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Comment by _stephan | Hacker News Reader

Can somebody explain why HN's ranking algorithm has already pushed this submission to the second page? This seems inconsistent with its points, age and level of discussion relative to the articles ranked above. (I'm just asking out of curiosity and have no personal interest in having this post ranked higher or lower.)

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No one can down-vote posts, but posts that require attention (moderator related?) can be flagged to indicate that the link is to something that is outright bad (spam, inflamatory content, false information etc) and if it gets flagged by a lot of people it falls down the front page.

There's probably something else I don't know about the ranking algorithm though.

Do users who abuse the flagging feature get penalized?

I lost my ability to flag. I have no idea why, I assume I flagged one too many posts that ended up as popular. Just as well. One less distraction for me.

I don't think so, not for just flagging but there does seem to be a way HN can find this type of behaviour and ignore the actions of users that abuse the voting system. read this for some more info http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ

Thanks for the link.

Some moderator probably downvoted it.

I've noticed when the discussion is of low quality stories tend to fall faster. So yeah, you're probably right.

I'd like it better if this kind of moderation would be more transparent.

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