Title: I'm definitely in the "up-vote the good stuff" camp, but contributing to
HN includes the far less enjoyable tasks of occasionally down-voting and
flagging.<p>I know HN employs an "excessive flagging" threshold to prevent abusive
flagging (pg mentioned this eons ago, but I can't find the link). The
"Enough rope to hang yourself" design works well with engaged users who
care about the quality of HN, but the design seems to break down when
there's too much bad stuff to flag/down-vote. The most obvious break
down is when emotions run high on some topic, and we're flooded with bad
comments, throw-away trolling accounts, and redundant but up-voted
submissions. But on everyday terms, if I was to flag every single
violation of the site guidelines I see in the /newest queue, I'd very
quickly hang myself on the anti-abuse code.<p>Even seemingly well-intentioned people get hung by the anti-abuse code:<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5454106<p>Too much of a good thing is often bad, and a well-intentioned person
with an itchy mouse finger could easily flag too much. At present,
there's just no way to know where the "too much" line is, or what kind
of infractions should be flagged.<p>pg, could you provide more guidance on what you want to be flagged?<p>I've got a few ideas for potential ways to provide feedback on good/bad
flags to users in their profiles without spoiling the anti-abuse code. I
could either email them to you or post them up in the "Feature Request"
thread where they belong.<p>p.s. Also could you please add "gossip" and "X is down" messages to the
list of off topic stuff in the site guidelines?
Upvote: