You guys are so fast I didn't have time to write anything about it. The purpose is to let users over a certain karma threshold flag spam and troll submissions.
It should only be used for spams and really egregious trolling, not for stuff that's merely vapid or mistaken or off-topic.
Please don't click on it just to try it out. Flags are really being recorded, so flagging something randomly could damage the reputation of the flagger and/or the submitter of the thing that got flagged.
Can you add an option for disabling flagging? I probably won't use the option that often (maybe once every few days if not more), so I'd like to hide it until I need it. Too much clutter.
"... Here's a random idea... Display a text box that requires a reason for flagging the post or comment. ..."
It's not a bad idea but it has the same problem as trying to describe why you like something instead of agreeing. I know there's a talk by Barry Schwartz on decision theory ~ http://www.google.com/search?q=paradox+of+choice that argues against explaining instead of just choosing. A flag is enough. People around here are pretty smart. The reasons why will mostly be obvious.
The only thing I don't like is it ius close to the "delete","parent" tag. My clumsy mouse-hands might hit it by mistake.
And if some really use it inappropriately then they could just lose their right to flag. No need to bother the vast majority who will use it when it's deserved.
Whether it's premature or not, I'm just putting the idea out there. The question is, what does that take away? If the item is truly flagworthy, then it shouldn't be any problem filling in a box.
The added benefit is that you have much less accidental flagging.
Thanks. Would you mind moving the flag link location to not be on the rightmost edge? I think if you see below others also feel the same way. The right edge is the first place I instinctively click, and flag is the least likely use case.
Anecdotal evidence in support of your request, I just had the following happen:
Read a headline I'm interested in. Looked at the flag button because it's new and interesting. Decided to check out the comments for the headline...And clicked flag.
Maybe incidence of this will go down in the future, but the link I'm least likely to click is right next to the one I'm most likely to click, so the mistake is easy.
Voting's a pretty big one. I'll own up to the fact that I often use votes as more of a bookmarking tool, to follow up on promising links later when I have more time. As a result, I get the urge to unvote something every once in a long while when I realize that it doesn't deserve good karma.
Although if the intent is to discourage that usage pattern and make people more careful about voting in the first place, then it works, at least in my case. I use votes as bookmarks much more extensively on digg, where I know I can undo them.
I agree with the voting thing. Although with me, I'm just more likely to accidentally vote something up or down from not being precise enough when clicking. I pay a lot more attention to the precise location of my cursor now, but it used to be bad.
It seems best to keep voting as a permanent operation. That will require people to think a little harder about whether a story or comment is truly worth an upvote.
I don't think "voting permanency == more thought before voting" is true for most people. I was saying it was true in my case and even so, it was a (relatively) long time before I noticed that unvoting was missing and that I still use votes as bookmarks, just less often than before. Plus it seems like an inefficient way to cut down on votes for bad links compared to being able to take back a mistaken vote.
More importantly, although I've reduced my usage of votes as bookmarking, I don't see why that's a good thing. The implied counter example is that if people could unvote, it would be a giant safety net and unleash a tidal wave of spurious votes, with people clicking on stories willy nilly because their actions were reversable. This doesn't sound true - more realistic scenarios are that there'd be a slight bump in votes overall or even a reduction of "bad" votes by allowing people to correct misclicks.
Thinking about my usage patterns, I bet a lot of people realize they can't take back their votes, use votes as bookmarks anyway and are simply annoyed at not being able to trim down their "saved" list by removing outdated/mistaken/irrelevant links. The lack of an undo feature doesn't change most people's actions unless they notice in advance that it's missing because the action they're about to perform is something really important, like paying for something or deleting their writing.
A big chunk of the problem may simply be the verbiage and language of the profile page. I can see how newish people (like myself) misunderstand voting for saving because votes are displayed as "Saved: ##" rather than "Votes: ##" instead. Saving implies bookmarking, as well as unsaving. Being able to "unvote" sounds unnatural, it sounds like what happened to Gore in Florida and nobody would expect to take back their participation in a poll. Whereas "unsaving" doesn't sound weird and is a routine operation.
I've seen the voting=bookmarking discussion on reddit too. If it's such a big deal, why does neither site offer a bookmarking link? Any other reason except feature trimming? Looks like a sound idea to me...
I've accidentally upvoted one of the worst posts I've seen on HN before, because I was using a mobile device. Maybe the arrows should be two or three times as big when a mobile browser is detected?
If someone flags stuff that turns out to be good (as measured by e.g. not later being killed), it would be reasonable to ignore their flags in future. The sw doesn't do that yet, but when and if that feature appears, it will be based on all flags ever made by an account.
Presumably, you're wasting moderator time, for which you will burn in hell eternally! By which I mean, you might lose navbar colour and flagging privileges.
Er, I didn't say nothing about the navbar secret. >_>
Seriously, you get to change the colour of the orange bar at the top when you're at or above 250 karma. Either then or if you can be bothered to set up some user CSS or javascript. :) No idea if there are further perks beyond that.
That brings up a pretty valid point - has anyone broken down what happens with what level of karma?
I know at 5 you can downvote comments, and at 250 you can change your bar color. Somewhere in there, you can create polls, but I don't know how that works, so I don't know what level karma is needed.
You're probably right about the 25 - I'm still pretty new and my karma is at 17, so I don't see downvoting. I hope the minimum number doesn't keep moving up on me as I approach it :)
I hit it by accident yesterday, hoping something like "Do you really want to flag this?" would pop up, as does in other features here. To avoid spurious clicks, I would suggest adding a two-phase commit.
It should only be used for spams and really egregious trolling, not for stuff that's merely vapid or mistaken or off-topic.
Please don't click on it just to try it out. Flags are really being recorded, so flagging something randomly could damage the reputation of the flagger and/or the submitter of the thing that got flagged.