Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

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I'm curious why there's no actual downvote for submissions. Was that ever discussed on here? I did a quick search for prior discussions on the topic but didn't find anything.

To me, "flag" means "this is a serious violation that requires moderator attention". Something I'd want you to see and deal with because it's bigoted, illegal, spam, etc. I wouldn't flag something simply because I didn't think HN was the right audience, or because I personally dislike the topic. You seem to be encouraging me to use it simply as a downvote.

I'm not going to start flagging things, nor do I feel that strongly about the lack of a downvote, but if flags are effectively downvotes behind the scenes, and if that's how users are treating flags (which they obviously are, from other comments on this thread), I think the UI should have a downvote button.

I assume there's been discussion about this before and I'm curious about the thought process behind the decision. I don't find the FAQ to be informative about this.

The only person who could answer that is pg because that design choice was part of the embryo of HN.

He must have been thinking something though, because Reddit was originally his conception and he was an influence on the earliest development of Reddit as well (edit: and Reddit does have story downvoting - forgot to mention that bit).

It's good that this is in this thread, as I bet a ton of power users (I check HN multiple times a day for years but likely only a time or two have glossed over the FAQ), did not know FLAG could be used as a downvote tool. Interesting choice by PG, I agree with the previous comment, we have all come to know FLAG as a violation tool on most platforms. Now we know.

I'm surprised by this thread too.

I never flag anything because it's recorded on my profile, and I don't want stuff recorded on my profile that isn't useful to me. I only upvote submissions and comments that I intend to refer back to in the future. Upvotes are simply bookmarks to me, so my only tool for voting on the quality of conversation is downvotes. Which, apparently, I can't do for articles without spamming up my profile.

Actually I just checked my profile and saw several flags that must have appeared on a mis-click, just like how sometimes upvotes appear on a mis-click. Fortunately, unlike mis-clicked upvotes, you can still remove these.

Do you happen to remember if the misclicks were on mobile or not? I'm planning to add a confirmation screen to cut down on flags-by-misclick, but the current intention is to make it mobile-only.

Almost certainly they were on mobile, where the small font and use of touch screen to scroll makes mis-clicks much more likely. I'd be happy with a confirmation screen because I rarely or never intend to flag, but by the sounds of it there are a lot of liberal flaggers who could find the extra step annoying.

Not the original poster, but in my case it's always mobile.

Thank you for your tireless work. HN is a breath of fresh air compared with the rest of the internet thanks to it.

I've ran into this a few times, not just with flagging but with hiding too. It would be really helpful to have a confirmation dialog and/or a banner on the screen after the action was taken that would let you undo it. To answer your question: I think most of mine were on mobile but it would be nice to be able to have it in all environments if possible.

Tbh if you just upvote what you like and do not vote what you don't like it's almost the same thing.

The one exception is if some group organizes to upvote something that fits their agenda / business plan. But in this case it's generally something worth flagging and it gets flagged?

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