Ask HN: When were flagged submissions/comments added to the profile page?
88 comments
It was added on Wednesday, about three weeks after I emailed to ask for some amelioration of my occasional clumsiness with phone screens leading to a high rate of erroneously flagged stories.
I didn't really go in with an expectation, certainly not for that kind of amazing responsiveness and turnaround time. Thanks, dang!
I didn't really go in with an expectation, certainly not for that kind of amazing responsiveness and turnaround time. Thanks, dang!
I occasionally accidentally flag and unflag... I didn't expect to find 30 accidental flags there.
I think it'd be great for the flag button to show a confirmation popup before actually flagging.
I think it'd be great for the flag button to show a confirmation popup before actually flagging.
The same goes for upvotes. I'm never really sure whether I actually upvoted or accidentally downvoted a comment. This is bad UI.
Definitely. Turns out I have about two accidental flags a year.
Hmm, I have flagged like 15-20 submissions, maybe 3 intentionally... A confirm dialog may help.
I intentionally flag posts sometimes.
I think a free-form text input for reason would be nice. No one even has to read the reason most of the time.
Providing a reason for flagging serves multiple purposes:
- makes it so that you don’t accidentally flag something when you don’t mean to
- discourages overly aggressive flagging
- in some cases the reason for flagging might be more subtle. So casual review of flagged posts by mods might miss the subtle reason it is being flagged by people. If we explicitly state the reason, it can help mods see why a post is being flagged by people in such situations
I think a free-form text input for reason would be nice. No one even has to read the reason most of the time.
Providing a reason for flagging serves multiple purposes:
- makes it so that you don’t accidentally flag something when you don’t mean to
- discourages overly aggressive flagging
- in some cases the reason for flagging might be more subtle. So casual review of flagged posts by mods might miss the subtle reason it is being flagged by people. If we explicitly state the reason, it can help mods see why a post is being flagged by people in such situations
> discourages overly aggressive flagging
I recently posted a tweet from pg [0] and as it starts getting some momentum, suddenly got flagged by someone who believes it is paywalled because Twitter rolled out the must-be-logged-to-view feature. It got unfairly flagged despite I provided the full tweet as a comment.
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0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36563683
I recently posted a tweet from pg [0] and as it starts getting some momentum, suddenly got flagged by someone who believes it is paywalled because Twitter rolled out the must-be-logged-to-view feature. It got unfairly flagged despite I provided the full tweet as a comment.
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0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36563683
> It got unfairly flagged despite I provided the full tweet as a comment.
Is it really unfair? Your link isn't accessible to a non-insignificant portion of the HN audience, therefore it seems reasonable to flag it.
It isn't reasonable to expect/force people to read comments before flagging content for being inaccessible.
Is it really unfair? Your link isn't accessible to a non-insignificant portion of the HN audience, therefore it seems reasonable to flag it.
It isn't reasonable to expect/force people to read comments before flagging content for being inaccessible.
I think you misread the latter part of the sentence - OP said they provided the raw text in a comment. This is no different than some other paywalled articles posted here where the first comment usually just links to the web archive for a non-paywalled version.
It may also have been flagged simply because pg tweeting yet again about Musk is one of the least interesting submissions possible.
>A confirm dialog may help.
I'm not really a fan of dialogs in flow if it can be avoided, at least not without trying other indicators first, but I would agree some UX experimentation might be worthwhile. Like rather then have it simply go to "unflag", a two letter difference purely in gray, also have it turn bold/bright red for an hour? At least as an option? I just tried playing with the CSS and flagging/unflagging your post, and setting [unflag] to color:red;font-weight:bold makes a real difference without being obnoxious.
I'm not really a fan of dialogs in flow if it can be avoided, at least not without trying other indicators first, but I would agree some UX experimentation might be worthwhile. Like rather then have it simply go to "unflag", a two letter difference purely in gray, also have it turn bold/bright red for an hour? At least as an option? I just tried playing with the CSS and flagging/unflagging your post, and setting [unflag] to color:red;font-weight:bold makes a real difference without being obnoxious.
I think destructive/high-consequence flows is the one case where dialogs are prudent. Dialogs add a lot of friction and extra actions, but that is sometimes a good thing (nobody ever complained about a poolside not being slippery enough).
There's a reason why the emergency services requires you to enter three digits when dialing. Sure it would be a smoother flow if you only had to press a single button or dial '9', but you'd also get a lot more butt dials.
There's a reason why the emergency services requires you to enter three digits when dialing. Sure it would be a smoother flow if you only had to press a single button or dial '9', but you'd also get a lot more butt dials.
Another option would be to add more statuses. When a comment gets enough flags, it gets "[flagged]" added to the top of it. Perhaps something like "[you flagged]" could help.
