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by MegaButts 458 days ago
Getting 500 karma is a trivial task and not some tiny group. Are there any HN regulars (that don't just lurk) that don't have that much karma?

The point is a flag has higher weight than an upvote, and it's easy to get the ability to flag posts.
1 comments
tptacek 458 days ago
Right, again, my point: the cohort of people who can be flagging these articles is quite large. It's not a small number of gatekeeping old-timers.
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MegaButts 458 days ago
dang has admitted that flagging carries more weight than voting, we just don't know what the weighing is.
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tptacek 458 days ago
Sure, sounds right.
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MegaButts 458 days ago
So then it's not an equal flagging vs equal upvoting, it's fewer flags by fewer people being able to derail a post off the front page which may have been upvoted by 10x or 100x as many people as flagged it.

The fact that it's easy to get the ability to flag just makes it easier to abuse by people who want to censor certain topics.

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tptacek 458 days ago
It's worked this way for 1,492 years (in Internet years) and mostly for the best. When stories get flagged inappropriately, you email Dan, and he usually fixes it. Seems good to me.

Because it's very longstanding precedent, you're going to have to do more than just notice it out loud for the first time to change it.

For what it's worth, I didn't just not flag this story, or even just upvote it; I submitted it (and was beaten to the punch). It's a good HN story! But I can absolutely understand why the Trump-Story-Flaggers would have reflexively flagged this story. These threads are incredibly tedious and corrosive to the community.

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MegaButts 458 days ago
I realize this website has operated more or less the same for a long time. But as it becomes increasingly popular it's going to become a bigger target for abuse by people wanting to push a narrative. I'm just commenting on why it's been more frustrating for me lately than it has in the past.

There is no correct answer to this problem. I'm just critiquing it in its current form and explaining why, to me (and many other people who have complained about it recently), it's getting worse.

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