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So this is unusual to me, because flagging feels more open to abuse than the comment score. Indeed this very thing happened to me recently: - user A says vague

by smcl 4y ago

So this is unusual to me, because flagging feels more open to abuse than the comment score. Indeed this very thing happened to me recently: - user A says vaguely racist thing - user B calls person out for racist thing - user A cannot downvote a reply, so they flag it instead - making it disappear So both can silence someone, but in one case many people need to disagree with someone and in the other you just need one person (or one person with an alt account if you want to go and revert a "vouch"). So if anything flagging is more prone to abuse than downvoting. I try to read greytext comments when I can and vouch whenever it looks unjust (and do something similar for downvoted posts) but from the looks of things not many people do. edit: might as well include my example - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001 So I'd understand if I was downvoted and called out for my confrontational response to racism. Because at that point I'd reply that actually treating this kind of casual xenophobic comment as unserious and mocking the person is the most effective counter to this kind of behavious. Getting bogged down in debating the merits or worth of any individual person or where they might "belong" is exactly what this kind of person wants to do.

mrtksn 4y ago
That's where you judge the moderation. The moderation quality defines the community quality. The good thing about HN is that the moderators are reachable and they do respond intelligently. Unlike AI moderation, you can send an e-mail about it and dang will respond to you and explain why something happen and you can discuss it. I had my account restricted multiple times and restored once we got on the same page(I don't agree with everything but once I see their point, I can work with it). I had wrongfully flagged comments unflagged by sending them an e-mail too. It's not perfect but it's pretty good and miles ahead than anything else online.
- smcl 4y ago
  So in my case the comment didn't desperately need unflagging - someone could wave the comment guidelines in my face and I'd probably concede that such an open confrontation broke at least one. But yeah I guess you can overturn a flagging more easily than being downvoted.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The real key is that there's a moderator, and the community is small enough that he can check things manually. Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to destruction eventually. My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does. Reddit somewhat has this, but there is still a site-wide issue.
    - mrtksn 4y ago
      >Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to destruction eventually. >My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does. I agree with this. In real life situations you can see it too, the larger the crowd the stupider their total behaviour becomes. Large crowds are good for certain things though, but mostly primal stuff like singing and chanting.

by smcl 4y ago

mrtksn 4y ago

That's where you judge the moderation. The moderation quality defines the community quality. The good thing about HN is that the moderators are reachable and they do respond intelligently. Unlike AI moderation, you can send an e-mail about it and dang will respond to you and explain why something happen and you can discuss it. I had my account restricted multiple times and restored once we got on the same page(I don't agree with everything but once I see their point, I can work with it). I had wrongfully flagged comments unflagged by sending them an e-mail too. It's not perfect but it's pretty good and miles ahead than anything else online.

smcl 4y ago
So in my case the comment didn't desperately need unflagging - someone could wave the comment guidelines in my face and I'd probably concede that such an open confrontation broke at least one. But yeah I guess you can overturn a flagging more easily than being downvoted.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The real key is that there's a moderator, and the community is small enough that he can check things manually. Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to destruction eventually. My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does. Reddit somewhat has this, but there is still a site-wide issue.
  - mrtksn 4y ago
    >Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to destruction eventually. >My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does. I agree with this. In real life situations you can see it too, the larger the crowd the stupider their total behaviour becomes. Large crowds are good for certain things though, but mostly primal stuff like singing and chanting.