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I would absolutely flag that if I came across it (which I didn't.) I think it was poorly argued, disingenuous flamebait. (It never mentions the obvious retort

I would absolutely flag that if I came across it (which I didn't.) I think it was poorly argued, disingenuous flamebait. (It never mentions the obvious retort, which is that the high profile of the cases in question, not a Batphone at Apple or AT&T, led to the criminal investigations.) If it was posted with the original headline, that would be even worse. In addition, not a single thing in the post was interesting or original; it was just agitating about old news with the same anti-authoritarian slant present on every website ever.

Goladus 16y ago
Flagging stuff because you personally think it's poorly argued, disingenuous flamebait is a bit dangerous. I can't tell you the number of times I've read some article that's been upvoted dozens of times that I think is a piece of garbage. (For example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1392140 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1392140). That doesn't mean I should flag it for deletion and try to force my view of the world on everyone. I just point out the flaws and move on. If you want to ignore me that's your loss. You should try to use a more objective standard when flagging posts. Flagging is easily abused should be a last resort.
- mquander 16y ago
  I sympathize with your viewpoint, but I'm not convinced it's correct. If there were a downvote, I might have downvoted it, but not flagged it. However, there's only a flag. I try to use the flag to mean "off-topic" or "very low quality", and preferably both. I think the post under discussion was both -- it certainly wasn't technical or informational, and was it really newsworthy or intellectually interesting to anyone? (Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but by "anyone" I hope I mean "the vast majority of the readership.") I really don't like the "point out the flaws" approach. There's no way I would pollute a comment thread on a reasonable post with a discussion of why I think the post is no good, unless it was really bad and I was just trolling. I think that would lead to a pretty undesirable level of noise if it were commonplace. I guess that my feeling is -- in a community with no full-time moderators who can look at every post, users have to shape the community in a way they consider reasonable, and in my experience online, taking out the trash is a really important part of that. There might be some unfortunate subjectivity in the process, but I think it beats the alternative of doing nothing. (Anticipation: You may say, don't flag anything, but upvote many more things to indicate what you prefer. Unfortunately, there aren't really a huge amount of great posts that I feel stand out from the average decent posts, and I want to be able to really encourage the great ones in particular. Upvoting so many posts would seem like I was diluting my real preference, so I don't do it; I reserve the upvote for the top 10% or so of my quality range. I don't know if this is really rational, though.)
  - recoiledsnake 16y ago
    You have to consider why there is no downvote button. From the HN guidelines: >If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. You're plainly abusing the flag link just because you don't like the article(even if others do) and by your own admission are trying to hit it with whatever is at your hand. You may not be one, but I have seen this behavior a lot in Apple fanboys who seem to be super sensitive to any criticism of Apple.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  It's interesting because that article (at the time) struck me as an excellent piece of rhetoric - and the provoked discussion was good. Don't confuse controversial arguments ("What's a disease? Or: shoud fat/shy/alcoholic people be blamed or treated?") with flamebating/ranting ("Law enforcement has apparently become an arm of AT&T and Apple") > You should try to use a more objective standard when flagging posts. Surely: poor arguments (as in bad rhetoric - such as fallacies), flames/baiting and so forth are suitable objective standards. What else would you recommend to use? (honest question; I can think of nothing much)

Goladus 16y ago

Flagging stuff because you personally think it's poorly argued, disingenuous flamebait is a bit dangerous. I can't tell you the number of times I've read some article that's been upvoted dozens of times that I think is a piece of garbage. (For example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1392140 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1392140). That doesn't mean I should flag it for deletion and try to force my view of the world on everyone. I just point out the flaws and move on. If you want to ignore me that's your loss. You should try to use a more objective standard when flagging posts. Flagging is easily abused should be a last resort.

mquander 16y ago
I sympathize with your viewpoint, but I'm not convinced it's correct. If there were a downvote, I might have downvoted it, but not flagged it. However, there's only a flag. I try to use the flag to mean "off-topic" or "very low quality", and preferably both. I think the post under discussion was both -- it certainly wasn't technical or informational, and was it really newsworthy or intellectually interesting to anyone? (Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but by "anyone" I hope I mean "the vast majority of the readership.") I really don't like the "point out the flaws" approach. There's no way I would pollute a comment thread on a reasonable post with a discussion of why I think the post is no good, unless it was really bad and I was just trolling. I think that would lead to a pretty undesirable level of noise if it were commonplace. I guess that my feeling is -- in a community with no full-time moderators who can look at every post, users have to shape the community in a way they consider reasonable, and in my experience online, taking out the trash is a really important part of that. There might be some unfortunate subjectivity in the process, but I think it beats the alternative of doing nothing. (Anticipation: You may say, don't flag anything, but upvote many more things to indicate what you prefer. Unfortunately, there aren't really a huge amount of great posts that I feel stand out from the average decent posts, and I want to be able to really encourage the great ones in particular. Upvoting so many posts would seem like I was diluting my real preference, so I don't do it; I reserve the upvote for the top 10% or so of my quality range. I don't know if this is really rational, though.)
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  You have to consider why there is no downvote button. From the HN guidelines: >If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. You're plainly abusing the flag link just because you don't like the article(even if others do) and by your own admission are trying to hit it with whatever is at your hand. You may not be one, but I have seen this behavior a lot in Apple fanboys who seem to be super sensitive to any criticism of Apple.
ErrantX 16y ago
It's interesting because that article (at the time) struck me as an excellent piece of rhetoric - and the provoked discussion was good. Don't confuse controversial arguments ("What's a disease? Or: shoud fat/shy/alcoholic people be blamed or treated?") with flamebating/ranting ("Law enforcement has apparently become an arm of AT&T and Apple") > You should try to use a more objective standard when flagging posts. Surely: poor arguments (as in bad rhetoric - such as fallacies), flames/baiting and so forth are suitable objective standards. What else would you recommend to use? (honest question; I can think of nothing much)