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Comment by vaxman | Hacker News Reader

I like how when the downvoted messages start to fade away until they say [flagged] and vanish. The creators of the site were only looking for what’s popular because, you know, they’re VC.

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Actually it's an attempt to prevent the overwhelming forces of the internet from filling the site immediately with dreck.

Would you please review the site guidelines? Your comment breaks more than one of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Also, as bigyikes pointed out, downvotes don't flag things. Flag flag things.

I like when people complain about HN without understanding how it works.

Actually, I don’t. Downvoting turns your comments grey. Flagging is a separate action.

I thought enough (5 or so?) downvotes resulted in an automatic [flagged][dead]? Did I misunderstand?

That's not how it works. Rather, there's a tug of war between upvotes and flags. If the flags get the upper hand, [flagged] appears, and if they dominate, then the post also gets killed. In the latter case users with 'showdead' turned on in their profile will see [flagged][dead].

semantics..users can and do choose to Flag comments because they disagree —not because they are considered inappropriate for the site

True, and (in my opinion) improper. But users can vouch for comments that are improperly flagged. If you see it happening, don't gripe, fix it.

>If you see it happening, don't gripe, fix it.

Sometimes flags/downvotes are warranted.

In my experience, most dead/downvoted comments are dead/downvoted for good reason.

But that doesn't mean I don't want to see them. Which is why I enabled "showdead." IMHO, that's often a better answer than vouching for a comment, but YMMV.

Sure. I meant vouch for it if the post warrants it, and not otherwise. If it deserves to be buried, leave it buried.

>Sure. I meant vouch for it if the post warrants it, and not otherwise. If it deserves to be buried, leave it buried.

A fair point. And a correct one too. I took that as a given, but apparently folks are unable to read my mind. :)

Thanks for clarifying. I should have been more explicit.

As should I have been...

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