[dang]

Yeah I hear you about the frustration. Btw I just came back here to add that there is a way to get at least some partial satisfaction: if you see some specific case that you're worried about you can email [e-mail]. We always look into it, and we're usually able to say something without giving away the store. Just be aware that the HN inbox is brutal, so if something requires time to look into or properly reply to, you may have to wait a while. We look at most emails as they come in, though, in case there's something that needs taking care of immediately.

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The idea of requiring a reply for downvotes or flags comes up a lot and I'm sorry to disappoint, but we're not going to do it, because all of our experience is that it would just lead to a lot of low-quality replies.

In terms of equal treatment of flagging: flags are almost all done by users and we can't control what they do, so this is beyond our power. When we do intervene, we definitely try to do it in an even handed way [1], so if you see an unfairly-unbalanced situation, emailing [e-mail] is also an option.

[1] Anyone who bothers to slog through https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... will see, for example, that we moderate all varieties of nationalistic attack and don't play favorites.