I ran into the character limit, but I just wanted to add some of the patterns I've noticed of stories that tend to get unfairly flagged, although there are plen

I ran into the character limit, but I just wanted to add some of the patterns I've noticed of stories that tend to get unfairly flagged, although there are plenty of instances where I don't really see any possible explanation for the flagging: - Stories that could be considered as positive towards Microsoft - Personally, I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, and if there was a Reddit-like downvote for stories, I might consider using it for some of these submissions. But uniformly flagging anything that could be construed as positive towards Microsoft seems quite out of line and petty. - Political stories or opinions with a Libertarian bent - based on user comments, HN seems to be about 1/3 Liberal, 1/3 Libertarian (with a few conservatives thrown in), and 1/3 moderate/apolitical, but comparable political stories and opinion pieces by Paul Krugman, Matt Taibbi, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, and other Liberal writers don't seem to run into the same flagging issues that Libertarian ones do. - Stories that are negative towards Apple - this doesn't seem to happen as much anymore, but was probably one of the best examples of abusive flagging a couple of years ago. - Political stories in general - I'm sympathetic to HNers who get frustrated when NSA or Aaron Swartz stories completely take over HN, and I'll admit that HN has been a little too politics heavy of late. However, I find it really troubling when HNers openly make comments about how they are "flagging every political story they see". I've witnessed some really interesting submissions and comment discussions get unfairly snuffed out because of this attitude. I would be curious to hear about any other abusive flagging patterns HNers have noticed, or any opinions on what can be done about it. I know that there is a thread buried away somewhere for feature requests and that this probably isn't the place for it, but I wish flagging could be more transparent somehow. Maybe with an icon to make users aware that flagging is taking place, and where they could have the opportunity to counter it - or unflag - a submission when they feel that the flagging is abusive?