5 ms·

Ask PG: How Critical Should I Be? (meta - flagging)

41 points by jcr 14y ago

I'm definitely in the "up-vote the good stuff" camp, but contributing to HN includes the far less enjoyable tasks of occasionally down-voting and flagging. I know HN employs an "excessive flagging" threshold to prevent abusive flagging (pg mentioned this eons ago, but I can't find the link). The "Enough rope to hang yourself" design works well with engaged users who care about the quality of HN, but the design seems to break down when there's too much bad stuff to flag/down-vote. The most obvious break down is when emotions run high on some topic, and we're flooded with bad comments, throw-away trolling accounts, and redundant but up-voted submissions. But on everyday terms, if I was to flag every single violation of the site guidelines I see in the /newest queue, I'd very quickly hang myself on the anti-abuse code. Even seemingly well-intentioned people get hung by the anti-abuse code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5454106 Too much of a good thing is often bad, and a well-intentioned person with an itchy mouse finger could easily flag too much. At present, there's just no way to know where the "too much" line is, or what kind of infractions should be flagged. pg, could you provide more guidance on what you want to be flagged? I've got a few ideas for potential ways to provide feedback on good/bad flags to users in their profiles without spoiling the anti-abuse code. I could either email them to you or post them up in the "Feature Request" thread where they belong. p.s. Also could you please add "gossip" and "X is down" messages to the list of off topic stuff in the site guidelines?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
buro9 14y ago
On the forums I run I have the policy that to flag something is an exceptional thing... and that when it happens it's because something exceptional has occurred. I feel that the whole flagging system is for two reasons: 1) Legal enforcement against illegal material: child porn, hate material, etc. 2) The way in which the community communicates to me the community standards... where the subjective line of acceptability is In the first instance, I only receive a couple of flags a year even on a community with 250k actives per month. On the second, I receive a flag every day or two. Flags generate emails to all of the admins and moderators, it's a "drop things and look at this" event. When we receive a flag we will ignore it if: The person is an habitual flagger (over-sensitive), or the person always flags the subject of the flag (chip-on-shoulder/bias). We're attempting to listen to and gently adjust the subjective acceptable standards that are communicated to us, but without introducing a system in which a small number create a wild amount of vocal bias. Hence... if someone flags often, they lose their ability to flag as they're creating disproportionate noise in the feedback mechanism. So long as people on the communities I run reserve the flag for the truly exceptional and unacceptable, then everything works well. Now, assuming similar intent in the system exists here, I'd say it's best to avoid flagging unless it's essential to flag.
- jcr 14y ago
  Thanks for the input. Great points. The flagging system on HN shares some similar aspects to the ones you mentioned (congrats on 250K active users!), but in many ways, it's a completely different system and has a slightly different intent. It only takes a few flags from established users for new submission to be marked [dead] and invisible to most people, save those who have "show dead" enabled in their profile. In this sense, HN flagging is designed to crowd-source the task of removing spam, abuse, and off-topic material from the site. Essentially, flagging is community cleanup, and it's the reason why the flag link is so prominent... --You probably remember when the front page didn't have flag links. For a long time, only the /newest page had easily accessible 'flag' links. The change of putting 'flag' links on the front page was made because junk kept getting up-voted onto the front page, and since most people didn't know how to flag (by visiting the 'link' link), the result was discussions about inappropriateness. Flags on HN work differently than what you described. If you flag something and it gets flagged by enough other people (tempered by anti-abuse ring flag/vote detection) to be marked [dead], then it was a "good" flag. Similarly, if you flag something and not enough others flag it to become [dead], then it was a "bad" flag. The more "good" flags you make, the more weight is given to them, and of course, the more "bad" flags you make, the less weight is given to them. (NOTE: Above I'm paraphrasing something pg posted eons ago, and I can't find the link, so I might not have the details perfect, and the details may have changed since then.) Also, flags reduce