Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Users flagged it, which is common on divisive topics. We sometimes turn flags off, even when a topic is divisive, but I think it's best if the underlying article is not a direct advocacy piece (or an organizational announcement*).

Here are some other places where I've posted about this in the context of this topic. If you or anyone take a look at those explanations and still have a question that isn't answered, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 (April 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024 (Feb 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947003 (Jan 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38749162 (Dec 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657527 (Dec 2023)

(* we tend not to favor posts that announce organizations, because while the organization may be important and its work may be interesting, the announcement posts themselves tend not to be interesting, so they end up fueling generic rather than specific discussion.)

I think you're doing a good job in turning off flags for some devisive posts. I was just surprised at how easy it is to kill the post from just a couple (?) flags especially after others have vouched for it. There was this weird behaviour going on where the post got killed then revived because some user vouched for it and then another flagged it.

It's also worthy of note that this system is ripe for abuse, because the visibility of the post is asymmetric. It gets killed as soon as it gets flagged, so no new users see it and hence hard for someone to vouch. There's also the obvious problem of ganging on a post to flag/vouch for it, which again seems like it can be easily abused by small groups.

Is it really abuse for a small number of people to decide right off the bat that a discussion is going to be, erm, unproductive?

It is if the post consistently gets vouched for whenever others stumble across it. Of course if it only got flags then it likely represents a widespread opinion.

Some users flag, others vouch, that's a disagreement rather than abuse in some obvious way.

Yes, but again see my previous comment about the asymmetry of visibility.

There are lots of such asymmetries (although yours isn't very accurate since posts don't get hidden the moment they are flagged) but however the system is tuned, it's still not evidence of abuse. People disagree on what stories belong where and the system may work differently than the way you prefer or assume but neither of these are evidence of abuse. That's not saying there isn't abuse it's just not clear how you reach that.

Yeah, you're right, it's not evidence of abuse. I just find the designed system is vulnerable to it. Whether that's the case would require more data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com