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Not to hijack this thread, but since we're having a meta-discussion about HN already... I am (mildly) aghast to discover that people are using the flag feature
by jsdalton 16y ago
Not to hijack this thread, but since we're having a meta-discussion about HN already... I am (mildly) aghast to discover that people are using the flag feature as a substitute for downvoting! There are numerous comments throughout this thread to that effect.
I always thought there was a reason that no downvote option was offered on submissions, i.e. so that people wouldn't bury articles simply because they didn't agree with them, etc.
Instead it appears that people are using the flag feature to do the very same thing. This is actually worse than downvoting, because if a submission gets enough flags it just gets killed outright. At least with downvoting, it just effects the point count, which I use as a shorthand to decide whether an article is worth reading or not.
I have only every used the flagging feature for articles that were completely inappropriate for Hacker News (e.g. stuff about politics, jokey stuff more appropriate for reddit, outright spam). I would never dream of using a flag to register displeasure with an author's style, arguments, choice of title, etc. as other people are suggesting here.
Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but I find it disappointing that people use HN like this.
- ErrantX 16y agoWell. There is also quite a movement (one i subscribe to actually) to use the comment downvote feature not for disagreement (which should be a comment) but to "punish" comments not in the spirit of the community. In that context flag would be synonymous with downvote in some respects. I think the overriding theory is that on HN neither downvotes nor flags should be used to signal disagreement but to signal a bad/poor comment/article. (I make not comment on whether that actually works out or not :))
- Scriptor 16y agoNot just a bad/poor comment/article. You can have a horrifically written article on Erlang and it would still be on Hacker News, therefore not deserving of flagging. What's supposed to happen is that nobody upvotes it and it stays in obscurity. On the other hand, even a brilliant article on upcoming political elections should be flagged because it's off-topic.
- ErrantX 16y agoI won't disagree; although in my mind it is cleaner if the badly written (as in fallacious, factually wrong, ranting, flamebait etc rather than the quality of the writing) is flagged too.
- dpritchett 16y agoI have seen several [dead] comments in the last week where I haven't been able to figure out why the comment was killed. Is this a case of "three flags from other community members and you're out"? I've really struggled to figure out why these innocuous-looking comments were killed.
- noodle 16y ago> I would never dream of using a flag to register displeasure with an author's style, arguments, choice of title, etc. as other people are suggesting here. perhaps some people do this, but i only use flags to report spammy type stuff, or similar. flagging only brings it under review, too. if the mods agree, they'll kill it. i don't think there's anything that auto-kills things. i could be wrong, though.