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Hacker News, say hello to the Flagging Bury Brigades
I have to say, it's really disappointing to see the flagging functionality being abused in this way.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2438002 , which has had 47 points in 1 hour (despite being flagged by a number of individuals) is exactly on-topic for HN, It concerns a product that is relevant to HN, it is built by an active HN member, it has been upvoted by a good number of HNers despite its unnaturally low placement (due to the flagging), it is written by an active HNer (me), and it is on a blog which is popular with HN.
It's hard to think of a more on-topic post.
And yet, at least 4 people have flagged it, possibly 5, thus lowering its placement by a lot. Flagging is supposed to be reserved for egregiously off-topic and spam posts.
If this is what happens to on-topic posts, one thing is clear:
Flagging is totally broken.
Why? I suspect too many people have access to flags, so flags have become indiscriminate. Simultaneously, pg made flags have a very large effect on story position (effectively, one flag is worth maybe 5-10 downvotes, no matter who applies the flag).
I have long since learned not to try to coerce pg into doing anything, but I really think this is strong evidence of broken functionality. If you want to introduce downvotes for stories, let's have downvotes for stories. But let's not have mega-downvotes in the sneaky form of flags that are supposed to be for spam.
I'll add that this is not the first time I've seen this happen, though it's the first time I see a perfectly legitimate article get quite that many flags. Is HN skipping the Reddit step and going straight to the Digg graveyard?
- pg 16y agoNo one flagged it. It set off the voting ring detector. This is probably why: http://twitter.com/swombat/statuses/57853143689601024 http://twitter.com/swombat/statuses/57853143689601024
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoThe logical follow up question is: assuming swombat isn't part of a secret cabal, how does he avoid setting it off in the future? You probably can't answer that, but I know I like tweeting about my HN posts and inviting folks over to HN to participate. If that's a bad thing, we need to know that and not do it anymore. EDIT: Is there is a prohibition against tweeting submissions? EDIT2: Happy to abide by whatever rules there are, but without knowing them I can see where it could get very frustrating for a lot of folks. A couple of my submissions I was sure were being flagged, but now I'm guessing it's because I shared the link with folks. That's an extremely non-intuitive system response.
- swombat 16y agoIf tweeting about your posts and getting them exposure is a bad thing, this is no forum for entrepreneurs.
- icey 16y agoThis isn't a forum for entrepreneurs: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403868 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403868
- swombat 16y agoSad. I've told numerous people that this was the best online community of entrepreneurs bar none. I guess we need a new one.
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- vyrotek 16y agoWhoa, same here. I guess I will direct my referrals elsewhere from now on. On that note. Where is the best online community for entrepreneurs then?
- bvi 16y ago> On that note. Where is the best online community for entrepreneurs then? That's easy. Check out Hacker News. Oh wait...
- 16y ago
- jmatt 16y agoI have seen a good hack to get around this problem. At the end of the article add a link "Discuss this on Hacker News" linking to your submission of the article here. Then you can just tweet your article directly and all the HN'ers will click through and comment and vote for your submission. It's not ideal but it works. One problem is old comments. Anyone that sees the article and wants to add to the discussion is pretty much screwed if it's been more than half a day. HN submissions older than that get few views and fewer responses to any late additions.