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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

by 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.

by buro9 14y ago

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.