Ironically, they&#x27;re probably flagging because they can&#x27;t downvote stories.<p>As for the article, I disagree with it. The &#x27;New&#x27; section moves so fast that there&#x27;s no need for a story downvote, if it reaches the home page it&#x27;s because there&#x27;s enough people interested in it. The mods are also good at managing incoming spam (which you can see from the Dead stories in the New section). Furthermore, whilst it may have been true to say comment downvotes were rare in 2009, they&#x27;re certainly not now.