HN: New flag feature

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226400

by naish • 18 years ago

64 77 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Posts now appear with a flag link. Anyone care to explain its proper use?

run4yourlives2• 18 years ago

I'm sure he's writing it up as we type...but I would assume this is a "downvote" compromise.

pg9• 18 years ago

Actually it's not related to the downvoting problem. I added it because spam submissions have been increasing.

mechanical_fish3• 18 years ago

I am so tempted to just press it and see what happens. But I fear that I will end up banishing you to the netherworld.

hugh3• 18 years ago

I'm hoping somebody will start submitting some rubbish stories so I can try flagging them.

kirubakaran3• 18 years ago

I flagged this post :-) (the post, not your comment)

edit1: I did this before pg explained what 'flag' is for. Now I feel bad.

edit2: oops... I am used to clicking on the last link 'parent'. Did it once by mistake on a comment.

bayareaguy2• 18 years ago

There are some things man was not meant to know.

pmjordan4• 18 years ago

I suspect it's a "report this post to the moderators" feature, although so far I've not really seen the need for it, so who knows.

EDIT: Ugh, it's already annoying me on the new/front pages, as the "<n> comments"/"discuss" links are harder to see and click now.

pg, would you mind swapping the "flag" and "discuss" links on story listing pages? Thanks!

EDIT2: same for the "parent" link on thread pages, I've had a couple near misses in the last 2 minutes.

hugh3• 18 years ago

Yes, but what is considered kosher to report?

1. Blatant machine-generated spam?

2. Really nasty stuff? (child porn, incitement to violence)

3. Slightly nasty stuff? (ordinary porn, Rick Astley)

4. Slightly spammy stuff? (unjustifiable advertising-like links?)

5. Comments which are insulting or nasty?

6. Comments which are just plain stupid?

7. Comments which only slightly stupid?

8. Things which you think are "not appropriate for HN"?

9. Other categories of stuff you don't want to see?

update: Never mind, answered by pg elsewhere.

mechanical_fish3• 18 years ago

It's funny... I hadn't realized the extent to which my subconscious was trained to scan down the right-hand side of the links, evaluating the "X comments" display and using it as a guide for what to click on.

When I hit the homepage I got this sudden feeling of wrongness in my stomach, like vertigo. Only then did I consciously see the new "flag" links.

So, yeah, I also vote to move the flag links to the left.

(This reminds me of Teresa Nielsen Hayden's stories about the superhumanly-talented copy editors who perceive typos as literally jumping out of the page, or blinking, or who feel physical pain at the sight of misspelled words.)

hugh3• 18 years ago

I agree with this. At the moment the "flag" link, which you want to use very rarely, is more prominent than the "comments" link, which you want to use often. Maybe changing the colours to make "comments" dark and "flag" light might work as well.

gojomo• 18 years ago

Agreed that right now its positioning is too prominent: at the row-end it's easier to see and click than other more frequently-used links. The problem is especially evident on the front page: it was rare for spam to reach there, but now it's harder to visually target every 'comments' link.

Moving 'flag' leftward on the line would help a bit. Making it only appear on the clikthrough page for an individual story or comment would help a lot -- requiring an extra click to flag something but not imposing clutter on all good contributions.

At some point anti-crime measures themselves become a community bummer. 'Flag' links everywhere are a little like walking through a neighborhood where all the windows/doorways are protected by metal bars.

What percentage of our attention is soaked up by defense? Over a certain threshold and the spamorrists have "won".

pg9• 18 years ago

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.

run4yourlives2• 18 years ago

whoops... excuse my first few flags then... I gave them to some that were merely off topic.

icey8• 18 years ago

Is there some sort of cost associated with flagging? I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "could damage the reputation of the flagger".

pmjordan4• 18 years ago

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.

pg9• 18 years ago

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.

nadim2• 18 years ago

How about an unflag toggle or an undo?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226414

jrockway3• 18 years ago

HN appears to be all about not being able to undo things. Is there any operation that's undo-able, other than deleting your own posts?

pg9• 18 years ago

You can now unflag.

huhtenberg• 18 years ago

Can you make it so that user's first click on the 'flag' link would bring up a short explanation of what the 'flag' does ?

I'm sure a lot of people are going to be clicking on it just because it is there. I know I would've if I hadn't ran into this thread first :)

(edit) Would it make sense to display current flag count ? Perhaps if it's over certain threshold. It is after all an interesting metric.

technoguyrob• 18 years ago

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.

pg9• 18 years ago

Yeah, on reflection it is a bit much to have the flag link appear everywhere, so I made it appear only on that item's page.

icey8• 18 years ago

Here's a random idea... Display a text box that requires a reason for flagging the post or comment.

That would cut down on flagging for the sake of flagging.

Hexstream• 18 years ago

Isn't that premature?

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.

bootload• 18 years ago

"... 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.

Xichekolas• 18 years ago

The flag link is appearing on [deleted] posts. Just thought you'd want to know.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226682

ii2• 18 years ago

What threshold? I hate to think about karma... I think it's bad for our community.

ii2• 18 years ago

I have it but I still think it is an anti-future, please, remove it

rms• 18 years ago

Dupes?

bayareaguy2• 18 years ago

It appears both comments and posts have the "flag". I can understand flagging spam posts but comments already have the upvote/downvote mechanism.

Does it really make sense to "flag" comments?

xlnt3• 18 years ago

yes, so spam comments can be deleted and the account banned.

aswanson• 18 years ago

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.

aggieben2• 18 years ago

heh...could we have a list of flagged posts, in the lists page?

eru3• 18 years ago

You want to see all your spam trophies?

aggieben2• 18 years ago

something like that..., but I was really thinking of something resembling the "Best of the Worst" of the last-man-standing reality genre (American Idol, Last Comic Standing, etc). It would be good fun to occasionally look at the list of flagged posts just like it's fun to occasionally poke fun at William Heng.

jrockway3• 18 years ago

That would be neat. Then we could use "flag" to mean "really good" and restrict upvoting to those-in-the-know and those-with-lots-of-karma. The main page would then be just a front for the underground hackernews community :)

Wow, actually I like this idea.

icey8• 18 years ago

The flag link still shows for deleted comments

ojbyrne• 18 years ago

Having both a downvote and "flag" on comments seems a bit too much. Nobody seems to spam the comments, and trolls get downvoted.

vlad2• 18 years ago

There should be a popup confirmation and the action should bring you back to where you were last, instead of the top of the page. Ideally, the row where the username where you clicked flag (starting from the point total and ending with the flag link) would turn yellow, and also keep you on that same page, like the voting buttons (which use ajax).

HN: New flag feature

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