rank in the HN sorting, but exactly how flags reduce rank is undisclosed (contra-factor --see pg's second post here): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417 If you flag something, and it does not go [dead], your flag still has some effect, but the details of whether said flag is "good" or "bad" are unknown. All I can say for sure is if something is highly up-voted, and also heavily flagged (i.e. controversial), it sinks down the ranking and off the front page very quickly even if it is never marked [dead]. It's a very clever design, reduces the workload on mods/admins, and enables you to do some other interesting stuff... Most of the details are not public, but I'd bet PG uses the good/bad ratio to determine things like the per-user threshold value where flagging is disabled for a user. I also suspect it would take some other count and/or good/bad threshold of flags per-submission or per-post for admins/moderators to be bothered with any kind of alert. Why bother the mods/admin when enough known-good users have flagged it to [dead]? These two points are pure speculation on my part, but having the good/bad flag ratio per-user allows you to lighten the workload on mods/admins. Of course, pg not elaborate on the anti-abuse code, and I sincerely doubt he will neither confirm nor deny anything I've said publicly because he just can't without jeopardizing the effectiveness of his anti-abuse code. (Yes, I'm intentionally giving him an out). On the other hand, having PG provide a bit more instruction on what he wants flagged could be really useful to the users watching the /newest queue, prevent well-intentioned folks from unnecessarily triggering the abusive-flagger threshold, and at the same time, help improve the quality on HN.
biot 14y ago
I tripped this flagging threshold a while back, flagging submissions which I thought were offtopic for HN. Alas, no more "flag" links for me. Apparently, one shouldn't flag stories as a substitute for the fact that they can't be downvoted.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- matthewcocco 14y ago
  To my knowledge, links actually can be downvoted - but only after you yourself have >500 karma.
  - manojlds 14y ago
    No, links can't be downvoted. Only comments can be. At the least, I am around 700 Karma, and I can't.
    - georgemcbay 14y ago
      I'm at 7274 karma and I can't downvote links either. So either the karma limit is very high or it doesn't exist. In any case, I don't think article downvotes would serve much use, articles nobody is interested in will naturally fall off due to lack of upvotes.
      - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
        Isn't the problem that you lose some signal with the noise that way. You're not filtering out the chaff, you're skimming off the top level of grain. If a submission is poorly titled then it will appear to be chaff [rubbish] when in fact it was grain [beneficial].
  - mscarborough 14y ago
    Articles cannot be downvoted at 500, or perhaps not at all. This article by a prominent community member may help the GP though: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ
huhtenberg 14y ago
On that note - mods and supers, can I please have my flagging privileges back?
mahesh_rm 14y ago
This is a good point. It happened to me for one of my very occasional HN posts, in which I presented our startup idea to HN for feedback. It was flagged for no apparent reasons while on front page top, and this impaired quite a lot its visibility. I'm not implying there were any deliberate malicious attempts, or organized obscure interests, behind flagging it, but as of today, I can't understand why it was. It would perhaps be useful to include a mandatory short motivation whenever you are flagging a post, which may be automatically delivered to authors' HN profile, so that they may be able to more easily understand the reasons behind the report.
nonamegiven 14y ago
The spirit of Postel's Law applies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel#Postel.27s_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel#Postel.27s_Law Upvote a lot. Ignoring is usually better than downvoting. Flag anything that's a blatant retail advertisement. "The best shoes at rockbottom prices!"
recoiledsnake 14y ago
I've losy my flagging ability a long time ago too. Whats more concerning is the abuse of the flagging system to hide articles people that don't want others to seee. like articles not showing Apple or Google in a good light, or articles friendly to Microsoft... like the Surface review, for example.
tomasien 14y ago
I've had 2 things that I thought weren't great but weren't terrible flagged and pushed to spot 301 in the last couple months. I don't know if they should have been or if it was excessive. They were: http://yourereallypretty.com http://yourereallypretty.com http://tommy.authpad.com/this-is-why-you-ship http://tommy.authpad.com/this-is-why-you-ship

