How is Hacker News moderated? I noticed that dang acts on certain comments from new accounts immediately. Does he have a feed of comments from the new accounts, from karma 1 accounts, and is this feed a public API?
If you click the "Lists" link at the bottom of this page, you'll see that there are feeds of submissions and comments by new accounts. You can also see all newly submitted articles using the "new" link at the top of the page (which is how I found this one).
But not all moderation is done by the official moderators (dang and sctb). Users (who have enough karma points) can also flag articles and comments. If an article/comment is marked as "[flagged]", that means it was killed by users flagging it.
I have seen articles with "flagged" but do not understand what this actually means in practice, as those articles are not removed from view. Does it mean that comments are closed?
Sometimes an article gets killed by flagging, but later gets revived by somebody "vouching" for it. In this situation, the article keeps the [flagged] designation, but is alive again (and comments are reopened).
If an article is dead due to flagging, you won't see it anymore (unless you have "showdead" set in your profile).
5 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 21.1 ms ] threadBut not all moderation is done by the official moderators (dang and sctb). Users (who have enough karma points) can also flag articles and comments. If an article/comment is marked as "[flagged]", that means it was killed by users flagging it.
If an article is dead due to flagging, you won't see it anymore (unless you have "showdead" set in your profile).