

What happened to the flag feature? - nhangen

Few weeks, maybe a month ago, my flag feature disappeared. Hadn't flagged anything recently, so assumed it was a new feature test...now I'm thinking  it was more. Is there some sort of threshold?
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jcr
Yes, there are various types of thresholds and heuristics employed just about
everywhere on HN, but the details are not public, and they are not included in
the news.arc open source code.

When it comes to flags, it is not a simple count threshold, instead, it's a
matter of the quality of your flagging. If you flag in an abusive manner, the
automation removes your ability to flag. If you flag in a beneficial manner,
the automation also notices your attempt to help control spam and abuse. Since
the goal of the automation is to prevent abuse, I won't go into any more
details. A few vague details were mentioned publicly a few years ago, but the
system is constantly evolving, so things have undoubtedly changed.

I do a significant amount of flagging of spam/bad submissions on the 'new'
page, and occasionally, I'll flag comments. I'm certainly not perfect, and
occasionally, I get it wrong, but I just do my best. Since I've done this for
a long time and have a history of flagging appropriately, the automation has
never removed my ability to flag, The same is true for the humans involved;
none of the mods or pg himself have asked me to stop, or removed my ability to
flag.

If you made some bad flags and the automation kicked in to prevent abuse by
removing your ability to flag, then don't take it personally. Also, pg has an
interesting habit of leveraging time in interesting ways. The only publicly
known examples are in the news.arc source and in the Guidelines/FAQ (at the
bottom of the page) regarding how rank is calculated. This hints at _possible_
good news; the removal of your ability to flag _might_ be temporary. If it
doesn't show up again after six months of "good behavior" then you're probably
stuffed or you've hit a glitch.

~~~
adrianwaj
I wonder if hellbanned flags are in place, or rather they are weighted. So
once you are weighted 0, the flag is removed entirely.

