[sph]

I have been discouraging people from flagging ‘articles that they think don't belong on HN’, because you have disabled my ability to do so time and time again. In private conversation with you, you have confirmed that if I flag/vouch stuff you mods don’t agree with, I get the privilege taken away, even if I genuinely believe a post to fall outside of the guidelines.

So either I read your mind, or it is best not to flag unless something is obviously, unequivocally, running afoul of the guidelines.

I keep being annoyed at how arbitrary, and dare I say hypocritical, the entire flagging mechanism and its surrounding politics are.

[PennRobotics]

Flagging, to me, seems like pissing in the wind. If I notice serial posters submitting extremely low effort content (a pair of their own posts every waking hour from "6 months and 5 minutes ago", off-topic wikipedia nearly once a day, "I have 60000+ points but only upload from thealtantic/guardian/nytimes") then I go on an irate ten-minute flagging binge.

I've also been aghast at the nerve of those same serial posters applying the letter of the law against other users. I genuinely wouldn't care if Bartosz Ciechanowski only self-promotes every last one of his own posts. Some users are significantly more interesting than others, whether or not they violate the site guidelines marginally on a technicality.

I have suspected it's possible some users flags are worth more than others, and I wouldn't be surprised if my flagging ability was silently removed several years ago.

[dang]

> In private conversation with you, you have confirmed that if I flag/vouch stuff you mods don’t agree with, I get the privilege taken away, even if I genuinely believe a post to fall outside of the guidelines.

People love to make vague claims like this based on things we supposedly said. How about you quote what exactly what I literally said so readers can make up their own minds?

Sorry if that is testy (well, it is testy), but I can't count the number of times that disgruntled users have posted falsely to HN threads to vent their residual frustrations with the mods.

[sph]

Sure, quoting select passages over multiple emails with you personally.

> I'm afraid we took vouching privileges away from your account because you vouched for too many comments that were unsubstantive and/or flamebait and/or otherwise broke the site guidelines

> If you want to build up a track record for a while of vouching for good comments only, and then email so we can look at the recent vouches

Wondering how does one tell what is ‘good’ in your mind:

> Btw if you're unsure about a case you can always check with us about it. I know the borderline cases are not always easy to call.

—-

In other words, do as dang himself would do, or get penalised. I am not in the business of mind reading.

This was years ago. I am pretty sure lately I have been flagging/vouching stuff I genuinely believe were OK, though you have all the data in front to smite me with “ah, but on this day you vouched this bad comment! Gotcha!” so in the end it’s always a losing battle.

In any case, my issue is with you saying, I quote, ”users should flag articles that they think don't belong on HN”. Emphasis mine. No. It is more nuanced than that.

[dang]

Kudos to you for responding exactly as I asked! That is rare to begin with, and more so when I'm being irritable. Big respect.

I can see how using the word "good" was confusing, but I just meant the opposite of "comments that were unsubstantive and/or flamebait and/or otherwise broke the site guidelines". It just boils down to: what fits the guidelines or not.

> Wondering how does one tell what is ‘good’ in your mind

Since you can't read my mind (at least I assume you can't, and if you could you wouldn't have this question), that's not doable. What you can do is assess things according to your own reading of the site guidelines. If you assimilate https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and evaluate comments based on that and not just on what you like/dislike, then I imagine you won't end up too far from where the mods are, because that's what we're also trying to do.

I'm sure there will always be individual cases where we disagree—even tomhow and I disagree on individual cases—but they should be a minority.

If there are specific cases where you think we got it wrong, I'd be interested to see links, and we're always willing to hear a contrary argument.

[hypfer]

Completely meta and possibly out-of-place, but this thread was I think my first encounter with dang (the human), and, based on it, I'm filled with respect for him.

Good job being you. Please continue doing so.

[sph]

I have had plenty of disagreements with dang over my time on this site, yet I am the first to claim he has been instrumental in making HN as good as it is, notwithstanding the deluge of posts, bots, trolls, and other ungovernable people.

I have a lot of respect for his work.

[cj]

> I have had plenty of disagreements with dang over my time on this site

To think that someone has multiple / repeated disagreements with Dang is wild to me.

In my history on this site, I have not once seen Dang say or do anything that’s not in the best interest of the community.

He’s possibly one of the least controversial moderators I have ever encountered online.

[Nition]

I can honestly say I've never seen a moderator on any forum as good as Dang. I wish I had!

[abustamam]

As opposed to dang the robot? :)

[hypfer]

As opposed to dang wearing the HN hat.

[sph]

> what fits the guidelines or not

It is no coincidence lawyering is a lucrative career, even when (in most countries) it is simply about interpreting what’s written in the big book.

Until you rewrite the guidelines in an unambiguous programming language (Lisp will do), and provide a system to discern whether a comment falls afoul of them, your personal interpretation of the Word will often differ from someone else’s.

That said, thanks for the edifying discussion.

[fireflash38]

I think you'll find as soon as you codify something strict, people will do their absolute best to work around those rules in any way possible.

[IanCal]

How were you penalised? Was it just losing the ability to flag?

If however you see things isn’t lining up well with how they want things flagged, it makes sense to remove that from you. Unless there’s more punishment attached this seems very sensible regardless of how genuinely you believe in things.

[Aachen]

(Not OP.) I can understand that it feels like a punishment though, if you are legitimately trying to help and this is the thanks you get. It's not just a human-to-human notice, but a change of your permission level; you're being stepped down. Of course I have no idea about this specific case and what the user flagged/vouched, and I can see your logic, just that I'd probably also feel bad if it happened to me and the wording seems fitting enough to me

[bellowsgulch]

Dan likes some people and you ain't in the group, buddy.

[dang]

I like people who follow the site guidelines and want to use HN as intended. That doesn't mean I dislike people who don't, but that side of the moon is more...nuanced.

[Barbing]

He has no idea who I am.

Privately, when I was new he was polite and helpful. (Tried to be polite, was returned.)

/singular anecdote for reader reference