
Ask HN: Why can't post authors see the reason a post was flagged? - obi1kenobi
I posted a few links for the sake of discussing their content with the HN community, but they got flagged and I don&#x27;t know the reason. Why does HN not allow posters to see the reason a post was flagged, or allow any discussion of whether the flag was appropriate or not?
======
wmf
In general, posts are flagged because someone clicked the "flag" link so HN
doesn't know any more specific reason.

Telling spammers why they were blocked just makes it easier for them to change
their behavior just enough to not be blocked in the future. Telling crackpots
why they were blocked just causes them to post multiple responses complaining
about groupthink, free speech, and conspiracies. This has led basically all
user generated content sites to have a policy of never explaining their
moderation decisions. Of course this occasionally goes wrong.

------
gus_massa
Which links? I looked at your submission story and I found:

(10 days ago) [flagged] [dead] NY Times Opinion Piece: “Trump? How Could We?”
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12609336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12609336)
: No explanation in the thread. My guess is that the article is too political.

(15 days ago) [dupe] SpaceX has released the initial results of its
investigation
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12570930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12570930)
: Explained in the thread, it's a (not exact) dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12567446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12567446)

(31 days ago) [dupe] [dead] Voteplz: Literally the easiest way to vote
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12456664](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12456664)
: Explained in the thread, it's a dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12454714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12454714)

(32 days ago) [dupe] No, really, the headphone jack is more useful than you
think
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12448453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12448453)
: Not explained in the thread, probably (not exact) a dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12453311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12453311)

~~~
obi1kenobi
For example, I would love to know about details about the following:

(84 days ago) [flagged] Turkey's president says all he wants is same powers as
Hitler (telegraph.co.uk)

(48 days ago) [flagged] Tesla stock up 2% on news of upcoming announcement,
down 1% after announcement (google.com)

I find it irritating (and it seems you've noticed this too) that "too-
political" articles get flagged. Posting articles does not imply agreement
with them. Are they not worth discussing?

~~~
gus_massa
From the guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _What to Submit_

> _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
> more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
> answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._

> _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they
> 're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or
> disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's
> probably off-topic._

The fist one "Turkey's president ..." I think it falls in the too political
category. It doesn't matter if you or me agree or disagree with that article.
An article that you or me agree with can be also too political. But that
article is not [dead], it's only [flagged], so was less visible but not
killed.

The second one "Tesla stock ..." is also [dead]. I can't see the URL. Looking
only at the title it doesn't seams to obviously bad, but the URL is strange,
because it's in google.com . Was it a google redirect? Was it a link to the
google stock graph? Was there another article in the front page with a similar
content? I'm not sure what happened with it.

Anyway, to get an authoritative response you can write to the mods:
hn@ycombinator.com That's also useful if you find a false positive and the
vouch button doesn't unkill the story.

------
throwmeOct7
This is especially relevant given last week's removal of Dash from the App
Store

