

Ask HN: What happened to the flagging option? - chollida1

This came about due to a discussion yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2925292 about the decline of discourse.<p>During that I mentioned that I used to go in and spend 5 minutes each morning flagging spam in the new tab, but I no longer have a flag link.  Some one mentioned that I might have tripped some automatic flagging limit and lost the privilege.<p>Has the flag link been removed or was I punished for too much flagging?  Is such a think possible?<p>I don't need the ability back, I'm just curious and it might help someone else from getting into this situation.
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allenbrunson
I read a comment from pg once that he "grades" flags based on how many
articles you flag that actually do end up being killed. So it stands to reason
that if you only flag honest-to-god spam, which almost always gets killed,
then you'll get a high "grade" for your flags. But if you flag stuff that you
think is merely off-topic, that mostly does _not_ get killed, it just
languishes with low points. So those flags would be counted against you. I of
course have no inside knowledge about this. He may have changed the code since
then.

For what it's worth, I go through /newest about once a day and flag only
honest-to-god spam, typically three or four at a time. I've been doing this
for a couple of years now, and I can still flag stuff.

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ColinWright
I've heard that there is a detector for excessive flagging. I used also to go
the "newest" and flag all the spam, and be a bit aggressive about keeping HN
on topic, but I don't any more. There are literally dozens of posts that I see
that should be flagged because, in essence, they are content-free. They
contain nothing to make you think - really think.

Fluff.

But I don't flag much any more. If you want it back, no doubt you can email
PG. Be brief and to the point - he usually responds quickly to sensible
requests.

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bartonfink
It's still here. I think you're on target when you guess that you may have
flagged too much. I doubt it's a serious offence - you'll probably get the
option to flag back in a little while.

~~~
benologist
Mine's been gone for weeks, I don't think it comes back unless someone
manually returns it.

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ltamake
I can see the flag link. You may have tripped a mechanism.

