[DanBC]

> good exchange of thoughts that came come-out of it.

I don't flag threads if there's good discussion in them. I do flag threads that collapse into unpleasant nastiness. I downvote some of the worst examples of unpleasantness too.

It's very easy to say that people flag a thread just because it has positive coverage of companyA or negative coverage of companyB - and maybe that does happen - but the HN mechanisms are opaque and some people[1] flag threads for different reasons.

[1] Me. I do. So that's at least one person.

[vaultboy21]

clearly people flag for different reasons. that just bolsters my point that there should be an examination of flagging behaviour and some clarification around how its meant to be used, if need be, and potentially some adjustments to prevent occurrences such as when "people flag a thread just because it has positive coverage of companyA or negative coverage of companyB"