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Comment by chvid | Hacker News Reader

Flagged and not on the front page.

Something needs to be done about this in my opinion. More and more over the last few months I've seen posts get flagged within minutes simply because someone disagrees with the content. Flagging should be for stuff that's irrelevant to HN and poor computer security practices by the woman running for president seems relevant to me - especially compared with a lot of the other stuff that gets upvoted.

I agree.

This case (HRC's emails) is world news and has a strong technical component.

The flagged post links directly to the statement of the FBI. It is a neutral source and a better read than a lot of the news sites.

It is sad that HN in practice censors this stuff just because it is political.

It's political. Many people prefer to keep politics out of HN, and so it gets flag-killed. I don't really agree, but I can understand the desire for a politics-free area.

What is wrong with political discussions, as long as people are respectful of each others' views?

Because the people who demand respectful discourse are the ones who rarely participate in it themselves.

Like Snowden. Oh wait...

It seems relevant to you and off-topic to others. In such cases the votes and flags combine to produce a community verdict. Nothing has changed about that in the last few months.

We sometimes turn off user flags in exceptional cases but this doesn't seem like one to me.

I understand (and I'm not suggesting something has changed with the system recently) but personally I have seen a lot of big stories get flagged within minutes of reaching the front page despite have large, useful discussions within the comments. Normally these stories have a political bent or are world news stories that involve guns, terrorism, immigration and other similar topics. I have seen how comment sections on those topics can descend into useless arguments but often there is still useful content and relevance to technology.

Does the number of comments on a post get taken into account along with votes and flags? It seems to me that if a story is polarising people who disagree with it will be much more liberal with their down vote whereas people who may agree with it are taking the time to read and comment instead of immediately voting.

In this case one group of people with similar political views is creating a safe space by silencing their opponents and preventing an inconvenient discussion. It is hard to see it any other way.

Yep. Conservatives and their ilk are so thoroughly convinced of her guilt (and if not this, list off the 100 other witch hunts the republicans in congress have led against her).

They'd rather flag and stifle discussion than let people know that her actions didn't rise to the level of criminal charges. It is sad. It's also exactly what I've come to expect. People scream about the liberal media, and yet here we are watching a pro-liberal (in theory... i guess... maybe just not anti-liberal) story get censored as fast as they get posted.

You are confused.

Hmm maybe it's a case of not enough of us upcoming the article. I know I'm pretty bad for it, I'll go straight to the HN comments the. Forget to upvote(hey it's a long way to scroll up!). I'll try to be better in the future :-s

Edit: @dang on the off chance you read his, is it worthwhile upvoting an article once it's dead? Or is the flag permanent?(I figure it's pissing against the wind, but I'd like to know either way).

You can vouch for dead posts by setting you "showdead" preference to "on". However, I cannot vouch this post, apparently because it is 'flagged' and not 'dead'. I could still upmod it though (probably useless?).

Very likely the work of Hillary's shill force, pretty low odds they don't follow this site when major news comes out.

It's against the rules here to fling 'astroturfing' and 'shill' around without evidence, so please don't do that.

Sorry, I thought it was common knowledge that people associated with her campaign were engaging in this type of activity: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/21/hillary-pac... .

I'd look hard at the logs, it certainly feels suspicious to me, although admittedly I haven't seen any commentator action suggesting anything other than a flagging campaign.

why would a pro-hillary group flag a story on here that says she's not guilty of crimes (or at least that charges won't be pursued due to the actions not warranting criminal prosecution)?

I'm literally in disbelief about how people think it's Hillary trying to hide these discussions. Liberal media, indeed...

This story shows how clinton is a liar. The lies started with "the personal server was only used for personal communications", when that was found to be a lie it changed to "no classified info was ever on the server", and when that lie was found out it was changed to "the only classified info was retroactively classified", and when that was found out to be a lie, it just went on and on until everything the most cynical observer alleged turned out to be true.

The record correctors are quick to point out that you aren't allowed to identify them, its part of the script they get whether or not its really a rule here.

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