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Hacker News would be immeasurably improved by removing the flag button entirely. That’s what the downvote button is for. Flag should be a message to a mod if

Hacker News would be immeasurably improved by removing the flag button entirely. That’s what the downvote button is for. Flag should be a message to a mod if there is something heinous like gore on the front page. It’s used as a censorship button here and that isn’t cool, especially in a place that is supposed to support well rounded discussion.

mdp2021 3y ago
The snipers that hit you prove you wrong: you may have looked for discussion, you received passing sneers: flagging is probably not the critical issue.
dotnet00 3y ago
I disagree, the flag button is very valuable, especially whenever any other social media goes through some exodus and we get a bunch of new transient users who don't really care about the culture here. For example, since the reddit exodus, I feel like we've had an uptick in "drive-by" comments (characteristic of reddit) where people just throw in some sort of unproductive, sometimes provocative comment with no intent of engaging. Flagging is a nice way to clean up trash like that without having to pull in a moderator.
tptacek 3y ago
That supposes that the only criteria for what should or shouldn't be promoted to HN users is the vote count. But HN has never worked that way, and never could; if it did, the front page would be all cat pictures.
- idlewords 3y ago
  Where do I go to upvote that happening?
grecy 3y ago
I agree 100%. Given that some of the most influential tech people on the planet frequent HN (see Matt Cutts, etc.), I think it's critically important to discuss topics that are related simply to making the world a better place. Tech and tech people can help , but not if we can't even have the conversations. If the richest and most influential people in tech are not even permitted to have these conversations, the chances of them getting fixed drops dramatically. It feels like YCombinator wants to just keep shoving heads into sand on many, many topics because they're making money, and making money is the goal.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
you can't downvote a submission, so that's already one issue. >lag should be a message to a mod if there is something heinous like gore on the front page. It’s used as a censorship button here and that isn’t cool I mostly agree and that is how I use flag. I've never flagged a submnission, personally unless I felt the site was outright malware (I haven't experienced that here). But I figure in this case flagging isn't too dissimilar to how reddit will hide submissions/comments with enough downvotes.

mdp2021 3y ago

The snipers that hit you prove you wrong: you may have looked for discussion, you received passing sneers: flagging is probably not the critical issue.

dotnet00 3y ago

I disagree, the flag button is very valuable, especially whenever any other social media goes through some exodus and we get a bunch of new transient users who don't really care about the culture here. For example, since the reddit exodus, I feel like we've had an uptick in "drive-by" comments (characteristic of reddit) where people just throw in some sort of unproductive, sometimes provocative comment with no intent of engaging. Flagging is a nice way to clean up trash like that without having to pull in a moderator.

tptacek 3y ago

That supposes that the only criteria for what should or shouldn't be promoted to HN users is the vote count. But HN has never worked that way, and never could; if it did, the front page would be all cat pictures.

idlewords 3y ago
Where do I go to upvote that happening?

grecy 3y ago

I agree 100%. Given that some of the most influential tech people on the planet frequent HN (see Matt Cutts, etc.), I think it's critically important to discuss topics that are related simply to making the world a better place. Tech and tech people can help , but not if we can't even have the conversations. If the richest and most influential people in tech are not even permitted to have these conversations, the chances of them getting fixed drops dramatically. It feels like YCombinator wants to just keep shoving heads into sand on many, many topics because they're making money, and making money is the goal.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

you can't downvote a submission, so that's already one issue. >lag should be a message to a mod if there is something heinous like gore on the front page. It’s used as a censorship button here and that isn’t cool I mostly agree and that is how I use flag. I've never flagged a submnission, personally unless I felt the site was outright malware (I haven't experienced that here). But I figure in this case flagging isn't too dissimilar to how reddit will hide submissions/comments with enough downvotes.