Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

One reason we tend to flag down meta drama like this is that, for the most part, people on HN don't have a good mental model of how moderation works here. This is a good example; it can bother you that people flag stories, but everyone over the (low) karma threshold can flag anything --- if you do it abusively, you can quietly lose your flag powers, is my understanding, but that's it. It's not a conspiracy.

I flagged this post, just to be clear: it's drama about drama. There was an excellent post yesterday that was critical of Paul Graham: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25325716

View on HN

Shouldn't there be an unflag or vouch option though? (I seem to remember ther was at some point, but I'm not sure.)

There is a vouch option already.

whats the karma level for that?

30. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24134548

strange, i can flag posts but can't vouch at 400+ karma

Me neither.

The vouch option only appears for me on [dead] or [flagged] comments when I access them directly from the poster's profile. I've never gotten the vouch to work on submissions.

Yep, this post is now showing as flagged and I have no option to vouch for it. Not that I would in this case, but the option is not there for me.

Users can flag submissions. There isn't a vouch option for submissions, but upvoting acts a bit like a vouch.

Users can flag and vouch comments.

If you think a story or comment is unfairly flag-killed you can email the mods I guess. This is particularly useful when something is being talked about on HN and the author / creator makes an account to join in that conversation. They'll sometimes find their account is rate-limited because it's a new account.

Thanks, that kind of makes sense.

I definitely have a “vouch” option for submissions. I think it’s a newer addition than vouching comments.

You can't vouch for something until it's dead. That's what vouching does: it unkills it. If you want to counteract flags, upvote.

Flags are worth more than upvotes - that's one of the imbalancing forces between the two. And something can be flagged off the front page (or two/three) - effectively halting any natural upvotes - without killing it.

That's true. Flags aren't downvotes. They're meant exclusively for stories that don't belong on the front page of HN, at all. Using them as a simple downvote is an abuse, and doing that routinely can get your flag power quietly revoked. Flagging helps the site much more than it hurts it, but, like everything else, it's deeply imperfect; I've had banal submissions flagged myself. The thing to do when that happens is to mail hn@yc and ask for the flags to be lifted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com