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Ask HN: What happened to the flagging option?
This came about due to a discussion yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2925292 about the decline of discourse.
During that I mentioned that I used to go in and spend 5 minutes each morning flagging spam in the new tab, but I no longer have a flag link. Some one mentioned that I might have tripped some automatic flagging limit and lost the privilege.
Has the flag link been removed or was I punished for too much flagging? Is such a think possible?
I don't need the ability back, I'm just curious and it might help someone else from getting into this situation.
- bartonfink 15y agoIt's still here. I think you're on target when you guess that you may have flagged too much. I doubt it's a serious offence - you'll probably get the option to flag back in a little while.
- benologist 15y agoMine's been gone for weeks, I don't think it comes back unless someone manually returns it.
- ColinWright 15y agoI've heard that there is a detector for excessive flagging. I used also to go the "newest" and flag all the spam, and be a bit aggressive about keeping HN on topic, but I don't any more. There are literally dozens of posts that I see that should be flagged because, in essence, they are content-free. They contain nothing to make you think - really think. Fluff. But I don't flag much any more. If you want it back, no doubt you can email PG. Be brief and to the point - he usually responds quickly to sensible requests.
- allenbrunson 15y agoI read a comment from pg once that he "grades" flags based on how many articles you flag that actually do end up being killed. So it stands to reason that if you only flag honest-to-god spam, which almost always gets killed, then you'll get a high "grade" for your flags. But if you flag stuff that you think is merely off-topic, that mostly does not get killed, it just languishes with low points. So those flags would be counted against you. I of course have no inside knowledge about this. He may have changed the code since then. For what it's worth, I go through /newest about once a day and flag only honest-to-god spam, typically three or four at a time. I've been doing this for a couple of years now, and I can still flag stuff.
- ltamake 15y agoI can see the flag link. You may have tripped a mechanism.