Hi @dang. Here is a factual comment of mine that does not break the rules which, along with many other comments on one side of the Israel/Palestine issue, was unnecessarily and unjustifiably flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45832233
@dang Here is another comment of mine on this thread that is substantive, responding directly to the issue, and not a personal attack, but was still flagged. I'm an HN user for 15 years, have reviewed the rules, and don't think this violates any (except that I used the word "balls"?). I agree with the other commenters that flagging is being abused here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223274
The point isn't so much to litigate each flagged comment, just to highlight how pervasive the flag abuse problem is. And of course, when the flag abusers 'defect' and gain some utility, it is only rational for the 'victims' to themselves defect from the civil conversation and start to abuse flags.
In threads that are, unfortunately, adversarial, abusing the flag button is a stable Nash equilibrium. I think it's a shitty equilibrium, though, and makes real, substantive conversations--ostensibly the goal on this forum--harder to achieve.
I think it's high time to reconsider the current 'flag' mechanics. At the very least I think we would all be better off if flags were simply disabled on highly controversial topics.
A better approach IMO would be to simply turn off comments entirely on controversial topics.
Whether flagging is available or not, nothing is gained in such polarized discussions. Of course it would be best if we could lower that polarization over time, but I am pretty skeptical that discussion boards & comments are a mechanism that will achieve that. I suspect their actual effect is to increase it.
I don't assess it that way. In any case, I am certain that turning off flags on controversial topics would have a devastating effect. To me that's like saying "let's turn off the immune system for the most fatal viruses".
To be clear, I am not suggesting to eliminate any form of moderation whatsoever. I think threads like these require intensive manual moderation.
I recognize that's a big ask for an already-overburdened mod. I just don't see any good alternative.
Separately, I want to express that while I don't always agree with you, I think you generally do an excellent job moderating and I appreciate your efforts to keep this community free and healthy.
Perhaps it's worth considering an algorithmic review of flagging abuse. You can feed a table of flagged comments with the user, the comment the user flagged, and the context, as well as HN's rules, into GPT or a similar AI to get a first approximation of which users are abusing flagging, and on which topics flagging is most abused. I bet you'd find some interesting data!
- immune system flagged this story because it thought that this story doesn't deserve to be on this site and it won't contribute/create any productive discussion (you can see this sentiment from many people who flagged it). Based on your comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46218920) you turned off flags on this story and created gesturing around this. You essentially did what you just here criticized.
- immune system comes with interesting thing: autoimmune diseases
