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Why is Hacker News like that?

363 points · 173 comments · caution

  1. kdavis · · focus · HN ↗
    Unfortunately moderated out of existence in 10, 9, 8, 7....
    1. dang · · focus · HN ↗
      Yes in the sense that users flagged it, but not in the sense that moderators penalized it. I didn't see it until someone emailed a couple minutes ago.

      The only thing I've done since then is mark the post so it won't be killed by excessive user flags. This means the thread can stay open for new comments.

      I'm not going to remove the flags, because they are clearly an authentic community reaction, though of course some users will have the opposite reaction as well; this is normal.

      1. jakobdabo · · focus · HN ↗
        IMHO, for fairness, upvotes should be the vouches countering the flags. I think unless the amount of flags is really significant, they shouldn't have priority over the 117 upvoters (and counting) who are clearly interested to have this discussion here.

        My thinking could be naïve, as the algorithms were probably created with the backing of some data and experience, but anyway, I felt like sharing my opinion.

        1. dang · · focus · HN ↗
          Upvotes do counter flags. It's just that in this case the flags overwhelmed the upvotes.

          <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;query=by%3Adang%20%22tug%20of%20war%22&amp;sort=byDate&amp;type=comment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;page=0&amp;prefix=true&amp;que...

          1. timmytokyo · · focus · HN ↗
            In a real tug-of-war, the teams are balanced. In the HN tug-of-war, flaggers have an advantage because flagged posts are invisible to people who might otherwise upvote them.
            1. Sabinus · · focus · HN ↗
              That, and flags have more weight than upvotes.
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