[Pikamander2]

One of HN's quirks, for better or worse, is that the lack of ability to downvote submissions encourages "controversial" content to rise to the top.

On Reddit, if 500 people like a submission and 500 people dislike it, then it'll end up with 0 points and fail to reach /r/all

But on HN, the same content will end up at 500 points since only the people who like it can affect its rank (unless it dies after getting mass flagged).

The end result is that HN's system favors "hot takes" while Reddit's system favors "preaching to the choir".

The two systems have their pros and cons, but personally I dislike being unable to downvote articles that are full of nonsense.

[pjc50]

People (ab)use the flagging system for that. I've seen plenty of categories of article that get upvoted onto the front page and then instantly vaporized off it by flagging.

[abustamam]

I use a pushbullet channel for HN500. I get a notification whenever an HN submission hits 500 up votes.

It's not common, but every so often one of these submissions will be flagged by the time I get around to clicking the notification.