2 of the most common reasons that make people think mods are randomly killing stories which they don't like: 1. People sharing direct links to their HN submiss

2 of the most common reasons that make people think mods are randomly killing stories which they don't like: 1. People sharing direct links to their HN submission, asking their friends to upvote. I believe the HN algorithm auto-flags such posts. Most people don't know about this, so they assume the worst (PG killed it because he didn't like the article/author). Those who do know about this now get around by telling people "Go to /newest and look for my submission". Most times people just want their friends to upvote the submission, but sometimes people are genuinely seeking comments on their submission. I don't know the solution but the current way of dealing with this is too heavy-handed and causes a broken user experience. [EDIT: What if you merely reduced the weight of votes from direct link visits, instead of flagging the post?] 2. Users can themselves flag stories off the homepage! Again, it appears that most people don't know about this. So, even a story which got to the homepage in a legit way, sometimes gets flagged off because enough people think it's lame. This has happened a number of times for controversial topics like sexism in tech. Once again, outsiders assume it's because HN mods are horrible people. Finally, I think PG's inclination has always been to fix HN's problems with software, but what it needs is more human solutions, not more code. Do things that don't scale ;)