Isn't it more likely it was flagged off the front page by overly-enthusiastic users?
I'll also admit that this link, to a support thread, is more compelling than the Ask HN, where half the comments were questioning whether the phenomenon was actually happening.
Yes. I believe some topics get removed by sufficient community flagging alone, no intervention by mods. If true, then this feature can be abused by users with agendas.
Yes, and within how short of a time span all those flags came in!
A post that's regularly being flagged by 0.0X% of logged-in users will have different behavior than one that gets fairly few flags for many hours and then suddenly gets 30 within a five minute period.
> Isn't it more likely it was flagged off the front page by overly-enthusiastic users?
It's a wild guess either way.
Increased transparency like mandatory reason for flagging, and anonymized stats on flagging per userid including not just aggregate numbers, but also flagged post titles (so ideological patterns could be observed per topic) would improve trustworthiness that HN is an impartial platform, and there are no technical limitations in doing this, although it would require a bit of one-time work. It would be interesting to know why we have some stats here, but not others.
But unless this greater transparency is provided some day, we will have to run on faith, just as other religious people have faith as the basis of trust in their God of choice. Everyone has faith in their axioms, it just doesn't seem that way, in no small part because the mind tends to not let you think in that manner, even if you try.
Is that more likely? Should it be that easy for a user to flag an article that's trending so far upward?
If it is that easy, maybe we should discuss the flagging system because it gives the ILLUSION that it was taken down because there's a conflict of interest.
Isn't it more likely it was flagged off the front page by overly-enthusiastic users?
I'll also admit that this link, to a support thread, is more compelling than the Ask HN, where half the comments were questioning whether the phenomenon was actually happening.