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Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

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Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#11

Post by Guid_NewGuid »

JustExAWS wrote: post #9

I flag submissions even when I agree on the topic. Basically any topic where I can’t see the comments as enhancing someone’s knowledge and will just be politics and whataboutism. Before the usual retorts come that I can only afford to think that way because I’m not a member of a “disaffected group”, my still living parents dealt with the Jim Crow south and my son who grew up in the suburbs all of his life still got l…

But the exact reason for flagging per-person is kind of orthogonal to this request right? It's a request for transparency. You are able to override other people's interest in discussing topics for no real personal cost. Is there any drawback to you having those flags be on the public record? Or any reason not to make those flags public? Why exactly should flagging be private.

I think a lot of people agree with your reasons for flagging and wish politics didn't cross over into tech, but that doesn't really impinge either way on making flags public. (In the example article that prompted this a debate about the relative benefits of different vaccine research approaches seems patently tech/science based, but again it is not really relevant to a proposal to make the flags public record).

Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#12

Post by Guid_NewGuid »

sjs382 wrote: post #10

I keep a few ways to contact me in my HN profile. I often flag submissions or comments when they go against the rules (sometimes written, sometimes unwritten) of the site. I'm generally not willing to: * engage with someone who's demanding an audience for a post/comment (upset that their post/comment was flagged). * justify these flags to a stranger. * open myself to harassment based on what I flag. So, if these flag…

Thanks for providing some food for thought on the specifics of the proposal. These are real and justified drawbacks. My interest is more in access to the flagging behavior in aggregate rather than campaigns against any specific person. But this being the internet it certainly creates a new avenue for deranged people to kick off. However does the risk of this hypothetical hate campaign:

a) exceed the likelihood of people doing this via commenting anyway

b) justify the opaque and powerful nature of flagging as-is

Perhaps you stopping flagging if you're not willing to justify a flag is a good outcome in aggregate? We have mods to kill threads which violate the guidelines already. But looking at the /active list there's certainly an amount of (probably organic) censorship of controversial threads in either direction (though my gut feel is it biases more towards censorship of articles about the latest outrages of US government).

I'm not really interested in say, Ruby, I think people should probably use languages which are type-safe if they want to avoid catastrophes in production and 1am pager calls. However if I see an article about Ruby I'm just going to not engage with it. Perhaps your existing interpretation of the unwritten rules is too broad and actually we ought to rein in the amount of flagging anyway?

Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#13

Post by JustExAWS »

Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #11
JustExAWS wrote: post #9

I flag submissions even when I agree on the topic. Basically any topic where I can’t see the comments as enhancing someone’s knowledge and will just be politics and whataboutism. Before the usual retorts come that I can only afford to think that way because I’m not a member of a “disaffected group”, my still living parents dealt with the Jim Crow south and my son who grew up in the suburbs all of his life still got l…

But the exact reason for flagging per-person is kind of orthogonal to this request right? It's a request for transparency. You are able to override other people's interest in discussing topics for no real personal cost. Is there any drawback to you having those flags be on the public record? Or any reason not to make those flags public? Why exactly should flagging be private. I think a lot of people agree with your r…

For better or worse, HN is a moderate site. If anything, the moderators should protect submissions from being flagged if they think it is unfair or the system itself should stop things from being flagged if it has been “vouched” for, or upvoted by HN users with high karma.

Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#14

Post by sjs382 »

Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #12
sjs382 wrote: post #10

I keep a few ways to contact me in my HN profile. I often flag submissions or comments when they go against the rules (sometimes written, sometimes unwritten) of the site. I'm generally not willing to: * engage with someone who's demanding an audience for a post/comment (upset that their post/comment was flagged). * justify these flags to a stranger. * open myself to harassment based on what I flag. So, if these flag…

Thanks for providing some food for thought on the specifics of the proposal. These are real and justified drawbacks. My interest is more in access to the flagging behavior in aggregate rather than campaigns against any specific person. But this being the internet it certainly creates a new avenue for deranged people to kick off. However does the risk of this hypothetical hate campaign: a) exceed the likelihood of peo…

We're in total disagreement. I say "yes" to both "a" and "b" and I do not think that people flagging less is a good outcome. Same goes for vouching.

