Comment by webappguy
1 year ago
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.