I suppose you could change further aspects of the current behaviour, but the issue with that idea is that the flagged items disappear currently, so you wouldn't get to see the "[you flagged]" entry, unless you got to the comments page for it via some other means (eg jumping to it from your browser history)
Ah, good call. I have "showdead" enabled, so I see flagged/dead entries, and didn't think of this. (I do actually often enough find dead comments that IMO deserve to be seen, and vouch for them.)
When you flag something, does it disappear immediately, or only if it's received enough flags to be killed? If the latter, then I think this is much less of a problem. Sure, you may have flagged it by accident, but if it was only one flag away from being killed, it'd probably end up getting intentionally flagged again by someone else soon enough.
When you flag something, does it disappear immediately, or only if it's received enough flags to be killed? If the latter, then I think this is much less of a problem. Sure, you may have flagged it by accident, but if it was only one flag away from being killed, it'd probably end up getting intentionally flagged again by someone else soon enough.
Sorry, I may have got this wrong!
I honestly thought they got removed but it looks like this isn't happening for me (at least not right away), unless it's the scenario you mention where it's only one away from being killed. I think I must have been conflating the behaviour for hide with flag.
I honestly thought they got removed but it looks like this isn't happening for me (at least not right away), unless it's the scenario you mention where it's only one away from being killed. I think I must have been conflating the behaviour for hide with flag.
I would like the ability to disable flagging for my account. Too easy to accidentally flag when scrolling. Or perhaps only offer flagging when you’re on a thread or viewing an individual comment.
My 9-10 pages of flagged comments seem mostly good, almost all of them are dead and things I think I intentionally flagged.
My 3 pages of flagged submissions seems a bit more random. Perhaps I don't remember the reason just skimming through, but some of them are certainly accidental.
My 3 pages of flagged submissions seems a bit more random. Perhaps I don't remember the reason just skimming through, but some of them are certainly accidental.
My list of flagged submissions is more or less like yours. I think the reason is that I flag things that I don't want to see on HN (not just that I don't care about them, but that I think some topics or specific articles are harmful/toxic to a community), which is often contrary to what many other HN readers think. There's no downvote button on submissions, so there's no other way for me to give that signal.
For comments, I usually only flag when people are egregiously violating site guidelines or are just being dicks in general, and I think most other potential flaggers often agree with my flags in those cases, and pile on. If I just think that a comment doesn't add anything substantive, I'll merely downvote.
I'll also downvote if I strongly disagree with someone's position, after reading an older post on HN from pg saying that's an accepted use for downvotes[0]. I'm still somewhat torn on this, as I'm not sure a nearly 15-year-old post on policy (from someone who seems not to be much involved with HN these days) should still be considered authoritative, as community norms change over time. I also don't love that using downvotes to express disagreement also has the effect of hiding contrary opinions, which can often hold a lot of value. So I try to reserve my disagreement downvotes for cases where I believe I have evidence the poster is objectively wrong about what they're saying.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
For comments, I usually only flag when people are egregiously violating site guidelines or are just being dicks in general, and I think most other potential flaggers often agree with my flags in those cases, and pile on. If I just think that a comment doesn't add anything substantive, I'll merely downvote.
I'll also downvote if I strongly disagree with someone's position, after reading an older post on HN from pg saying that's an accepted use for downvotes[0]. I'm still somewhat torn on this, as I'm not sure a nearly 15-year-old post on policy (from someone who seems not to be much involved with HN these days) should still be considered authoritative, as community norms change over time. I also don't love that using downvotes to express disagreement also has the effect of hiding contrary opinions, which can often hold a lot of value. So I try to reserve my disagreement downvotes for cases where I believe I have evidence the poster is objectively wrong about what they're saying.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
One thing that is hard with submissions is duplicates. Reasonable to flag, hard to identify later.
I had 4 out of 4 accidental flagged submissions.
I was also shocked to see I had flagged quite a few articles, likely because of my own fat fingers.
Oh my god, I have flagged dozens. None on purpose.
I have just unflagged all of them, hopefully It helps
I have just unflagged all of them, hopefully It helps
Judging by the reaction in this thread, I feel like it might noticeably lower the noise floor on the moderation queue!
Same here. I use the favorite button a lot and that it is next to flag, I assume this is most likely what’s happened
Me too, like 20+ over the years. I had no clue I was misclicking. Some kind of confirmation would be a real good idea!
On mobile, up/down voting is super close.
I probably downvoted 20% of the time I tried to upvote until I realized I need to pinch-zoom super close and pay attention to the "on clicked" look of the link for the few milliseconds it appears.
Those arrows are not mobile friendly.
I probably downvoted 20% of the time I tried to upvote until I realized I need to pinch-zoom super close and pay attention to the "on clicked" look of the link for the few milliseconds it appears.
