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> What I do think we'll (finally) add is a "please give a reason why you flagged this post" step, and "because I think it's genai" will be one choice among seve

• dang 3mo ago
  Damn you people for asking good questions that go straight to the fuzzy areas! I don't know for sure yet. But you're right that that would follow from what I said. What I do know is that users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN. But this should rely on their reading of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not just be based on a like/dislike reaction. That is, users should flag articles that they think break the site guidelines, not just ones they dislike.
  • bellowsgulch 3mo ago
    Generally speaking, HN seems to have more of a problem now of people just drive-by downvoting things because they don't like someone's opinion. I know you hate the supposedly "noob" comment, as you've put it over the years, and as it is written in the guidelines, that HN is or isn't turning into Reddit, but this aspect of HN makes it indistinguishable to me as a long-time reader here whether you accept it from your perspective as a long-time moderator or not. Because HN moderation allows people to downvote or flag things simply because they don't like something, it will always be like Reddit. There is no distinguishing feature to separate it otherwise. One thing that would, would be forcing users to say why they downvoted or flagged something. Edit: If you spend years saying "no, no, it isn't true" to people, you're just sticking your fingers in your ears. Where there's smoke, there's fire.
    • DANmode 3mo ago
      It’s not necessarily that it isn’t true - the most common problem voters have is that it just isn’t interesting or unique.
      • bellowsgulch 3mo ago
        Most comments aren't interesting.
        • DANmode 3mo ago
          Then you’re in the wrong place (community, thread, or what have you). Said another way: I couldn’t disagree more.
          • bellowsgulch 3mo ago
            I'm not trying to be edgy or intentionally controversial or something, it's just life. Most things people have to say are not interesting. Not everything written on HN can be exceptional, because by definition it wouldn't be the exception. Your comment right now, and mine above are not interesting! In another thread there might be one whole comment out of hundreds that retells the experience of a senior engineer working on an uncommon problem, sharing specifics about a particular industry, piece of intellectual property, or another individual. The rest will not be interesting. That's normal! That's OK! But most are not.
            • DANmode 3mo ago
              They’re interesting to me, (or I wouldn’t be spending time on them), and they’re interesting because I expect to care about this specific community behind this specific domain in five or ten, same as I did five or ten ago. You may be more ephemeral with your community identities. That’s cool, too.
            • latexr 2mo ago
              > Not everything written on HN can be exceptional, because by definition it wouldn't be the exception. I’m not arguing every comment on HN is exceptional, but that logic isn’t sound because exceptionalism is relative (as you alluded to). In other words, it’s congruent that every comment on some website could be exceptional when compared to the internet at large.
    • bluefirebrand 3mo ago
      Don't you need a certain number of upvotes on your account before you can even use the downvote button? I seem to remember that being a thing, has it changed? The fact you can't just make an account, log in and start downvoting is already a massive improvement over Reddit
      • another-dave 3mo ago
        This post from awhile back suggests it's at 501 karma - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439437
    • Aachen 3mo ago
      Yeah, even if this is very hard to get it perfect, I keep thinking there has to exist a better voting system than what we have. We can do a presumed step in the right direction and evaluate. - To give an outlet for (dis)agreement: We could have two arrows on each post, one for agree/disagree, the other for 'legitimate post that helps the conversation'. Someone posting wrong info rarely helps the conversation, but also often enough it's an opinion matter and you can disagree while leaving the latter arrow alone. The latter determines sort order (most helpful first); the former is displayed as a fun fact on posts that are deemed helpful (author sees exact counts just like now) - A system that seems to work better: A local tech site uses a system where you assign a quality level to a post. The short labels are (translated) "flamebait", "irrelevant but well-intentioned", "relevant but well-known", "useful contribution", and "exceptionally useful". Each one has a numerical value, ranging from -1 to +3, and it'll take the median of all votes (with a half-vote bias towards +1 I think, but that's an implementation detail). If your median comes out to -1, it's collapsed by default; at +2 and +3, it gets highlighted. Incorporating opinion into your quality assessment is a problem here, too, but then you might get +0 instead of +1 and not (like on HN) a score of -7. Not just does that feel a lot more fair, the system and its UI also just makes more clear to everyone that you're supposed to objectively score the comments on the mentioned guidelines (it shows a description every time you hover over a vote option)
    • abustamam 3mo ago
      To add to this, it does make me think what the difference between down vote and flag is. I mean down vote is obviously the numerical opposite of upvote but why else would people downvote if it not be inappropriate for the forum? (Other than the obvious "I dont like this commenter/their opinion") Just thinking out loud I suppose.
