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We don't let users abuse flagging. We have software that identifies users who flag excessive numbers of stories, and we take away their ability to flag.
by pg 13y ago
We don't let users abuse flagging. We have software that identifies users who flag excessive numbers of stories, and we take away their ability to flag.
- pearjuice 13y agoI sometimes downvote or flag stuff to take account of correctional inflation.
- jamesbritt 13y agoI believe, though, that flagging something that ends up popular can count against you.
- ars_technician 13y agoThat sounds like an impressive way to create an echo chamber of opinions. "Looks like what you said isn't what other people believe so you shall be punished!"
- jamesbritt 13y agoYes, it seems so. If you get caught on the wrong side of some upvote mob you lose. Whatever; this is what the oweners want and it's a silly thing in the grand scheme of things.
- larrys 13y agoCurious if the software would also weigh a person who never flags higher or just what you are describing.
- nkurz 13y agoIs the option visibly removed, or are the 'flags' silently ignored? When I post something I try go through a few pages of 'newest' and flag spam, but this makes me worry I'm wasting my time.
- jamesbritt 13y agoMy flagging option one day just vanished. Not really a big loss for me. One less distraction.
- drinkzima 13y agoJust an FYI, but accidental flagging happens to me all the time on my iphone, would be nice to have a flag-confirm on mobile (I'd bet mobile flagging correlates much worse with controversy if others are having that problem too)
- skeletonjelly 13y agoI'd recommend using a thick client. I'm not sure how you use HN plain on a mobile
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoHow not? It's mostly just plain text. Easier than most other sites.
- skeletonjelly 13y agoBecause of the reasons mentioned above me, the UX/UI isn't designed for mobile, hence mistakenly clicking the wrong buttons.
- jamesbritt 13y agoI read hn a lot on my phone; I super-zoom when hitting any arrows to give me a huge triangle, then zoom back out.
- alxndr 13y agoDownvoting, too. Have to zoom in so the up triangle is unmissable.
- lostlogin 13y agoWhat about instead having the ability to change your vote?
- 13y ago
- bigiain 13y agoAnd, FWIW, you don't seem to automatically get it back (at least not within six or eight months - I had this one angry, ill-considered day once…)
- seiji 13y agoI've been flag free for over two (three?) years now. No big loss.
- bigiain 13y agoYeah, I figure I'd probably get it back pretty easily if I asked Paul and apologised - but I really don't miss the "opportunity to be negative". So long as he's happy that there are sufficient people down-flagging the stuff that requires down-flagging, the site will happily exist without _my_ opinions of what's worthwhile and what isn't.
- xiaoma 13y agoWhat if an excessive number of stories are off-topic, highly political, spam or otherwise inappropriate? Not all high frequency flaggers are abusive.
- davidw 13y agoI mentioned that I flag pretty much all of the climate change stories, and got my flag powers revoked. C'est la vie, I guess. I still don't think those stories add anything to this site besides some of the same old tired flame wars, so I'd probably continue flagging those and politics if I got the flag link back.
- manys 13y agoI thought I was doing good by scanning /new and flagging garbage, but alas my link also vanished soon after.
- jules 13y agoI'm sorry if this is blunt but in my opinion it is good that your flagging rights were removed. For every person who personally doesn't like climate change stories, there is a person who doesn't like Ruby on Rails stories, a person who doesn't like patent stories, a person who doesn't like NSA stories, and another person who doesn't like Node.js stories. Because flagging has such a strong effect on ranking, it should be reserved for highly inappropriate posts. With great power comes great responsibility.
- davidw 13y agoThere are stories that I don't like, and stories that should not be on this site per the guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Hardly any of the climate change stories are "interesting", but basically just "LOOK SEE I AM RIGHT IN MY BELIEFS AND THIS PROVES IT" sorts of articles. Those are poisonous to a site like this - they just beget a lot of useless discussion without much substance in it. In other words, they are, IMO, highly inappropriate posts, not just stuff I happen to find uninteresting or don't like.
- barrkel 13y agoApparently I was caught by that, yet I don't believe I flagged an excessive number of stories. I seldom used the flag at all unless it was for egregiously political or lightweight stories on the front page, or for spam comments a few years ago. I doubt I used more than double-digit flags in the 6+ years I've been here.
- antirez 13y agoCompany driven sabotage does not require excessive flagging, it requires a number of real-world accounts usually used in a correct way that are one-spot abused to avoid that the weakness of their product stays in the home page for too much time.
- dennisgorelik 13y agoIt's better to let everyone flag stories (or better yet - downvote). But the weight of every flag should depend on how well user's downvoting correlate with your own downvoting. If there is no correlation between user and you - then downvoting should not affect ranking. That way you would get types of stories you don't like on HN to be quickly downvoted.