disagree with there - all commenters agreed that lightweight sites are great. The title was also completely true.
But you are right, it was inappropriate. My point is there were 43 upvotes in a matter of a few minutes (and more coming) but it was not generating good discussion. The top comment:
>>hyperbovine 269 days ago [-]
>>Loads instantly, looks fine on mobile, the thing(s) you are probably interested in are linked right from the front page. As usual, Buffet is onto something here.
Which is why I submitted it. I simply thought it was interesting.
However, although all the comments agreed with it (there was no flaming) and it was getting traction, the comments were simply not very high quality or generating any good discussion. It simply wasn't worthy of the front page despite getting voted there organically. I have no problem with it being buried.
I think flamebait is the correct word, because the discussion would have just ended in the usual "modern web" complaints interspersed with people saying that these things have legitimate uses, and so on and so on. They're never productive discussions, just full of ranting and flaming.
But as you can see, no one in the discussion actively disagreed with anyone else. (No one flamed anyone.) It just wasn't very substantive and the reason it was buried.
The stories that are buried are not appropriate for the front page. The reason you come to Hacker News is because it has a better front page, with better comments under it, than other places. You experience the benefit of this editorial intervention each and every day.
I've had a story buried as it was gaining a lot of traction very quickly: this one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11920431
The quality of the comments was inordinately low and it didn't look like it would be improving, which is the reason it was buried.
No complaints from me around this. You can email the moderators if you want to know their reasoning. (I'm not one.)
People here need to understand and be thankful for the extraordinary and ongoing work that the moderators do every single day to keep this place an appropriate place for interesting, deep discussion along the editorial lines chosen. It is not a democracy (see: reddit) but I find the moderators generally extremely fair.
As far as I understand the moderators bury tons of stories (often political, link-bait, etc), which do however get traction quickly until they do so. It is easy to get traction through click-bait.
Generating serious discussion is harder. For example, this title promises "the stories that Hacker News removes" -- but is not really about the stories that Hacker News removes. For example the author does not analyze the comments under them or see why it derails or is not a good contribution to HN.
It is more of a click-bait title is bait-and-switch, and is designed to generate easy outrage.
There's nothing remarkable here despite the traction this story is getting. It is part of the hidden workings that keep HN great. Dan and Scott (the moderators) do an extremely good and thankless job keeping the principles of this place alive.
You have no idea how hard they work and I've seen them make difficult and intricate decisions. (Sometimes as simple as detaching a thread that was derailing an important discussion.) In my opinion this story does not belong on the front page.