[aw1621107]

> Much more superficial stuff flies on this site and even gets hundreds of upvotes.

Sure, but the fact that one thing gets one kind of reception but another thing gets another tells you little since HN is not a monolith. Different people read different things, have different thresholds for flagging stuff, so on and so forth.

> You haven't explained why this is flagged.

My comment was not an attempt to explain why the post was flagged in the first place?

It's not like I can give a definitive reason for its flagging either, since a) I don't know the precise manner in which HN's software determines whether something is flagged or not, b) I can't read the minds of everyone who flagged the article, let alone try to determine whether their reason for flagging was "valid" (assuming I'm even qualified to make that determination), and c) I have no idea if the moderators manually flagged this article. I can make guesses, sure, but it's not like my guesses would be worth any more than yours.

If you see something is flagged and think it should not be, the best way to try to resolve the issue is to either vouch for it, or if that doesn't work, email the moderators.

[wakawaka28]

I don't think I have enough points to vouch for anything. The rules about how many points are required to do things seem to promote a hive mind phenomenon.

If you're not trying to explain why this thing is flagged, or at least why it isn't flagged, idk why you are in this thread. But it's all good.

[aw1621107]

> I don't think I have enough points to vouch for anything.

Based on this [0] (and a few other random comments search engines pulled up) the points threshold for vouching is supposedly 31. It does appear that I misunderstood the vouching functionality, though, since apparently it's supposed to counteract [dead] posts, not [flagged]. My mistake!

> The rules about how many points are required to do things seem to promote a hive mind phenomenon.

As with many things, it's a tradeoff. Having a points threshold also makes it harder to abuse new accounts to manipulate flags/votes/etc., so there's no free lunch here.

> If you're not trying to explain why this thing is flagged, or at least why it isn't flagged, idk why you are in this thread.

My intent was very specifically to push back against the claim that Rust criticism is a surefire way to get downvoted/flagged. The tl;dr is that good criticism of Rust is well-received, and this article is not a good critique and so it's not all that surprising that it was not well-received.

[0]: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...

[wakawaka28]

I'm inclined to agree with him. I've had comments mass downvoted here and on Reddit over Rust criticism. It's not even symmetrical either, because the threshold to be able to downvote is 500 points. I'll never get to that level (or stay there) unless I stick to very milquetoast takes on things. I shouldn't care but it's unfair and annoying. At one point I even lost the theme feature because I made a few unpopular comments in a row and got like 50 downvotes in a short time. The way the votes are tabulated is also confusing. It is not one to one. It's like, the downvoted posts contribute more than the sum total of the downvotes, based on the replies.

[aw1621107]

> I'm inclined to agree with him. I've had comments mass downvoted here and on Reddit over Rust criticism.

I mean, I'm not trying to say that (even good, unfortunately) Rust criticism will never be at risk of downvotes/flagging; I'm just saying that Rust criticism is not guaranteed to garner downvotes/flags - or at least, not to the extent implied in the particular wording. That's not to comment on your specific situation, either.

> It's not even symmetrical either, because the threshold to be able to downvote is 500 points.

If anything, shouldn't that weigh in favor of comments being upvoted, since there's no threshold to vote something up?

> The way the votes are tabulated is also confusing. It is not one to one. It's like, the downvoted posts contribute more than the sum total of the downvotes, based on the replies.

IIRC the vote display on comments has a floor of -4, but further downvotes continue to affect your karma nevertheless.

I had the impression that there's a bit of the opposite at play as well - upvotes beyond some threshold stop contributing 1:1 to your total karma. Not sure if that's just my faulty memory though.