Ask HN: Should HN flaggers be public to users with X karma? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should HN flaggers be public to users with X karma?

I saw a benign-but-valuable submission flagged. The submission was getting upvotes and there was discussion. It would be useful if respectable long-term users with high karma could see who flagged posts that get flagged, particularly when the submission is amassing upvotes and discussion. Otherwise, this place is no longer any better than reddit where astroturfing, gaslighting, and brigading are now the norm.

These high-karma users would then be able to vet flags and remove flags that may be coordinated. We need to face the reality that there can be coordinated flagging that is designed to wedge an ideological bent into the flow of the conversation.

View on HN

Knowing why people flag / downvote something is more interesting.

I don't see a need for knowing who did what, but knowing the patterns on the other hand would be very interesting. As a hobby data enthusiast I'd love to have a data feed of flagging / downvoting / upvoting without actually knowing the names. Even playing with historical data from six months ago or whenever submissions get locked would suit me.

Anonymising that data might not be easy but the graphs from it would be fun to explore.

> These high-karma users would then be able to vet flags and remove flags that may be coordinated. We need to face the reality that there can be coordinated flagging that is designed to wedge an ideological bent into the flow of the conversation.

It's perhaps just as likely that these high-karma users would become the "coordinators" of "ideological wedging" imo.

I don't agree with your idea, and I think one or a handful of lost potential discussions is totally fine given the pretty stellar level of discussion that is the norm here.

Most specifically, I don't think it helps a lot to know who flagged something. It's likely an extremely small subset of users are the ones flagging things, regardless of whether that implies any coordination or agenda. Dang said that something like < 10% of users ever contribute any type of comment. In my time here, I may have flagged something once or twice, but I've made hundreds of comments (across a few accounts). If I'm correct, then you would only see a handful of users flagging things, and that would just be normal--not the result of coordination or malice.

I think a lot of posts are flagged / killed as off topic rather than specifically as ideological. In some sense, it's more of a problem that many purely ideological posts are not killed, and so it makes people notice the bias of what's permitted and what isn't.

HN is one of the few (maybe the only) forum that still tolerates some intellectual discussion about issues that other sites would ignorantly label as conspiracy / misinformation and ban discussion. And for that reason, it is a popular place to reach a minority audience that's actually interested in discussing unorthodox political views, without descending into some kind of raving charicature of the right or just trolling like free speech sites often do. But it's still a tech site, and would be better if there was less political / ideology from all sides

> HN is one of the few (maybe the only) forum that still tolerates some intellectual discussion about issues that other sites would ignorantly label as conspiracy / misinformation and ban discussion

What sort of topics do you mean?

> HN is one of the few (maybe the only) forum that still tolerates some intellectual discussion about issues that other sites would ignorantly label as conspiracy / misinformation and ban discussion

What kind of places do you mean?

I've been part of many online communities, and never once has one banned any type of discussion. At most, they would ask for off-topic conversations to be restricted to specific forum threads.

HN is probably the most heavily-moderated community I've been a part of. I'm grateful for that, frankly--I don't think letting every comment section devolve into a political debate is healthy for any individuals, let alone the community here.

I've actually noticed lately that, even here, more threads feel like arguments (name calling, derision of opinions, etc), and fewer feel like discussions. Everywhere else (FB & Reddit, in particular), I feel like there's virtually no discussion, and almost entirely arguments.

I've seen very little abuse of flagging (although I skip some controversial threads) and it's already possible to vouch for flagged posts to rescue them. IMO additional complexity isn't needed.

I've seen it a few times, almost always in the exact sort of thread you can imagine, but I'd say most flags I see are probably deserved.

Which post?

The site has some automatic anti-voting-ring protection. The details are unclear, because it's part of the secret sauce. My guess is that there is also an anti-brigading protection, but I never found an official announcement.

Note that most users can "vouch" dead post, and enough vouches unkill the post. Anyway, you can send an email to the mods so they take a look in this case.

Should anyone at higher levels ever be able to see who flags? No. Full stop.

> vet flags and remove flags that may be coordinated

Yes, that makes sense and could be good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com