[J-dawg]

> Flagging as no good discussion can come from this

..in your opinion. Why do you feel the need to silence that discussion?

I get that HN is a forum with its own rules and as such there is no automatic "right" to free speech, but is this really what flagging is for?

Flagging should be used for spam and other content which simply doesn't belong on a tech-related forum. Not for just removing stuff that you personally don't want to discuss.

Why don't you just ignore it and upvote the stuff you do want to participate in?

EDIT: this comment now appears as 'folded' when I refresh the page. Does this mean that it too has been flagged? That's pretty funny.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

On HN flagging is used not just for spam, but often for content you don't agree with; especially if you strongly don't agree with it. In this case you think this content shouldn't be on HN and click "flag". If enough people do that, the post disappears. There's nothing you can do about it.

[J-dawg]

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

Flagging is supposed to be used for spam or off-topic content. People who flag stuff they don't agree with are not following the guidelines of this community.

'whalesalad' is apparently breaking the guidelines twice, first by flagging something simply because they don't agree with the discussion that might ensue, and secondly by commenting to say that they flagged.

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[dvfjsdhgfv]

This is theory. What I describe is how this works in practice: commenters on HN use flag as a tool to silence opposing views. It happens every day, hard to overlook it.

[dang]

If people flag civil, substantive comments just because they don't like them, that's an abuse of flagging, and we eventually take away their flagging rights.

Flagging is for posts that break the site guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[J-dawg]

Thanks for this.

So was my comment flagged? And does this count as an abuse of flagging?

[dang]

No, we collapsed the subthread because it's off topic.