zlacker

The problem is the community can't really do anything about it. Without the ability to downvote a topic all you can do is watch and hope others don't upvote a story like that.

Which itself is a problem because the threshold is so low. By even the most conservative estimates there are thousands of people visiting the site every day yet it only takes a handful or so to get an item to the front page.

So even if 99.5% of the people here make a "strong commitment" as you put it the front page will still be flooded with all those TSA stories

>>TomOfT+(OP)
Flag them. Flag them all.

>>gloob+r
Does anyone know how many flags it takes before an article is automatically deleted? I'm just curious as to what percentage of the hacker news ecosystem would have to flag something to remove it from the front page.

>>TomOfT+(OP)
How about permitting downvotes to everyone after a submission has had a certain number of upvotes (say 10 or 20)?

As you say, currently there's no way to say "there's nothing interesting on the front page" even if a majority think that.

>>Nathan+W
I think an article is deleted when it reaches 10 flags (could be less, not sure) before reaching 10 votes. After 10 votes, it can't be flagged to death anymore.