Ask PG: How Critical Should I Be? (meta - flagging)

I'm definitely in the "up-vote the good stuff" camp, but contributing to HN includes the far less enjoyable tasks of occasionally down-voting and flagging.

I know HN employs an "excessive flagging" threshold to prevent abusive flagging (pg mentioned this eons ago, but I can't find the link). The "Enough rope to hang yourself" design works well with engaged users who care about the quality of HN, but the design seems to break down when there's too much bad stuff to flag/down-vote. The most obvious break down is when emotions run high on some topic, and we're flooded with bad comments, throw-away trolling accounts, and redundant but up-voted submissions. But on everyday terms, if I was to flag every single violation of the site guidelines I see in the /newest queue, I'd very quickly hang myself on the anti-abuse code.

Even seemingly well-intentioned people get hung by the anti-abuse code:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5454106

Too much of a good thing is often bad, and a well-intentioned person with an itchy mouse finger could easily flag too much. At present, there's just no way to know where the "too much" line is, or what kind of infractions should be flagged.

pg, could you provide more guidance on what you want to be flagged?

I've got a few ideas for potential ways to provide feedback on good/bad flags to users in their profiles without spoiling the anti-abuse code. I could either email them to you or post them up in the "Feature Request" thread where they belong.

p.s. Also could you please add "gossip" and "X is down" messages to the list of off topic stuff in the site guidelines?