What constitutes flag abuse? I only do it for stories which I know will only produce flamewars.
I wish there were something between "do nothing" and "remove this story." Like a downvote button. But this is an experiment.
An Update on Hacker News
21–30 of 371 posts
Re: An Update on Hacker News
#22I'm wondering if there's any official policy on linking to articles that are behind pay/register walls. I've flagged two such submissions, and only one got flagkilled.
Re: An Update on Hacker News
#23Last month, I posted an analysis of all 5.6 million Hacker News comments at the time: http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/ It should be noted that during the aforementioned six month periods, both the number of new comments made monthly and the average score for a given comment decreased, although this post claims a 30% increase to Hacker News traffic due to changes in the comment system, which is…
> It would be helpful if this article clarified how to flag comments, as that action is unintuitive (you have to click the comment permalink first) So that's how you flag! Thank you! This definitely should be more noticeable.
Agreed. I didn't even know I could flag comments until I read this blog post.
Re: An Update on Hacker News
#24Last month, I posted an analysis of all 5.6 million Hacker News comments at the time: http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/ It should be noted that during the aforementioned six month periods, both the number of new comments made monthly and the average score for a given comment decreased, although this post claims a 30% increase to Hacker News traffic due to changes in the comment system, which is…
How do you see the scores of comments? I only see the points of my own comments.
Comment scores are visible to the Algolia API after a period of time. Otherwise, the API returns a "null" for the points field. (example: https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/2921983)
This is apparently unintended, as the official API has no points field. (example: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/2921983.json?prin...)
Re: An Update on Hacker News
#25A third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We heard that and reversed the change. Good to hear they decided to roll that back. PG opened a pandora's box when he said that d…
> In the meantime, we will simply have to stop assuming that downvoted comments are actually, you know, bad. I don't think this is true. Given that downvoted comments become faded, I have a strong reason to believe that the intent is to hide them because they are actually bad
The irony of your comment being faded should not be lost.
Re: An Update on Hacker News
#26What constitutes flag abuse? I only do it for stories which I know will only produce flamewars.
>>I only do it for stories which I know will only produce flamewars.
You shouldn't. For example, stories about big players (e.g. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook) almost always produce flamewars, but the discussions can also be interesting and informative.
You should flag stuff only when it doesn't meet guidelines. For example, most news stories (e.g. "Man murders family, followed by car chase") are inappropriate for the site.
Re: An Update on Hacker News
#27Last month, I posted an analysis of all 5.6 million Hacker News comments at the time: http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/ It should be noted that during the aforementioned six month periods, both the number of new comments made monthly and the average score for a given comment decreased, although this post claims a 30% increase to Hacker News traffic due to changes in the comment system, which is…
How do you see the scores of comments? I only see the points of my own comments.
You can't. That feature was removed around 3 years ago, I think.
Re: An Update on Hacker News
#28If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. But is fading the comment really the correct behaviour. Isn't the position on the page deciding whether the community agrees with the comment? My suggestion is: remove the fading; let downvoting only move the comments down, since the comment is appropriate yet the community doesn't a…
Moving comments down completely can break the threading - e.g. you could have a highly upvoted parent comment with a single child comment that was heavily downvoted. You can't move the child any further down the tree.
You CAN indicative that the comment has been downvoted - the fading accomplishes that objective.
Re: An Update on Hacker News
#29A third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We heard that and reversed the change. Good to hear they decided to roll that back. PG opened a pandora's box when he said that d…
your name is bad for the site and you should change it. nomen est omen.
Re: An Update on Hacker News
#30I still read HN. There's a good article or two per day. That said, the moderation needs work. (Or, more accurately, to be put out of work.)
I've been under "rankban" for at least a year, if not longer. This means that my posts, even if they get a lot of upvotes, fall to or near the bottom. I don't really care, and while I could use sock puppets to get around that, I'm too old for that shit and I don't really care. Still, it's irritating.
I've used HN Search (https://hn.algolia.com/) to verify comment karma and validate my suspicion.
I'm also on "slowban", as Hacker News performs worse when I use it while logged in than when I do so in incognito, logged-out mode.
It's dishonest bullshit. My main reason for continuing to comment is (a) to spite the moderators and (b) because there's a certain joy in getting +10 karma even when your post falls to the bottom.