You keep assuming that it's HN staff, but HN articles very often get flagged by regular users when they get political, and having seen some of the comments on one of the other articles, including some of yours, I'm not the slightest bit surprised they got flagged.
If people want Xlibre to have a shot at HN at all, those are things to fix. Making unsubstantiated claims about HN staff is not going to change anything - if anything that too is likely to attract flagging.
No, a project or a project leader having haters (just this thread there are 3 distinct people jumping in with various insults or fake news on normal questions) should not be enough for something to get censored. What kind of 'Why are you hitting yourself?' logic is that?
> You keep assuming that it's HN staff,
It's HN staff, and I've already explained it. Read back.
It's quite possible that there are just people flagging things without commenting. I do this all the time if the discussion looks particularly stupid, unproductive, bad-tempered, pointless, and so on - or some combination thereof. (I haven't done it in this case, but only because I was silly enough to comment. This thread has been quite reasonably flagged, I'd say.)
This is part of the how this particular site works. If you don't like it, that's fine, but you will have to go elsewhere to avoid it. And even if it is indeed the admins working away behind the scenes, a committee of shadowy puppetmasters directing their every move, suppression of X11 forks just one probing toothed tendril of this multi-armed octopus - well, this place was never a democracy anyway.
> It's quite possible that there are just people flagging things without commenting. I do this all the time if the discussion looks particularly stupid, unproductive, bad-tempered, pointless, and so on - or some combination thereof.
Huh? Wait, really? I never ever once considered to flag an article based on the discussion. I've flagged some articles, which I think are bad (as articles).
What's the reasoning behind doing that?
edit: hmph, probably the same reasoning as my reasons to flag, but considering the submission with comments as a whole, instead of the article.
Still, I don't think that some bad comments made by some haters should be enough to remove a good article with several separate good discussions.
edit2: the news guideline[0] is pretty clear about what is a good submission and what is not:
> Hacker News Guidelines
> What to Submit
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
XLibre having haters that flag it, or randomly appear calling the creator jerk, arsehole, nutjob and more should not be connected for it to be hidden--according to the guidelines, that is. The only remaining option is deliberate censorship I believe.
> XLibre having haters that flag it, or randomly appear calling the creator jerk, arsehole, nutjob and more should not be connected for it to be hidden--according to the guidelines, that is. The only remaining option is deliberate censorship I believe.
You can dislike it as much as you like, but it is how HN works, and have worked, for many years, and complaining about it is not going to change that.
You have assumed it is HN staff, without evidence. I've read what you've written.
You've then further demonstrated exactly why these threads gets flagged by being hostile and making unsubstantiated allegations.
If you care about this project, the best you could do is to stop pushing this.
I'm pretty much the perfect audience for this project, and at this point not just the project leader looks like a problem, but supporters of it like you as well.
If you're intent on pushing away potential supporters, this is the way to do it.
If people want Xlibre to have a shot at HN at all, those are things to fix. Making unsubstantiated claims about HN staff is not going to change anything - if anything that too is likely to attract flagging.