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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

What if the incivility flag actually included a message, so you could literally say what you're suggesting? What if it was, in effect, an anonymous comment that had no reply link and was only visible to the submitter of the parent comment?

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I don't mind having the option to click one of a small number of specific tiny phrases describing my downvote: "spam", "offtopic", "bad title", "dupe". But free-form responses? I want to subtly (or unsubtly) correct people, not start up a relationship with them. Indeed, given that a lot of bad posts are made by trolls, a relationship longer than one mouse click is the one thing you don't want to start.

I don't want to waste valuable time figuring out exactly how sure I am that a particular title is bad, or how polite I should be, or whether or not I should take advantage of this high-bandwidth feedback mechanism to start some kind of conversation.

Learn the design lesson of Twitter: More degrees of freedom doesn't necessarily help.

But there wouldn't be a relationship, since the flags would be anonymous, and I presume filling in a comment would not be necessary for flagging.

Given those two prerequisites, I think it's a great idea.

I think free-form response might be a bad idea as well. One of the main problems is people being mean-spirited - now we're going to give these same people the option to anonymously write whatever they want to someone, without even the (modest) fear of being down-voted for their comment?

I think this is a GREAT idea if it uses pre-selected phrases to convey specific / useful info to the author.

I like this 'private feedback' idea for more than just incivility: it would work well for tiny correction suggestions that the author could helpfully use (esp. in the first 2 re-edit hours) but that would otherwise pollute the thread with minutiae.

That would work great for my part-- I'd assume moderators/admins could see it, too.

I'd hate for people to abuse the anonymous nature of it sometimes and be rude-- we haven't had any "private" messaging so far on HN, so this would open a little of that world for moderators to think about.

I'd assume moderators/admins could see it, too.

Yes, it would definitely be a good idea, if private comments attached to flags are implemented, to say explicitly that moderators/curators are allowed to view all of them.

I like the idea of small <150 character anonymous comment along side the flag.

A few other thoughts:

Would it be helpful have 1 word positive and negative flags like: offtopic, uncivil, helpful, insightful, inspiring, trolling, etc...? That way, positive as well as negative behavior could be reinforced.

Would it be helpful to have a delay in how soon the flag shows up. So much online discussion get's aggravated people get angry at getting downvoted, flagged, etc... and then they quickly flame back. If there was a delay in when the flags showed up, would it decrease people's tendency to post "why did I just get downmodded" an hour later.

That is a really good idea, but I suggest making sure that the commenter gets notified of that private reply (instead of having to check it manually).

I don't much like the idea of private messaging, but I really don't want to be explicitly notified of anything that has been typed by someone who I have not specifically designated as a friend.

I have enough spam and distraction in my life.

If I did this, I'd make it work like comments work now. In fact, these messages would literally be comments, with some extra flag set.

I take that these comments would only appear to the poster? This means new users won't see these moderating comments / suggestions, hence may miss out on this education until it happens to them. How hard would it be to add a flag to each user's profile so that they will see these comments until their karma reaches a certain level (50?) and then they get the option to turn them off.

How about automatically hiding all child messages from the original post's page but show them on the message's page itself. As a naive observer trying to learn the norms, one could click on the message and see dissent.

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