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Comment by toomanyrichies | Hacker News Reader

This shouldn't have been flagged. My understanding is that posts which comment on current events from a tech perspective are 100% within the bounds of acceptable behavior here.

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Details of what happened are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397230.

Since people are asking "if all that is true, why does it still say [flagged]", I've turned off flags on the above post now.

They totally are, threads discussing such things make it to the top of the front page _all_ the time. It's very suspect that this thread is flagged.

It's routine for threads discussing such things to make it to the front page and routine for them to get flagged. This is the cycle of life on HN. And rightly so: otherwise the front page would consist entirely of the sensational/hottest topics and flamewars.

Everything "controversial" or anti-narrative since October 2020 I've posted has been flagged. Frankly, I think it's mostly bots or people being paid to do so. IMO HN should be changing it's flag policy.

This isn't remotely close to true. I think you may be falling prey to the notice-dislike bias, which unfortunately leads to false feelings of generality.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

That’s fair, could also be the topics im weighing in on are more prone.

From personal experience, I’m experiencing flags like I’ve never seen before. I have several IRL fiends who no longer post or visit HN because of it (because reasonable discussion is being disappeared).

I’d be curious to know the attrition rate after flags. Also if the number of flags for long term members have increased. The data’s all public (I think), so I can do the analysis. But I find it interesting.

I'd be happy to look up specific numbers if it's something I can do quickly. Unfortunately today has been a tornado and I haven't quite landed yet.

I think I speak for all of us, when I say we appreciate all you do!

Whatever happened to the "vouch" option?

I wanted to, but it seems to be gone. :-(

[Ed. I see, flagged but not dead, so no vouching...]

So until it gets flagged enough to become dead, it's in a kind of flag purgatory and can't be vouched for?

Separately, I'd be curious to know what systems are in place to deal with bad-faith flagging. There doesn't seem to be any mention of this in the Hacker News FAQ. Not saying that's what happened here, but it seems like a situation that would come up sooner or later.

It only appears once the article is actually dead (as far as I've experienced). I have no idea why that's the case.

Very suspicious. I suspect employees are flagging this post, but my suspicions aren’t really founded. Is there a way to unflag?

Normally @dang turns up to clarify and fix things

Posts are flagged if a certain number of users flag them, not just mods/admins.

Is it possible to ban all users that flagged this post? Or at the very least permanently disable their downvoting and flagging power?

There was another submission about tank man, just a CNN article on it. That submission has been marked as a dupe, despite the link not appearing in a recent search.

I think users can flag, but not mark as dupe

I didn't flag it, but it's a boring link to an empty search result with no discussion except outrage. I know political topics can be on-topic here, but why is this worthy of a HN submission and not being flagged? What's particularly interesting about it?

(And before you respond with the obvious - Microsoft has clearly blocked this, and it's in China's interest for them to do so, yes, but can you explain why you think that is that particularly Hacker Newsworthy? Like, the only thing you've posted is 5x comments of single line outrage - you've called for people to be banned, DDG to be removed from a list, called it suspicious, cast aspersions on HN employees - you don't seem to be trying to start a detailed discussion about anything related - and neither does almost everyone else.)

I'd like to hear their explanation first. There might be people who honestly believe that no political content should on HN.

To allow that rationale, you'd want to look over the commenting & voting history of anyone claiming that. I bet they all turn out to have funny definitions of what counts and what doesn't.

That's very disproportionate (but I think it's ridiculous that this is flagged).

Welp, dang has commented on this post and it's still flagged. Per the guidelines:

> It means that users flagged a post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on Hacker News.

> Moderators sometimes also add [flagged] (though not usually on submissions), and sometimes turn flags off when they are unfair.

Is it therefore the case that the Moderators consider this flagging to be fair?

@Dang was this a user or a mod action?

[flagged] on submissions nearly always means users flagged it.

This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#flag.

Edit: details of what happened are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397230

The flagging is clearly unfair...so why hasn't it been removed?

A lot of CCP fans out there it seems.

I've removed the flags now.

That last bit breaks the site guidelines. Can you please review them and stick to the rules? We'd appreciate it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Dang is probably on top of the situation given that another tank man post was marked as dupe, which requires admin powers.

Disappointed in the flagging too

Sorry for speculation but if the upvote to comments ratio are off, they might get auto flagged too, right?

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