zlacker

Actually that's something I've already changed. A few hours ago I made flags have a lot more weight.

The old weights were ok for the more engaged users we had a year ago, but now the ratio of votes to flags on a fluff story tends to be a lot higher.

>>pg+(OP)
So that's why my submission plummeted so quickly. One person made a reasoned argument for it not belonging, lots of people piled on and flagged it, hey presto, gone.

Giving flags more weight is not necessarily the answer. Punishing people for making bad comments is, I think, more important. Equally important is punishing people for upvoting bad comments.

But now it's late here, and starting tomorrow I'm really not going to be here for a while. Good luck PG, I hope you can find a way to reduce the mean-spiritedness fluff, and make HN more pleasant again.

>>pg+(OP)
Have you done the same for comment flags? I tracked my flags for a week and none of them had any effect. Here is a sample of the things I flagged:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2351266

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2351266

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348304

>>RiderO+D4
> I hope you can find a way to reduce the mean-spiritedness fluff, and make HN more pleasant again.

I think this last sentence is very telling. Low quality is only part of the problem. What really makes people want to disengage is having their feelings hurt.

>>RiderO+D4
You could make flags scale concavely.

>>crassh+Li
Come to think of it, maybe upvotes should scale concavely as well.