zlacker

Thanks for flagging flame trolls like us.

People tend to get carried away in a heat of discussion, but eventually return to the mean of civility after cool-down period.

Other places just impose ban frivolously, which doesn't help long term, bans destroy the community, methinks.

Moderate moderation like yours is the way to go, and I'm not saying it as a kiss ass.

Edit: dang, what moderation tools do you think could be helpful. What part of your job can be automated via ML/NLP?

What is your least favorite, repetitive or time consuming manual algorithm as a mod?

>>bra-ke+(OP)
I do think that there is room for ML/NLP tools to be useful but we haven't done much with that yet.

Probably looking through the flagged comments is the least favorite, as well as most repetitive and time consuming manual activity, for all the mods who do it.

>>dang+tg
So the first problem seems to be classifying user-flagged comments based on rules violations.

And if this ML labeling is successful then do all the unflagging, or whatever is the most easily automated , most frequent action, to reduce the queue for manual processing.

>>dang+tg
Mods are reviewing every flagged comment?

I don't flag comments often, but I'll be even more careful now when I do if that's the case.

Suggestion: when flagging a comment, allow the flagger to state which guideline they think the comment violates (I believe both reddit and FB do this).

>>js2+zx
I'm not sure how many of those flags are just misclicks or "I don't like this" button, but I guess the noise level is higher than expected

>>raverb+uy
It’s easy to flag submissions by accident and I’ve definitely done that and had to unflag them. I flag submissions on purpose fairly often when I feel they are really poor quality, spam, or way off-topic for HN. I also flag submissions where the discussion has gone off the rails.

Flagging a comment takes extra work because you have to click through to the comment. I’ve never done that by accident and tried to only do it for comments that violate guidelines. Sometimes I subjectively feel a comment is trolling and will flag it. That’s not strictly against the guidelines and is a judgement call.

(The worst is when I accidentally hide a story. That’s way too easy to do and too hard to undo.)

>>js2+gB
Should we add a temporary "unhide" link that appears after you hide a story? If so, where should it appear?

>>dang+vT1
Having the hide link right next to "N comments" makes it really easy to tap by accident. Then to unhide, you have to click through to your preferences to get to the "hidden" link.

Reddit uses this order:

    N comments | share | save | hide | give award | report | crosspost

I guess my preference would be for HN to use a similar order:

    N comments | N points by <user> <time> | hide | flag

Of course, if you make this change, half the readers will hate it and insist you change it back. :-)

I'm not sure that "flag" and "hide" need to be on the main page at all. You could show those only after clicking through to the submission?

(I should probably just switch to one of the many HN reader apps.)