41 points by jcr 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

buro9 14y ago

On the forums I run I have the policy that to flag something is an exceptional thing... and that when it happens it's because something exceptional has occurred. I feel that the whole flagging system is for two reasons: 1) Legal enforcement against illegal material: child porn, hate material, etc. 2) The way in which the community communicates to me the community standards... where the subjective line of acceptability is In the first instance, I only receive a couple of flags a year even on a community with 250k actives per month. On the second, I receive a flag every day or two. Flags generate emails to all of the admins and moderators, it's a "drop things and look at this" event. When we receive a flag we will ignore it if: The person is an habitual flagger (over-sensitive), or the person always flags the subject of the flag (chip-on-shoulder/bias). We're attempting to listen to and gently adjust the subjective acceptable standards that are communicated to us, but without introducing a system in which a small number create a wild amount of vocal bias. Hence... if someone flags often, they lose their ability to flag as they're creating disproportionate noise in the feedback mechanism. So long as people on the communities I run reserve the flag for the truly exceptional and unacceptable, then everything works well. Now, assuming similar intent in the system exists here, I'd say it's best to avoid flagging unless it's essential to flag.

jcr 14y ago
Thanks for the input. Great points. The flagging system on HN shares some similar aspects to the ones you mentioned (congrats on 250K active users!), but in many ways, it's a completely different system and has a slightly different intent. It only takes a few flags from established users for new submission to be marked [dead] and invisible to most people, save those who have "show dead" enabled in their profile. In this sense, HN flagging is designed to crowd-source the task of removing spam, abuse, and off-topic material from the site. Essentially, flagging is community cleanup, and it's the reason why the flag link is so prominent... --You probably remember when the front page didn't have flag links. For a long time, only the /newest page had easily accessible 'flag' links. The change of putting 'flag' links on the front page was made because junk kept getting up-voted onto the front page, and since most people didn't know how to flag (by visiting the 'link' link), the result was discussions about inappropriateness. Flags on HN work differently than what you described. If you flag something and it gets flagged by enough other people (tempered by anti-abuse ring flag/vote detection) to be marked [dead], then it was a "good" flag. Similarly, if you flag something and not enough others flag it to become [dead], then it was a "bad" flag. The more "good" flags you make, the more weight is given to them, and of course, the more "bad" flags you make, the less weight is given to them. (NOTE: Above I'm paraphrasing something pg posted eons ago, and I can't find the link, so I might not have the details perfect, and the details may have changed since then.) Also, flags reduce rank in the HN sorting, but exactly how flags reduce rank is undisclosed (contra-factor --see pg's second post here): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781417 If you flag something, and it does not go [dead], your flag still has some effect, but the details of whether said flag is "good" or "bad" are unknown. All I can say for sure is if something is highly up-voted, and also heavily flagged (i.e. controversial), it sinks down the ranking and off the front page very quickly even if it is never marked [dead]. It's a very clever design, reduces the workload on mods/admins, and enables you to do some other interesting stuff... Most of the details are not public, but I'd bet PG uses the good/bad ratio to determine things like the per-user threshold value where flagging is disabled for a user. I also suspect it would take some other count and/or good/bad threshold of flags per-submission or per-post for admins/moderators to be bothered with any kind of alert. Why bother the mods/admin when enough known-good users have flagged it to [dead]? These two points are pure speculation on my part, but having the good/bad flag ratio per-user allows you to lighten the workload on mods/admins. Of course, pg not elaborate on the anti-abuse code, and I sincerely doubt he will neither confirm nor deny anything I've said publicly because he just can't without jeopardizing the effectiveness of his anti-abuse code. (Yes, I'm intentionally giving him an out). On the other hand, having PG provide a bit more instruction on what he wants flagged could be really useful to the users watching the /newest queue, prevent well-intentioned folks from unnecessarily triggering the abusive-flagger threshold, and at the same time, help improve the quality on HN.

biot 14y ago

I tripped this flagging threshold a while back, flagging submissions which I thought were offtopic for HN. Alas, no more "flag" links for me. Apparently, one shouldn't flag stories as a substitute for the fact that they can't be downvoted.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
matthewcocco 14y ago
To my knowledge, links actually can be downvoted - but only after you yourself have >500 karma.
- manojlds 14y ago
  No, links can't be downvoted. Only comments can be. At the least, I am around 700 Karma, and I can't.
  - georgemcbay 14y ago
    I'm at 7274 karma and I can't downvote links either. So either the karma limit is very high or it doesn't exist. In any case, I don't think article downvotes would serve much use, articles nobody is interested in will naturally fall off due to lack of upvotes.
    - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
      Isn't the problem that you lose some signal with the noise that way. You're not filtering out the chaff, you're skimming off the top level of grain. If a submission is poorly titled then it will appear to be chaff [rubbish] when in fact it was grain [beneficial].
- mscarborough 14y ago
  Articles cannot be downvoted at 500, or perhaps not at all. This article by a prominent community member may help the GP though: http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ

huhtenberg 14y ago

On that note - mods and supers, can I please have my flagging privileges back?

mahesh_rm 14y ago

This is a good point. It happened to me for one of my very occasional HN posts, in which I presented our startup idea to HN for feedback. It was flagged for no apparent reasons while on front page top, and this impaired quite a lot its visibility. I'm not implying there were any deliberate malicious attempts, or organized obscure interests, behind flagging it, but as of today, I can't understand why it was. It would perhaps be useful to include a mandatory short motivation whenever you are flagging a post, which may be automatically delivered to authors' HN profile, so that they may be able to more easily understand the reasons behind the report.

nonamegiven 14y ago

The spirit of Postel's Law applies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel#Postel.27s_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel#Postel.27s_Law Upvote a lot. Ignoring is usually better than downvoting. Flag anything that's a blatant retail advertisement. "The best shoes at rockbottom prices!"

recoiledsnake 14y ago

I've losy my flagging ability a long time ago too. Whats more concerning is the abuse of the flagging system to hide articles people that don't want others to seee. like articles not showing Apple or Google in a good light, or articles friendly to Microsoft... like the Surface review, for example.

tomasien 14y ago

I've had 2 things that I thought weren't great but weren't terrible flagged and pushed to spot 301 in the last couple months. I don't know if they should have been or if it was excessive. They were: http://yourereallypretty.com http://yourereallypretty.com http://tommy.authpad.com/this-is-why-you-ship http://tommy.authpad.com/this-is-why-you-ship