Poll: Should flags be public?

3 points by ig1 15y ago ↗ HN

Using flagging to down-vote an article has become much more common in the last year and has resulted in a lot of contentious debate about the scoring mechanism.

Articles end up being significantly pushed down (flags have a disproportionate negative impact compared to up-votes) and the community has no visibility as to the reason often leading to conspiracy theories, etc. especially when the articles being flagged relate to YC companies or their competitors.

If flag counts were visible (even if they were on their own page and you had to check specifically to see them) it would help tackle this issues.

If the identities of the flaggers was also public it would allow the HN community to identify where users are flagging down articles for their personal benefit (i.e. removing negative articles about their companies).

What does the HN community think ?

2 comments

[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 13.1 ms ] thread

huhtenberg 15y ago ↗

Any examples of unfairly flagged-down articles?

mooism2 15y ago ↗

Should flaggers have to give a reason (from a list) for flagging? e.g. spam / off-topic / linkbait / editorialising. Then when you see that I've flagged a link, you see why I flagged it.