[dang]

I didn't see it yesterday either, otherwise I would have turned the flags off sooner.

But thanks for the kind reply—I confess I was expecting something else!

Edit: incidentally, (and not directing this at you personally!), if even one of the commenters spending their time complaining about flags on HN had let us know about this submission at [e-mail], this would probably have happened earlier. I say "probably" because I haven't processed all the emails from the last 12 hours yet.

[dredmorbius]

For those sending emails:

- Include the post item in your subject line. That would be "42922647" for this particular story.

- Include some idea of what the problem is. For example, for a flagged story I'd have "vouch" as the first word of my subject, followed by the article title.

- I typically include the full article link (in body) and title (in subject) as insurance against my own fat-finger-fumbling.

- A brief description of the problem. E.g., "I'd like to vouch for this article".

My own typical emails are for titles (frequent), link indirection, preferred sources, and occasional mentions of flagrant violations of HN comment guidelines (flagging tends to pick those up most of the time).

For the latter, you can use the "replies" endpoint to see if a mod has previously responded to a given userID, e.g.:

For dang replying to me: <https://news.ycombinator.com/replies?id=dredmorbius&by=dang>

(Yes, there's an admonishment in there if you dig back far enough, and I remember it.)

[dredmorbius]

Addition: Comments also have IDs (and are essentially the same as posts), and if you're referencing a specific comment or thread, that should similarly be highlighted in the email subject.

[AnimalMuppet]

dang, for my clarification, why are you so clearly in favor of this being unflagged?

I haven't been flagging these topics, but I have defended those who do, on the grounds of "not politics" and "leads to flamewar discussions". On the politics front, you have deliberately allowed more politics recently (or at least that's my perception) when you thought it was of general interest, or of tech interest. But the discussions are, perhaps less flame-full than expected, still somewhat incindiary (not least the discussions around flagging, with accusations up to being full-on fascists aimed at those who just don't want HN to be overrun by this).

So: What made it clear to you that this was something that should not be flagged?

[dredmorbius]

HN's guidance is that most but not all politics is off-topic:

<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>

It may have come to your attention that 1) there's been a fair bit of political activity of late 2) with impacts on YC, startups, and many of HN's readers, and 3) involving some notable individuals within the tech world.

Much of that argues to facilitate some discussion of at least a sampling of these stories. And this particular item has garnered a large number of both votes and comments. Slightly over the "flamewar" threshold (> 40 votes, comments > votes), but not in the extreme. The flamewar-detector heuristic is surprisingly accurate (I've gone through much of HN's front-page archive a couple of years ago), but not perfect. High-profile political discussions are among the more notable exceptions. Self-discussion of HN is the other (and AFAIR the most highly-ratioed high-placed story was one such item early in HN's life).

[dang]

I turned off the flags on this one because there hadn't been a thread specifically about DOGE personnel and there is a clear intersection between the people in the article and the interests of HN. I mostly mean the type of people, not the specific individuals, but at least one of them (the Vesuvius prizewinner) did work which was the subject of major threads here.

I would rather the article had been more neutral and more informative, but beggars can't be choosers.

Btw, you do realize that not all politics is off topic on HN, yes? I'm pretty sure you must have seen some of my explanations about this over the years, but if not, please take a look at some of https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....

All of the following can be (indeed are) true at once: (1) most political stories are off topic here; (2) we don't want the frontpage to be dominated by politics; (3) some political stories are on topic; (4) significant and interesting things are going on right now, even though it's hard for most people to stay curious about them.

Have I clarified sufficiently?

[AnimalMuppet]

Yes.

That is, for the moment. You're trying to walk a balance, and I tend to drift, over time, off on one side or the other.