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"To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately." When I first joined HN,
by sciurus 12y ago
"To prevent abuse, moderators review flagged stories and comments and revoke flagging privileges from users who flag inappropriately."
When I first joined HN, I aggressively flagged stories and comments that didn't meet the guidelines. I thought that's what I was supposed to do. However, one day my comment flagging privileges disappeared with no explanation. If someone had contacted me and explained how I was misusing flags, I would have happily self-corrected.
- lotharbot 12y agoI once had my flagging privileges disappear. I e-mailed the moderators, and they restored them. It wasn't clear either to me or the moderator what had resulted in the loss of privilege. On the one hand, that made it easy to decide to reinstate the privilege; on the other hand that made it hard to learn what I'd done wrong.
- dang 12y ago> comment flagging privileges disappeared Comment flagging privileges don't disappear (edit: alone). Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585939.
- privong 12y agoWould you mind clarifying? The blog post (quoted by parent) seems to explicity say that flagging privs can be revoked, which directly contradicts what you are saying in the comments. Or was the quote from the blog post only meant to refer to flagging of articles?
- minimaxir 12y agoComment flagging cannot be revoked, but story flagging can.
- dang 12y agoMy apologies—I wrote that in haste and I see now that it was unclear. What I meant was that you can't lose comment flagging privileges while story flagging privileges remain intact; the software just doesn't do that. Either all the flag links would disappear, or none would. So there must be another explanation for what sciurus described (as I understood it). Does that make sense?
- privong 12y agoThanks, dang. Your response to sciurus makes more sense now. Though, his description was lacking enough in detail that I suppose he could have also lost story flagging descriptions. But I am still confused about the apparent contradiction with what you've stated versus what was stated in the blog post, about losing flagging privs. When flagging privs are lost, are _all_ flagging privs lost? Or is minimaxr correct[0], that it works the other way, where you can lose story flagging privs without losing comment flagging privs? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8586144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8586144
- dang 12y agoI need to check that. Could you please email hn@ycombinator.com if you don't get a reply here soon? I don't intend to forget, but I have a lot of packets dropping at the minute. Edit: Ok, I checked it. Story and comment flagging privileges are lost or retained as a set. You can't have, or lose, one without the other. It's not clear why minimaxir thought otherwise, since I'm pretty sure the code has always worked this way.
- sciurus 12y agoThanks; I stand corrected.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]