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Ask HN: Guard against users who misuse flag/report on posts

3 points by hjoldic ↗ HN
In the last few days I have seen a number of posts become flagged for no clear reason. I don't want to get into the detail of what the topic of those posts was to avoid derailing the conversation, but in my opinion they were absolutely in line with what people here would be interested in.

So, this would be my suggestion:

1. Instead of submitting a post, a user can request to get it preemptively approved by mods to prevent it from being flagged

This can take some time, so one downside would be that there would be a delay between the request and the post being visible in the forum

2. If approved, the post stays up no matter what - users can brigade and flag all day long, but the post was already cleared

3. If not approved, the post goes through the normal cycle

Does anyone have a better suggestion to reduce the negative effects of users who misuse the flag/report functionality?

10 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 38.2 ms ] thread
bell-cot
My sense is that HN's benevolent dictators really prefer to avoid anything as heavy-handed as your suggestions. If enough users here just don't want certain topics in their HN experience, then posts on those topics will get flagged.

HN is not the whole internet. If you have strong feelings about the current NCAA football rankings, or stupid policies of NYC's Dept. of Homeless Services, or the horrible ethical issues raised by Scorsese's new movie Killers of the Flower Moon - there are a zillion other sites where you can raise and discuss those.

And if the managers or users on those other sites are quick to flag and ban posts about the relative merits of MySQL vs. PostgreSQL, or awesome CSS tricks - that's okay, too.

hjoldic
Do you think doxxing, privacy, and free speech is not of interest to HN readers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37852784

I see that the post is not flagged anymore, but it was for a couple of days after it was submitted and the damage is already done as far as visibility goes.

defrost
It was unflagged for several hours when fresh, 80 people commented, myself included.

It got the regular amount of visibily and then was hit with meconium accounts doing wall of text dumps about nazis and kill, kill, kill, etc - leading to the flagging.

The topic itself was discussed in multiple threads, so there was no undue lack of coverage given it's all related to a very topical, political, non tech, tangental to HN subject.

hjoldic
> and then was hit with meconium accounts doing wall of text dumps about nazis and kill, kill, kill, etc - leading to the flagging.

So, it was okay to flag it because some users were writing unreasonably vile comments? If this tactic works, then it would be a good way to get something flagged.

defrost
It's OK to flag anything - that's free will at play.

It's especially OK to flag things that are off-topic as per the guidelines:

    Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

as opposed to:

    On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
There was very little in the linked thread that gratified intellectual curiosity.
hjoldic
> It's OK to flag anything - that's free will at play.

If it was organic and from regular users, I would agree with you. However, I don't think it is, considering how targeted the flagging is.

If you don't agree with me, then at least consider the possibility. Wouldn't you want to make it harder for people to do that?

defrost
There are already barriers to flagging, many threads get flagged by people who have passsed those barriers and are deemed entitled to flag.

A number of flagged posts are vouched for, leading to posts being unflagged - such as the linked post which is no longer flagged.

You appear to be arguing that the ocean should be wetter.

hjoldic
I have provided a link that was flagged, but it's not flagged anymore. So, it was both deemed to be a valid submission and for the most part it was invisible to users - ergo, the damage was done.

What you are describing obviously doesn't work.

quickthrower2
HN mods don’t have that much capacity. You would need a team of approvers. And it would be a boring job!

Instead just internally sticky note people who flag something that is later vouched or vice versa. Then review these noted people and shadow ban their vouch/flag powers if they are making a lot of off decisions.

I reckon an algo like this would catch a person a day and would be easy to review. This reduces trolls.

(BTW: If your submission is fine and gets flagged your other remedy is to submit again a day later.)

brudgers
absolutely in line with what people here would be interested in

Were they intellectually interesting?

That's the bar.

A lot of HN'ers would probably be interested in free beer.

Or the positions of politicians on tech related issues.

And of course naked pictures.

The community decides what meets that bar and only in exceptional cases do moderators intervene. Typically it is as a safety valve not an editorial position.

Anyway, there are always other interesting things to talk about...and submissions based on a person's desire to talk about X tend to be less interesting than submissions simply based on X being intellectually interesting.

YMMV.

Good luck.

Good luck.