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Comment by jsnell | Hacker News Reader

Could "vouch" be made available if there are any flags, even before the full flagging threshold is reached?

We've been toying with doing something like this. The original intent of vouching was to rescue good posts that happen to be [dead] (e.g. because a banned user posted them) which is why we didn't implement it that way at the time.

I think that this is a great idea. I imagine that it's very difficult to differentiate between users flagging things that really don't belong on the site and flagging things that they dislike for more personal reasons. Showing a "vouch" link to high-karma users on stories that are being flagged would make it easier to separate the two cases.

Good idea. If a flagging brigade is active, early independent vouching would either stop the brigade, or make it easier to detect the brigade.

You'll just create competing teams of brigades. Better to just go to a moderator and say, "I think my submission was brigaded, help!"

How does one "go to a moderator" on HN?

And besides, if a submission is flagged off the front page by that point I would think the damage is done short of resetting the gravity of the post to allow it to be in the same position on the front that it "should" have been. I'm not even sure if this is something they can do.

E-mail worked for me when I needed to ask them a question. The whole thing was resolved in less than a day, and it was painless. From what I've seen they're pretty active here in comments too, and seem inclined to reply to reasonable questions posed to them, including, "Mind if I send you an e-mail detailing some concerns?"

Talk to them... they're people.

Doesn't flagging trigger moderator review? If not, should it be called something stronger, like "killing"?

I honestly don't know, but I'd guess that there are only so many mods, and a lot more users/posts that demand their attention. To be honest though, I base this on experiences moderating communities in the past, not particular experiences here.

If moderators don't have review capacity, HN could have a dedicated page for flagged posts, so that users could review and vouch as needed.

I'm sure that kind of thing could work, especially with the group of users here, but it would probably represent a full-time job for a mod just to police that page and make use of it. They may simply not see the benefit?

Moderators would not need to police it, users would use the page to rescue incorrectly flagged posts.

In any case, someone other than HN (e.g. Algolia) could construct a page/queue of flagged posts for review. It would be used by a subset of the audience for the "new" page.

No permission needed from HN moderators. Users already have the power to vouch for stories, they only need a timely way to review.

I think the rate of objectively incorrectly flagged posts is very low. The author's previous post is an example. Flagging meta posts is not objectively incorrect. Flagging posts that suggest nefarious motives by the moderators is not objectively incorrect. Flagging posts that are technically mediocre (i.e. not reflecting knowledge of HN's moderators or the long published general ranking algorithm) is not objectively incorrect. The only obvious objectively incorrect situation of flags killing a story is when there is organized effort to flag a story to death for ulterior motive...and I suspect that is probably already covered reasonably well algorithmically.

Technically and opinion aside, given the weighting function, what is supposed to happen when someone vouches for an eight hour old thirty-five point story? Does it move to page the middle of page two? How is justice done?

To quote Dennis Moore blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought.

In the weighting function, wouldn't vouching invert the changes that were previously effected by flagging, which in fact took place on an incremental basis? Or are you saying that vouching is not needed?

Generally, I think that a vouching queue looks like another way for people who like the sort of submissions that HN tends to flag to further promote that content.

I don't think flagging is creating problems in terms of HN's quality. As I indicated, there were lots of reasonable criteria under which to flag the previous post. To me, this post has characteristics that meet those criteria as well.

Where vouching might have a role is a quality story with very few points that is flagged dead based on misunderstanding or malintent. A story that hits the front page has had many eyeballs upon it and if it is killed from there by organic means, that's the way the system is supposed to normally work. Even when I think the story does not deserve it.

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