Ask HN: Abuse of Flagging and Downvotes on HN | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Abuse of Flagging and Downvotes on HN

7 pointsHopenHeyHi20 comments

Hi all,

I have repeatedly observed a very clear pattern where people abuse flagging and downvotes in a bad faith censorious and outright hostile and hateful manner.

Furthermore, it doesn't stop with one comment being buried for wrong think, rather the down voters promptly go through your recent comment history and flag arbitrary unrelated things. Completely mundane things, uncontroversial things, comments that were up for days with no ill will from anyone and had plenty of upvotes are suddenly flagged. Not subtle at all.

I believe this sort of behavior is not appropriate/healthy and will eventually kill the community. My question is whether you have observed similar things, please share your personal experience and opinions on this matter.

My suggestion is to show a public list of users who go on such flagging sprees.

View on HN

I'd encourage you to spend some time reading dang's comment history. I think it makes the guidelines and the reasons for them very clear.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang

I've read your comment history and I can see you do get a lot of flags. I recall vouching for one of your comments a while ago. But I think you have a habit of speaking provocatively in a way that attracts flags, and that most of them violate the guidelines in ways you're probably not aware of. I don't know if you're aware that dang is the admin here, but he did bring this up to you recently.

You gotta let go and learn to love getting down voted. I look at my HN points as a bank account. It goes up and it goes down. I spend the money I have in there on the freedom to say whatever I really think. It would be so boring if my bank account only went up up up. The up down up down cycle is life.

Precisely.

Don't base your life around fake internet points. Make your case in good faith and if people want to not accept it with good faith then they've outed themselves as the ones who are unable to think or debate. They're probably not happy people anyway.

shrug

All good, yeah. This place will end up a Mastodon instance of sorts but on the other hand HN is ancient and no community lasts forever. Onwards and upwards.

Per https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, email hn@ycombinator.com. Link to the specific comments that you think were flagged in bad faith.

I just reskimmed that (it's been a while)

I find these items quite funny in light of the OP:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it to hn@ycombinator.com.

I’ve had the downvoting spree happen to me a couple of times. But I don’t agree with you because preventing downvotes/flagging, or identifying users who appear to downvote in bad faith, will just spiral into worse behavior. HN isn’t perfect but it’s better than the alternatives.

My HN karma doesn’t mean anything. Losing a few points now and then to a person with too much time on their hands doesn’t bother me.

For sure karma doesn't mean anything and if it was just somebody rage downvoting it hardly matters. Rage flagging appears to give regular users mod like powers.

I understand the counter argument you're making to my suggestion, hopefully somebody can come up with a better one.

Somewhat ironic that this post is flagged.

No community is perfect, and HN has its biases which turn ugly when posts about certain things show up. Best to assume it's humans being human and ignore it. I've found that to be a good strategy.

A month ago user O__________O complained about the same thing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35230366

And I'll tell you the same thing I told them - a 'flag' is a form of 'downvote' (you can dislike this fact, but it doesn't change the fact)

No one is required to vote

No one is required to explain their vote

No one is required to vote like you do

No one is required to explain their vote to you

Flagging mafias that go through comment histories of people is several steps past that.

Do you always cast aspersions on others' behavior that is not 100% in line with your preference?

No, the behavior is different, at least on HN. Flagging is supposed to be for suppressing hostile content but is most typically used to censor highly upvoted comments or threads. Downvotes typically just dictate disagreement.

The world would be a better place if flagging or downvoting required a comment.

>The world would be a better place if flagging or downvoting required a comment.

This is a comment sentiment

But is absolutely 100% wrong ... unless your only goal is to eliminate downvotes

If 2-3 people decide that this warrenm fellow needs to be pushed out of the website for whatever reason they currently can coordinate and start flagging your posts left and right at every opportunity until you are effectively banned.

It will turn into reddit. Groups will start raiding each other over politics. Coordinated upvotes are not allowed, I don't see why grudge/group flagging should be.

If 2-3 people have enough clout they can get me "effectively banned" ... meh

This is a website that offers fake internet points to its users

I can create a new user (if I really wanted to) in a few seconds

You really are hung up on these fake internet points ... and I do not understand why

(also, per your link to the HN guidelines " Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.")

>My suggestion is to show a public list of users who go on such flagging sprees.

Vote history is not visible that I've ever seen - what makes you think you're going to encourage the community by making their voting histories public?

The suggestion is to expose those who downvote and flag not just one comment but all comments by a user and not just in one thread but across unrelated threads and comments. As well as groups that coordinate in this manner.

I don't know if it is viable or how else to fix the problem, just throwing an idea out there to generate a discussion.

So you only want to make public what you personally think is undesirable behavior

Got it - so if it crosses some subjective threshold you have, tell everyone about it?

Why that number? Why not 1 downvote? It's bad faith for you to disagree with me, so if you ever downvote me, show everyone!

See what I did there? You have some subjective dislike - most likely because you have been downvoted or flagged (I admit that is an assumption I am making) in what you think is "bad faith"

Karma on sites like this is just fake internet points

If you're that hung up on your score, maybe it's you who needs to take a break, and not get attached to an arbitrary, inconsequential "number" attached to your user name :)

Curious - how have you "repeatedly observed a very clear pattern" in just 29 days?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com