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Comment by relaxing | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: how do things get unflagged? Do users at some level gain vouch privileges?

They 99.99999% of the time don't. I think only dang has that ability and he won't really step in unless there are some truly rouge actors.

> unless there are some truly rouge actors

It's more a question of the article. What we're looking for includes: is the article not too repetitive of recent discussions? does it contain significant new information? is there a reasonable chance that it could support a substantive, thoughtful discussion, or is it too flamebaity/provocative? that kind of thing.

Here's a subthread from yesterday where I went into this in depth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011. Past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

If anyone has a question that isn't answered at those links, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

Can you tell if there's a concerted effort to flag Musk and DOGE related threads? I've seen threads go from nothing to [flagged][dead] in the course of 30 seconds after being up for 40 minutes, suggesting very spiky flagging behavior. This has come up a few times recently, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904148

(Of course, I could just be misunderstanding how flagging works on the site... maybe the state machine has to transition in order from regular -> [flagged][dead] -> [flagged] after vouching?)

I haven't looked specifically at DOGE stories but from my general perspective, this is the same as what we see with all the hottest/most divisive topics—that is, it's the same with Musk in general, Trump in general, and Israel/Gaza, to name perhaps the 3 most in-that-category topics.

If a post is flagged-but-you-can-still-comment, then it can't be vouched.

If a post is flagkilled w/ comments disabled, then you can typically vouch.

It's possible to vouch for stories and comments.

You can also email moderators at hn@ycombintor.com to request unflagging. I do that occasionally, with mixed results. (I've come to know which are long shots, and typically concede the point, but at least make the attempt.)

Correction: vouch only works on comments. For stories, email mods as discussed elsewhere and in both the HN FAQ & Guidelines:

FAQ: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

Guidelines: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

Both are linked at the bottom of most HN pages.

If you use the vouch feature much, eventually they take it away from you. Same with upvoting and downvoting, but it all happens silently so most people don't notice.

That’s funny, I thought at one point I saw vouch link for comments, but no longer. I doubt I used it more than once. Does that mean it got taken away?

I couldn't say for sure but... I think so? It's the same for me, I used to have it and now I don't.

In your case that was true. General explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902318.

I didn't see much misuse of vouching in your recent history so I've removed that penalty from your account now. But please make sure that the comments you're vouching for are respecting the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Why don't you make such things transparent and clear on a user's account so they can see what you've done?

You're keen on reviewing a user's recent history, but provide no corresponding transparency to the user on what you've done.

Because I'm scared of how much extra work it would create, and because it's the sort of frog-boiling bureaucratism that it is in the spirit of this site to avoid. It's easy for me to imagine that one day I would wake up and be horrified by the systems we had inadvertently let sprout up around ourselves.

HN works best with informal systems, not formal ones. The informal contract around transparency is: people are welcome to ask questions and we always answer them, but we don't formally publish a moderation log or anything like that (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

> I call it frog-boiling because it's easy for me to imagine that one day I would wake up and be horrified by the systems we had inadvertently let spring up around ourselves.

You're already removing the ability of users to vouch. That frog is boiled.

I'm saying tell them on their user page. Include a line that only they can see which says "can no longer vouch" or similar. That way they know what's happened instead of having to guess what's happened.

I have been trying to bring Musk and DOGE topics to light all week and have lost the ability to vouch as a consequence.

You haven't lost the ability to vouch.

Meta note, but seriously thank you for being so transparent about this! It's a big part of why I love and trust HN

It didn't get taken away. Not sure why you didn't see it where you expected to but there's no issue with your account.

Thank you.

I didn’t realize the vouch link doesn’t show up in the main threads.

You have to go to the specific comment (click on the timestamp) and vouch is available there.

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