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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

As other users have pointed out, to flag a comment you have to click on 'link' to go to the comment's item page [1]. I don't know why PG designed it this way but have always assumed it was a speed bump to reduce impulsive flagging, since flags are more powerful than downvotes.

We never remove flagging privileges because of just one flag. The concept of a mistake is all too familiar over here.

1. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adang+flag+link#!/comment/...

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It's not great UI and it's made worse if, like me, you mostly read HN on a tablet so hitting the wrong link is easy to do. A better speed bump would be to have the flag link always available, but have it take you to a page that says "you are flagging the following item: <comment/link> by <author>. You should continue if <list of reasons> and not <list of bad reasons>. [OK, flag it!]"

This (a) draws attention to the exact thing you are flagging (the individual comment/link, not the thread) and (b) puts the confirm link somewhere else on the screen so you can't double-tap the same hotspot by accident. The advisory text is optional, but as others have pointed out, it's not really clear where the line between flagging and downvoting should be drawn.

Is there any way for me to tell if my flags are useful or stupid?

I tend to pre-emptively flag stories which I know will draw out the worst bits of HN. That's probably a bad thing, and I wouldn't be surprised if it caused my flags to be ignored.

Same here. I generally flag gender stories, not because I disagree, but because the comments quickly deteriorate.

Perhaps flagging those comments would be better, since they are what you claim to be the problem.

I have only just become aware of flagging comments. Some of the threads tho' you would need to flag 100 and a lot of bad feeling is generated. Best nip it in the bud early I reckon.m

The threads that you are flagging are the ones that need to happen.

I can see why you would flag a whole thread, but I don't think that will ultimately get us anywhere. If you care about the accessibility of this site, then I implore you to upvote those threads^ and flag the bad comments within.

^presuming that they have some techy slant

> Is there any way for me to tell if my flags are useful

Anyone worried about this is welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and ask, and we'll be happy to take a look for you. But I feel like the kind of people who would worry about this probably tend to be the kind whose flags are useful.

There was one time when I accidentally clicked on 'flag'. I meant to click on the 'comments' link, but I was on my phone and the link was too small so I ended up clicking on 'flag'. I couldn't find a way to undo it. It seems unfair if my flagging rights get revoked because of that.

You can unflag. Go to the link for the comment, click "flag", and when the page reloads you can unflag.

he's referring to flagging stories, not comments.

the flag link is right next to the comments link.

it's very easy to accidentally flag something from the home page of hacker news, when you actually intended to read the comments.

I agree that navigating HN on a phone is terrible.

You can also unflag stories.

> We never remove flagging privileges because of just one flag. The concept of a mistake is intimately familiar to us, I assure you.

Is it possible to either allow people to upvote a comment they have previously downvoted (or vice versa), or at least to undo an accidental upvote/downvote?

Especially on mobile devices, the margin of error here is very low, and I know I have accidentally downvoted a comment that I meant to upvote.

(In addition, I know some people may upvote/downvote a long comment before they have finished reading the entire text. This probably isn't behavior that should be encouraged or catered to, which is why allowing people to change their mind on votes[0] may be overkill. But at least allowing people to revoke an incorrect upvote/downvote might mitigate this effect.)

[0] ie, the way Reddit does

Also, FWIW, all flag actions can already be undone.

I feel like the UI should be consistent dang, because I've been flagging entire threads where there's an inappropriate comment (not knowing that there was a comment flag there).

I think at the moment it's too easy to hit that flag button on the front page (as others have said, especially on mobile), so maybe it should be moved back too?

The consistency would be to remove the flag button from the front page, but clicking on a story and flagging it in the thread itself is equivalent to clicking on a comment to flag it in its page.

And now I know. It's not draconian in this case, it's just twice as opaque as I expected.

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