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Another approach is to penalize users (e.g. stop trusting their flags) who flagged a post which then got unflagged by a mod.
by idbehold 5y ago
Another approach is to penalize users (e.g. stop trusting their flags) who flagged a post which then got unflagged by a mod.
- retrac 5y agoI have a flag on my platform that flags users who reported things I agreed with the removal of, as "trusted" and their reports are given more weight in the algorithm next time. Sort of the inverse of what you propose where everyone is somewhat untrusted by default. (But not entirely untrusted.)
- detaro 5y agothe mods take flagging rights away from people they find abusing it
- idbehold 5y agoMy proposed approach is a little more automated. The mods don't have to find and remove flagging rights individually, they just unflag a post and instantly all the users who had flagged it lose some credibility for future flags. EDIT: The "flagging trustworthiness" could even help mods to find posts which might need to be unflagged quicker based on the average trustworthiness of the flags.
- munk-a 5y agoBut unfortunately that could lead to a chilling effect on flagging deserving content. I like having dang and other moderators involved as the final say to reverse a decision if it's necessary. I am pretty conservative with my own flagging and vouching (I've vouched precisely once and it was a comment I strongly disagreed with but was clearly made in good faith and added to the discussion) and I believe that other folks are as well. Since the system mostly works and since social media upvoting algorithms are so insanely complicated to balance well I think it's fair to avoid rocking the boat.
- prepend 5y agoI don’t think so. I’d still be able to flag, just my flags would count for less. And not make that discount visible to me.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoWait, flags are only meant to be used for bad things? I've been using them for “title is bad, pls change” requests. (Oops.)
- idbehold 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#flag https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#flag > What does [flagged] mean? > It means that users flagged a post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on Hacker News.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoFortunately you can see everything you've flagged at /flagged?id=username; I corrected my flagging.
- stingrae 5y agoi would like an option in the settings to disable/enable my ability to flag content. On mobile, I have accidentally flagged things and recall it being challenging to hit the button to unflag.
- floatingatoll 5y agoYeah, about 80% of my flags on the homepage are precisely this.
- tpmx 5y agoOr just remove the link from the list view. (Only show the flag link when viewing a particular story.) (I've also done that by mistake like four times.)
- dredmorbius 5y agoIt's possible to email the mods vouching for stories (or comments). I do this fairly frequently. Not (yet) in this case, though there was a politically-tinged story earlier this week that I alerted mods on. What's particularly insidious is that killed stories both don't show up in Algolia search results (this is somewhat understandable, but in the case of political flagging, problematic), and even where favourited (something I also do with some regularity), may not be visible to non-logged-in users and IIRC actually disappear from the index in time.
- bostik 5y agoThere is apparently an entire branch of research called Reviewer Reliability. Someone on HN pointed that out to me a couple of years back, when we were discussing the problem with fake/bought/manipulated/blackhat product reviews. In a hilarious twist of fate, searching for that term brings up papers on either medical research or peer-review reliability problems in general[0]. You try to find data on a potentially abstract, complex societal issue, and come up with what can only be described as attention grabbing HN-catnip. 0: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/confusion-between-reviewer-reliability-and-wise-editorial-and-funding-decisions/6AD6B2801E1C4C6E4B69F6AD6017AD87 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain...