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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

I didn't see any such pattern in the data. It was flagged by quite a few users, none of whom showed any obvious pattern like affiliation with a company or a political slant. (Edit: I mean none of the ones I looked at. There were too many to look at them all.)

We can only guess why users flag things. In this case, I don't have a good guess, other than that the article title is baity, so I replaced it with more neutral language from the subtitle, and (partly) rolled back the flags.

The flaggers may be correct, in any case, because this thread is noticeably terrible.

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> We can only guess why users flag things.

I'm sure you've considered this feature, but since flagging is such a heavyweight (in terms of ranking impact) activity, shouldn't a flagger need to at least articulate (via text or a drop-down menu) why they are flagging it? Even vague choices like "Site guideline violation," "Spam," "Astroturfing," "Political flame bait" might offer some of the missing insight.

I've always resisted that, but could be persuaded. Not sure we'd get the true reasons though.

What are your concerns with that?

If it's overhead for the flagger, they could be presented with a single multi choice question, eg:

What most deserves flagging: a)item title b) item content c) hn discussion d) something else

With different users presented with different questions to build up a picture.

Flags could be recorded even if the question isn't answered, but with you reserving the right to weight ones without answers less.

Mainly the bureaucratic nature of it. Preserving HN's minimalism has been a priority because it's the kind of thing that's so easily lost; like a frog boiling itself.

Yea, I get the hesitance to invest in this. Nobody is going to select/admit reasons like "Because flagging is a mega-downvote and I don't like this story getting attention," even if it's the real reason. We don't know how accurate or actionable Slashdot's drop-down choice moderation was, either. Even if people are honest about their intentions, what is actionable? Not much I guess.

my guess would be that it's because you have to sign up to read the article.

That's actually a fair point. The good thing is that archive.is works on their site now.

Yes, although it's strangely inconsistent. Usually I see that but occasionally I don't.

(nice to see you still commenting here btw!)

hey, thanks for remembering the oldtimers!!

I check in often, but don't comment much anymore.

Thanks for looking into it.

And yeah, I thought that this topic would have garnered a better discussion.

I'm surprised you'd think that - Facebook moderation changes and the same tired back and forth about 'free speech' have been some of the worst threads for me.

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