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Users likely flagged your post because they felt that it was relatively uninformative political boilerplate with grains of unsubstantive flamebait: “People are

by sctb 9y ago

Users likely flagged your post because they felt that it was relatively uninformative political boilerplate with grains of unsubstantive flamebait: “People are starting to realize that the Cold War never ended.” and an offshoot of a tangent to boot. Political discussions on Hacker News need to be civil and substantive, like the guidelines ask. Even more so because the flamewar risk is much higher and this is not a flamewar site.

staunch 9y ago
My comment was civil, informed, and substantive. It includes an answer to the question, and seven supporting citations. It also refrains from any unnecessarily controversial aspects of the argument. The comment very well could've been upvoted as the most useful reply. The other replies were terribly uniformed. We'll never know because it was censored by a small number of users that didn't agree with the argument. An abuse of the flagging system that you've chosen to support and reinforce.
- grzm 9y ago
  As an exercise, set aside temporarily your judgement of whether the flagging was abuse or otherwise. What are some reasons members may have flagged the comment? Take an additional step: assume they’re reasonable people. Are any of the reasons you came up with consistent with that view? What are some reasons that are consistent with them being reasonable? Are there potential readings of your comment that may lead to their action, even if it wasn’t what you intended? This isn’t meant as a defense of their actions. It’s only to aid in more effective communication. Clearly people acted in a manner you believe is unfair or unjustified. Communication involves both the commenter and the reader. As you can only control one of those ends, what can you do to improve the probability of successful communication? I don’t expect answers to these questions. I just find them useful when communication that I’m a part of breaks down, and offer them here in the hope that you may find them useful, too.

by sctb 9y ago

staunch 9y ago

My comment was civil, informed, and substantive. It includes an answer to the question, and seven supporting citations. It also refrains from any unnecessarily controversial aspects of the argument. The comment very well could've been upvoted as the most useful reply. The other replies were terribly uniformed. We'll never know because it was censored by a small number of users that didn't agree with the argument. An abuse of the flagging system that you've chosen to support and reinforce.

grzm 9y ago
As an exercise, set aside temporarily your judgement of whether the flagging was abuse or otherwise. What are some reasons members may have flagged the comment? Take an additional step: assume they’re reasonable people. Are any of the reasons you came up with consistent with that view? What are some reasons that are consistent with them being reasonable? Are there potential readings of your comment that may lead to their action, even if it wasn’t what you intended? This isn’t meant as a defense of their actions. It’s only to aid in more effective communication. Clearly people acted in a manner you believe is unfair or unjustified. Communication involves both the commenter and the reader. As you can only control one of those ends, what can you do to improve the probability of successful communication? I don’t expect answers to these questions. I just find them useful when communication that I’m a part of breaks down, and offer them here in the hope that you may find them useful, too.