Comment by venning | Hacker News Reader

Comment by venning | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

To create an intentional false dichotomy: if I have to choose between a site that surfaces all content regardless of controversy but accepts that related discussions will be lower-quality, and a site that directly or indirectly suppresses some content to maintain higher-quality discussion overall, I will choose the latter.

I appreciate that some people feel that the "loss" of some submissions due to automatic flamewar detection algorithms or user flagging is a problem, but I, for one, appreciate that the discussions that remain on the front page (for a long time) have a reasonable guarantee of being high quality.

Relatedly, it may also have an effect on the non-controversial submissions by establishing that flamewars will not remain in high positions for long. (I realize that's a bit of a "broken windows theory".)

Most of the recently flagged submissions were related to the diversity memo. I don't mind if fluff articles from dailydot are removed. But then when a verbatim copy of the memo was posted, and even that was flagged. I highly doubt that was flagged because it would have low quality discussions. People just abuse the flagging system to hide content that they don't agree with.

I also doubt that it was flagged because it would generate low-quality discussion. But I do not doubt that low-quality discussion would have followed had it not been flagged off the front page.

I see flags, especially when they are abused, as indicators that having a high-quality discussion is going to be next to impossible. If people are going to use one tool (flags) poorly, it's likely they will use a more powerful tool (comments) poorly.

> I see flags, especially when they are abused, as indicators that having a high-quality discussion is going to be next to impossible. If people are going to use one tool (flags) poorly, it's likely they will use a more powerful tool (comments) poorly.

Flags are the more powerful tool. A single flag is the equivalent of many upvotes and annihilates the whole discussion. That's a lot more power than a comment, which can be dealt with on an individual basis.

That's a fair point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com