I think a lot of us are generally happy with how the site operates—that's why we're here. I personally consider the moderation to be a feature—I think dang and team do a great job. I'm sure you could pick out some counterexamples but comments and posts that rise to the top tend to be thoughtful. There are exceptions. Nobody bats 1.000.

Posters don't have a right to be seen/read. That said, there are plenty of other communities that will embrace the types of posts/threads that would get flagged here.

If you have specific concerns about specific comments/stories getting flagged, it's reasonable to take each one up with the moderation team privately (there's a contact link in the footer). Just don't badger them—becoming a nuisance won't help you achieve your goals.

Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#15

Post by Guid_NewGuid »

JustExAWS wrote: post #13
Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the exact reason for flagging per-person is kind of orthogonal to this request right? It's a request for transparency. You are able to override other people's interest in discussing topics for no real personal cost. Is there any drawback to you having those flags be on the public record? Or any reason not to make those flags public? Why exactly should flagging be private. I think a lot of people agree with your r…

For better or worse, HN is a moderate site. If anything, the moderators should protect submissions from being flagged if they think it is unfair or the system itself should stop things from being flagged if it has been “vouched” for, or upvoted by HN users with high karma.

I'm not actually sure what the karma threshold is for flagging, I've already crossed it on this which is my alt account.

Perusing active at the moment it looks like a fairly quiet time for flagging, though the example didn't get to active so it's a lopsided sample. The flagged articles are roughly:

- UBI doesn't work because the poor are lazy

- 2 different aliens/UFOs related articles

- Zohran Mamdani and reaction of tech scene in NYC

- Israeli settler violence in the west bank

I don't really see a compelling argument that any of these except perhaps west bank violence is worthy of a flag. We have tools to deal with these topics already such as the front page fall off for flame wars. I don't think the site is enhanced by flagging in it's current state and absent a larger change like increasing the flag karma to be closer to vouch karma so recovery is less lopsided, I think at least being transparent about flagging helps restore confidence in the system and would help reduce conspiracy thinking.

Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#16

Post by [deleted] »

Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #12
sjs382 wrote: post #10

I keep a few ways to contact me in my HN profile. I often flag submissions or comments when they go against the rules (sometimes written, sometimes unwritten) of the site. I'm generally not willing to: * engage with someone who's demanding an audience for a post/comment (upset that their post/comment was flagged). * justify these flags to a stranger. * open myself to harassment based on what I flag. So, if these flag…

Thanks for providing some food for thought on the specifics of the proposal. These are real and justified drawbacks. My interest is more in access to the flagging behavior in aggregate rather than campaigns against any specific person. But this being the internet it certainly creates a new avenue for deranged people to kick off. However does the risk of this hypothetical hate campaign: a) exceed the likelihood of peo…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#17

Post by oehpr »

Just some food for thought: I was recently brainstorming ideas for building a more decentralized moderation system, and one of the ideas I arrived at was using the rules themselves as part of the flagging system.

It would work like this: When you flag a post for breaking the rules, the community's guidelines will pop up. You are then asked in this window to highlight the relevant section or sections of those rules that this post has violated. And I don't mean just "select which rule was violated", I mean "use your cursor and highlight the text of the rules that were violated." (with support for highlighting multiple sections if so desired).

This serves the following functions:

1. Communicates why something was flagged (obviously).

2. Forces the person who's flagging the submission to actually read the rules.

3. The subjectivity of the highlighting system is used to make Sybil attacks more obvious. I'll explain why after this list.

4. It differentiates flagging from downvoting. Downvoting is for saying "I don't like this". Flagging is for saying "This violates our community's rules".

