Why are posts about the Geeklist controversy being removed from Hacker News?

[fleitz]

Because it's internet drama that doesn't matter. Someone posted a video, someone got offended, twitter flame war ensues.

This continuing to be news would require that every time a godaddy ad is shown that we need 8 articles about it. If you don't like how godaddy advertises simply don't buy their product.

[untog]

You don't think that there are lessons for other startup entrepreneurs to learn here about PR and handling complaints?

I'd say there is an interesting conversation to be had, as suggested by the interesting conversation being had before the entry was deleted.

[dlikhten]

Argument invalid. If HN did not like the article, it would not be upvoted. If this was a trolololl debate happening then upvotes won't do much. If the trolololl debates got upvoted enough times, we'd get some calls for more Haskel/Erlang articles (actually I could really use a call for Clojure articles). HN is fairly well self-regulating.

[tessr]

Oh yes, the marginalization of women in tech is definitely "internet drama that doesn't matter."

[kaiju]

I kind of wish HN as a collective whole would check their privilege at the door.

[ChuckMcM]

Not deleted, flagged. Folks who think an article is not HN material or useful can click the 'flag' button, enough flags and the article is made 'dead' which drops it out of consideration for ranking.

[untog]

Right. I mention that in the post, I guess I could have phrased the title better.

The larger question is "why was it flagged?" There was a lively discussion on the topic, and it seems very relevant to the startup scene. The fact that this topic would be considered "not worthy" of HN speaks volumes by itself.

[sycr]

To recap, this is the thread that was removed: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3739913

[wglb]

Not deleted, flagged to dead state.

[ghurlman]

A very hood question indeed. Perhaps there's a touch of ostrich syndrome going around?

[untog]

More weirdness- this post was on the front page briefly, then immediately shot down to the fourth page, behind an entry that's 589 days old. Is HN just screwed up today?

[mmastrac]

That probably means it was flagged a few times.

[wglb]

Likely due to community flagging.