There is a lot of ideologically motivated flagging of comments from all sides. We're trying to go through and unkill reasonable comments, but it's a slow process. You could help by vouching the ones that are not breaking the guidelines, and also by not posting comments that break the guidelines yourself.
If the flagging is such that one point of view is represented ad nauseam and the other point of view is barely represented due to flagging pile on, then it's not actually contributing to discourse at all -- it's just an echo chamber. That does not fit in with what I find valuable in HN.
I wish you'd work with us as we try to do what we can to maximize the quality of the thread, rather than dismissing everything we've spent today doing as futile. Of course it's going to be futile when the very people who think they could make it better insist that it's pointless to even try.
Yes, there's a weight of sentiment in a certain direction about this topic. Equally, there are minority, nuanced perspectives that are important, and I've unkilled several of them today and turned off flagging powers on users who were reflexively flagging anything they disagreed with.
I'll continue to be online for most of the next 4-5 hours. I'd be very pleased if you were to contribute positively by sharing your perspective, and as long as it's within the guidelines I'll ensure it doesn't get killed by a flag pile-on.
Well-argued minority positions are often the most valuable on HN. Comments that just say the same thing everyone's been saying are by-definition uninteresting, even if they're in the overwhelming majority. Indeed, one of the most important reasons to allow topics like this to be discussed on HN is to give a voice to well-argued minority perspectives that can't be found elsewhere.
Thank you for unflagging some of the posts. I think that the discussion reads a lot better now. I sympathise with the difficult position that you're in but given the hostility here to hearing views from a variety of angles I'm afraid I don't think I'll be contributing much personally. I still think this topic makes HN a worse place to be and it doesn't have to take place here. There are plenty of more suitable venues.
Only in so far as it relates to Gaza and the Ukraine .. which tracks for a US based IT forum given the US political ties to all parties concerned and the cyber capabilities of almost all the parties (including the use of phone bombs wrt Hamas members, etc).
Sudan doesn't have a substantial US sub community nor much in the way of a cyber footprint (on a globally relative scale).
This reeks like a massive failure of any content moderation process.
dang, what is up with factual, on topic comments being flagged en masse within two minutes of writing?