> Not sure if you know this or not, but flagging an article as it first appears prevents all other HNers from seeing it. As I understand it, this is not the ca

> Not sure if you know this or not, but flagging an article as it first appears prevents all other HNers from seeing it. As I understand it, this is not the case. If enough people flag a story before it gets some upvotes, then it gets auto-killed, but one flag won't kill a story. It does make it harder to get to the front page though. > Flagging it later on causes it to sink rapidly off the top page. This is exactly how I'd expect a downvote to function, so I'd say flagging is serving a sort of dual purpose. If you look at the front page, there's no lack of quality stories. It's harder these days for any individual story to make it to the front page, but that's a function of greater submission volume. Quality discussions on the other hand have become more sparse as HN has grown. Perhaps it's a function of community size and there's no real fix for it.