| Just out of curiosity if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with? I recall multiple HN Epstein discussions that didn't get flagged (in the sense of Net Flagged status assignment by HN, not talking about individual acts of individual flagging) It would really help the discourse if HN used separate terms for the button for users to individually cast a flag, and the [flagged] marking by HN: a suggestion would be to give the latter a different word like [perverse], as the literal meaning of perverse come from Latin "per" (away) "vertere" (to turn), i.e. "turned away" or "to turn a blind eye" as one would say in English. That would seem more apt as it describes what is done, and allows HN commenters to talk about the difference between individual acts of users pressing the "flag" button versus HN mapping that to an attention modulating action. For example discussions about the method of mapping upvotes, views, flaggings, and their relative timing distributions, onto the either "attended" or "perverse" status. |
> if more people downvote / individual flag it than upvote it, then how did it rise to the front page to start with?
It's because most of the flags only happen later. Upvotes get a post onto the frontpage, then other users see it on the frontpage and think "wtf? that doesn't belong on HN" and flag it. This is especially common with sensational or outrageous stories, since those qualities inevitably attract upvotes—but then later they attract flags. You can think of flags as a bit like an immune system in that sense.