Those arrows are not mobile friendly.
Once it is older than a few hours it probably doesn't matter any.
same; maybe two dozen flagged stories, none of which I intended to flag. Comments however, they seem to be flagged appropriately
Same here. I assumed flagging was something that required a certain amount of reputation. I've never even purposefully tried to see how to flag something, and I have 4 submissions flagged.
I've flagged articles I don't recognize. I'm not sure how. There might need to be a UX change here.
I knew I was doing it, I just hated that I couldn't fix it myself!
It also seems like flagging an article now no longer hides it, which is extra great since the unflag link is right there without even needing to visit the profile to undo a mistap.
It also seems like flagging an article now no longer hides it, which is extra great since the unflag link is right there without even needing to visit the profile to undo a mistap.
If it's any consolation, the page doesn't show flagged submissions that ended up being removed, so you're likely only going to see stuff you've accidentally flagged.
Flagging could do with a confirmation prompt perhaps.
Flagging could do with a confirmation prompt perhaps.
me too! some of them looked kind of interesting too, probably just hit the wrong thing on mobile I guess?
there was some stuff I definitely meant to flag like spam or whatever but definitely some stuff that was not supposed to be
there was some stuff I definitely meant to flag like spam or whatever but definitely some stuff that was not supposed to be
I used to think I caught accidental flags very well… I no longer believe that after reviewing my list of flagged submissions. I just unflagged anything I didn’t think was worth flagging in the first place but some of these are years old.
Heh, same here, although I always held the thought "well, if I did not do such a good job at detecting accidental clicks, I'd never know about it". Now I do!
Huh. Apparently I've flagged and voted lots of stuff by accident.
I checked again and have a bunch of flagged submissions, mostly deliberate, but there were certainly some accidental ones in there. Great feature indeed.
Yeah I had no idea how many accidental flags I’ve done so this is really useful
Well I just found out that somehow over the years I had flagged 30+ totally innocuous items. So I've unflagged them all. They were more like things I would have been interested in rather than upset by. So I guess I was flagging instead of favoriting or some such madness.
All 10 on my flagged posts were accidents. Think this probably highlights a UX issue and the need for an "are you sure?" popup.
I think a popup would be annoying and get in the way. A better option might be to highlight in some way (perhaps via a change in text color) items that you have flagged, so you can easily see that you may have made a mistake.
Ditto I have accidently flagged 12 submissions without noticing (but no comments). This is in addition to the many times where I've noticed an accidental flagging and immediately unflagged it. In my case, it's entirely a consequence of reading HN on a phone.
Nice to see it added, quite a lot of people found out they had fat finger flagged some content when I told HN about these (then) hidden pages: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253799
Edit: as stated in that post, you can also see your vouched items by accessing https://news.ycombinator.com/vouched
Edit: as stated in that post, you can also see your vouched items by accessing https://news.ycombinator.com/vouched
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Apparently I’ve flagged about 100 submissions since 2015, and I’d wager none were intentional.
Apologies to posters that didn’t get the complete chance their submissions deserved.
Apologies to posters that didn’t get the complete chance their submissions deserved.
Wow great feature. Apparently I accidentally hit the “flag” button all of the time because every one of my flagged posts was an accident. Now I get to go through and unflag them all. Sorry about that whoever made the post!
Thanks for the tip. Every flag for me was accidental.
I just checked my flags.
Everything earlier than 2017 or so was straight up a mistake. I didn't know what "flag" did, so I must have clicked it to experiment back then and just never realized I kept the flag this whole time. I just undid those flags.
There were 3 or 4 submissions I actually flagged for real that I'll keep the flag on. A bunch of comments that I've flagged.
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This seems like a good feature, in practice, I seem to have a fair number of mistaken flags (albeit from earlier before I knew what the feature did). But even today I've got a few misclicks, perfectly normal topics I must have accidentally hit the "flag" button on that I really shouldn't have.
Everything earlier than 2017 or so was straight up a mistake. I didn't know what "flag" did, so I must have clicked it to experiment back then and just never realized I kept the flag this whole time. I just undid those flags.
There were 3 or 4 submissions I actually flagged for real that I'll keep the flag on. A bunch of comments that I've flagged.
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This seems like a good feature, in practice, I seem to have a fair number of mistaken flags (albeit from earlier before I knew what the feature did). But even today I've got a few misclicks, perfectly normal topics I must have accidentally hit the "flag" button on that I really shouldn't have.
When were flagged submissions/comments added to the profile page?
Not sure but here [1] are some of the other URL's on HN one could bookmark.
[1] - https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#public... [not my repo]
Not sure but here [1] are some of the other URL's on HN one could bookmark.
