Comment by joshuaellinger

I've read through (some of) your essays on HN design and think that, ultimately, you will have to introduce a little more complexity to handle posts that relate to identity cleanly.

The best option that I can see is to allow users to mark a post as 'off-topic' in addition to 'flag'. Subtract the off-topic count in some fashion and generate second set of rankings. Then allow users to chose between the normal front-page and the filtered front-page.

It would not split the community into have/have-nots and it would enable a little self-selected filtering. It feels like a general enough case that it would have merit across a wide range of posts.

It would also provide a lot more information upon which to make judgment calls.

Fascinating site you've got going. This is the only place where I can actually stand to read the comments.