As to why this helps reveal Sybil attacks: There are several subjective points on what, where, and how people will highlight rules. Should punctuation be included or not? Should the key word in the rule be highlighted? The key sentence? The whole section? What about examples? Should we include them? Or only highlight them? Users operating in good faith will cluster around common points in common areas, but will have different ways of doing so. So, if a block of users all have: the same input, in the same way, clustered around the same time, then it was likely a Sybil attack.

This system doesn't require that it de-anonymize the people who submit flags, but it does provide a form of publicly visible transparency as to why something was flagged.

Edit: I forgot to make clear, you would be able to see a heat map of the rules that were highlighted for a flagged post.

I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on this idea.

Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#18

Post by Paradigm2020 »

oehpr wrote: post #17

Just some food for thought: I was recently brainstorming ideas for building a more decentralized moderation system, and one of the ideas I arrived at was using the rules themselves as part of the flagging system. It would work like this: When you flag a post for breaking the rules, the community's guidelines will pop up. You are then asked in this window to highlight the relevant section or sections of those rules th…

Except for the highlight the text (think people on mobile, people with disabilities etc) it sounds like a good plan.

Than other random "judges" would be asked if the reason given by the "accuser" are correct. There would have to be some "cost" in karma to flag a post (or limit of X flags / day for X karma status or smth) and some reward in karma for being chosen as a judge/jury.

Also the need to have a minimum flagging weight and a minimum of judging weight and to reconcile conflicting votes.

Anyway would love to talk about it more but tbh it's probably not gonna happen also because most people don't like jury duty... Maybe when ai gets over the "hallucinations" but well at that point we can also get our individual ai's to read everything and judge for us

Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#19

Post by oehpr »

Paradigm2020 wrote: post #18
oehpr wrote: post #17

Just some food for thought: I was recently brainstorming ideas for building a more decentralized moderation system, and one of the ideas I arrived at was using the rules themselves as part of the flagging system. It would work like this: When you flag a post for breaking the rules, the community's guidelines will pop up. You are then asked in this window to highlight the relevant section or sections of those rules th…

Except for the highlight the text (think people on mobile, people with disabilities etc) it sounds like a good plan. Than other random "judges" would be asked if the reason given by the "accuser" are correct. There would have to be some "cost" in karma to flag a post (or limit of X flags / day for X karma status or smth) and some reward in karma for being chosen as a judge/jury. Also the need to have a minimum flaggi…

I don't find highlighting text on mobile to be too difficult, so I don't see that as a barrier imo.

for disabilities well... That one I dunno. I don't have a good concept of what kinds of UI are most convenient for each type of accessibility case.

And it's a little tempting to get lost in the weeds of who watches the watchers, but to be honest even if implemented in hacker news case, the mods themselves could vet flags for anomalies. Just this on its own would serve as a force multiplication for HN mods.

For more decentralized forms of moderation. One method might just be a simple flag appeal. Circles back to the community, they can discuss if the rule that is cited is fair, and if it wasn't possibly remove or limit flagging abilities of those who cited the rule incorrectly. And possibly some increased punishment if the appeal fails? There are lots of options there. Big wide design space.

I do think the direct text highlighting has a few important features. The Sybil attack resistance is one. That was one of the OP's primary concerns. Also, clarity on what rule was broken and why is very important, and a given rule can be verbose. It might not be obvious what specifically in a given rule was the reason for the violation. Direct highlighting lets flaggers more directly communicate what the issue is, without opening the communication channel up for a flame war.

Re: Ask HN: Make Flagging Activity Public?

#20

Post by cherry_tree »

IMHO the problem with flagging on HN is its ability to kill a discussion thread in its infancy, preventing most users from ever seeing its existence or having the opportunity for discussion.

Flagging should be just that; a flag for the moderation team to review the submission/comment. It should not at all come with an immediate downranking of the content itself until the moderation team has reviewed the flag and upholds it as appropriately flagged.

If flagging wasn’t a simple way to kill young discussion threads and instead users had to downvote the submissions they don’t like; then discussions couldn’t be so severely impacted by a minority of users.

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