[1] - https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#public... [not my repo]
Since lots of people are accidentally flagging on mobile and I'm currently revisiting my Hacker News extension to add a Safari version, I'm adding something which will let you choose your preferred solution for this (hide the flag control or require a confirm):
https://github.com/insin/hn-comments-owl/issues/14#issuecomm...
https://github.com/insin/hn-comments-owl/issues/14#issuecomm...
It's interesting to see how many people have flagged by mistake. I'm a relatively new user of HN and has been always shocked to see many good posts getting flagged.
I also think either a confirmation dialog or "what's wrong?" input for the flag would be good.
(As a side note, I have seen many good comments being down voted too without any reason, but that's for another day probably :D )
I also think either a confirmation dialog or "what's wrong?" input for the flag would be good.
(As a side note, I have seen many good comments being down voted too without any reason, but that's for another day probably :D )
On mobile it's too easy to accidentally click Flag.
I checked my profile and noticed a handful of accidental Flags this year alone.
Perhaps a confirmation dialog would solve it.
I checked my profile and noticed a handful of accidental Flags this year alone.
Perhaps a confirmation dialog would solve it.
Why does my own show 2 flagged submissions when I did not submit either of those things?
Is it saying that I flagged them?
edit, I see the unflag links now, which resolves that.
Is it saying that I flagged them?
edit, I see the unflag links now, which resolves that.
When I saw this post, I thought the new flagging links were added to help track biases from users. For example, there might be users on this platform that will flag anything that might be critical of their fav tech company or political ideology.
I did not expect to see so many comments (nearly all of them, ~2 hours into this post) referring to accidental flagging.
Whatever the reasons, I like the new links.
I did not expect to see so many comments (nearly all of them, ~2 hours into this post) referring to accidental flagging.
Whatever the reasons, I like the new links.
Glad to hear I wasn’t the only one accidentally flagging submissions! I had about 20 on my list going back to 2011 and only 1-2 were legitimately flag-worthy. Far fewer comments, only 4, and of those only 1 was by error. However my account can still flag submissions, but I noticed recently I don’t have the ability to flag comments for whatever reason.
I'd like a setting to disable flagging. I saw that I accidentally flagged some submissions and unflagged then now. I probably upvoted many of them and flagged them instead of tapping the link on my phone.
I'm always surprised when I see some submission flagged on purpose by others. They are often interesting stuff. I upvoted and commented some of them.
I'm always surprised when I see some submission flagged on purpose by others. They are often interesting stuff. I upvoted and commented some of them.
Sometimes my comments get flagged, that is always a good lesson on what is possible to say in some abroad communities. In some areas of possible opinions I do not even receive a single downvote, but a flag and it is always instant. I have no opinion about the topic, just a little observation.
the list clearly includes actions from long ago, so this data was recorded, just not visible to the account holder
in that sense, it is somehow a benefit, to see more of what is tracked behind the scenes. It seems obvious that these simple values are easily used make profiles of profiles, in aggregate.
in that sense, it is somehow a benefit, to see more of what is tracked behind the scenes. It seems obvious that these simple values are easily used make profiles of profiles, in aggregate.
Gotta be in the last 14 days. Wonder what the use is though, when looking at my reports I see a couple spam flags and a dozen utterly vile and down-greyed comments. Not sure why anyone would want to see what they have reported...
I often accidentally flag something (on mobile) and this helps me undo that.
Tangentially related .. can we bring back average karma score or whatever it was?
I really felt like it was a good tool to help curb people from posting useless throwaway comments.
Anyone know why this was removed?
I really felt like it was a good tool to help curb people from posting useless throwaway comments.
Anyone know why this was removed?
Flag 'em all; let dang sort them out.
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I had 10, all of which were accidental. It's so easy to accidentally hit flag with this UI
Happy to see the link to Hiddens. Sometimes I hide the wrong one and there was no way out.
@dang can we add more friction to the flag thing? Maybe just a yes/no after.
Wow, looks like I flagged several posts ver the years, 100% by accident.
Jeez, I knew I sometimes misclicked but I have to do something about it.
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lots of calls for a pop up confirmation. Consider colors or bolding: click flag, it becomes bold and red.
I had no idea I ever flagged a submission.
I have like 200+ flags and every single one has been intentional. I am not sure the accidental excuse applies here. You either flag something or you don’t.
It's not an excuse. It's a fact. Just read this thread. Thousands of flags of totally innocuous material by accident by scores of users. Including myself. Or maybe you think I subliminally love flagging articles concerning improvements to the Python programming language...Which would be worrying.
It's surprisingly easy to flag something by mistake while scrolling & browsing HN on iphone.
Probably on Android as well. The "flag" link is right under my thumb as I scroll through the page.
I flagged the parent. Yes, intentionally.
It's a useful addition, if only to check occasionally that I haven't mistakenly flagged a comment or a submission.