  • sph 3mo ago
    I have been discouraging people from flagging ‘articles that they think don't belong on HN’, because you have disabled my ability to do so time and time again. In private conversation with you, you have confirmed that if I flag/vouch stuff you mods don’t agree with, I get the privilege taken away, even if I genuinely believe a post to fall outside of the guidelines. So either I read your mind, or it is best not to flag unless something is obviously, unequivocally, running afoul of the guidelines. I keep being annoyed at how arbitrary, and dare I say hypocritical, the entire flagging mechanism and its surrounding politics are.
    • bellowsgulch 3mo ago
      Dan likes some people and you ain't in the group, buddy.
      • dang 3mo ago
        I like people who follow the site guidelines and want to use HN as intended. That doesn't mean I dislike people who don't, but that side of the moon is more...nuanced.
      • Barbing 3mo ago
        He has no idea who I am. Privately, when I was new he was polite and helpful. (Tried to be polite, was returned.) /singular anecdote for reader reference
    • dang 3mo ago
      > In private conversation with you, you have confirmed that if I flag/vouch stuff you mods don’t agree with, I get the privilege taken away, even if I genuinely believe a post to fall outside of the guidelines. People love to make vague claims like this based on things we supposedly said. How about you quote what exactly what I literally said so readers can make up their own minds? Sorry if that is testy (well, it is testy), but I can't count the number of times that disgruntled users have posted falsely to HN threads to vent their residual frustrations with the mods.
      • 3mo ago
  • causality0 3mo ago
    What I do know is that users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN If this is true then this statement should be added to the guidelines. Many a time I've seen a submission and thought "My god, this is the most moronic thing I've ever read in my life, nearly every single factual claim in this is wrong" but I don't flag it because "don't post utter drivel" is not in the guidelines.
    • dang 3mo ago
      What did you think flagging was for? (Genuine question) It's true that we don't spell things out precisely, but that's because it's impossible to spell things out fully precisely. If you start, where do you stop?
      • frm88 3mo ago
        What did you think flagging was for? (Genuine question) Same as on other sites: Spam and/or bot, abuse and/or insults and other ad hominems and particularly the point in the guidelines where you go: Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. and Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Not that my flagging amounts to anything, there's so much domestic US politics articles from mainstream media on here that I often wonder whether I misunderstand the guidelines, but then, I'm just an Europoor /s
      • causality0 2mo ago
        To flag things for removal that the powers that be, aka you, don't want on HN, as defined by the Guidelines. What I want on HN and what you want on HN aren't the same, so users like me have to go by the Guidelines on what is and isn't flaggable. For example, some types of submissions I utterly despise but don't violate the guidelines include "product launches that lie about being the first/only way to do something when this tool already exists", "obvious bullshit like a ten year old curing cancer", "this month's revolutionary new battery technology, ignore the fact it has so little real application we aren't even patenting it", and the classic "here is a five page article examining a question whose answer is not only incredibly obvious but can be answered in a single sentence". I'd be overjoyed if you told us you wanted us to flag that stuff.
  • haunter 3mo ago
    > users should flag articles that they think break the site guidelines I'm more and more think that link actually hurts the site more than helps. It's a gotcha against everything, can be used a sword and a shield too. See the part about politics. There is more and more US domestic politics post here (which I actually flag all the time) yet when the topic comes up people will say: "should hackers turn their back on when the world burns" So basically everything goes as long as it fits the narrative. And the worst offender imo is the last part about reddit. Because I do _really agree_ that HN is more and more like reddit, if not already is. This very post with the comments where everyone is asking for a downvote button is a perfect example of that.