[HN Gopher] Ask HN: When were flagged submissions/comments added...
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       Ask HN: When were flagged submissions/comments added to the profile
       page?
        
       I noticed it just now in my status page. I'm fairly convinced it
       wasn't there last time I viewed it.  It's a useful addition, if
       only to check occasionally that I haven't mistakenly flagged a
       comment or a submission.
        
       Author : olvy0
       Score  : 75 points
       Date   : 2023-07-09 18:56 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
       | scandox wrote:
       | Well I just found out that somehow over the years I had flagged
       | 30+ totally innocuous items. So I've unflagged them all. They
       | were more like things I would have been interested in rather than
       | upset by. So I guess I was flagging instead of favoriting or some
       | such madness.
        
       | Brian_K_White wrote:
       | Why does my own show 2 flagged submissions when I did not submit
       | either of those things?
       | 
       | Is it saying that I flagged them?
       | 
       | edit, I see the unflag links now, which resolves that.
        
       | throwanem wrote:
       | It was added on Wednesday, about three weeks after I emailed to
       | ask for some amelioration of my occasional clumsiness with phone
       | screens leading to a high rate of erroneously flagged stories.
       | 
       | I didn't really go in with an expectation, certainly not for that
       | kind of amazing responsiveness and turnaround time. Thanks, dang!
        
         | doubled112 wrote:
         | I was also shocked to see I had flagged quite a few articles,
         | likely because of my own fat fingers.
        
           | throwanem wrote:
           | I knew I was doing it, I just hated that I couldn't fix it
           | myself!
           | 
           | It also seems like flagging an article now no longer hides
           | it, which is extra great since the unflag link is right there
           | without even needing to visit the profile to undo a mistap.
        
           | gota wrote:
           | Oh my god, I have flagged dozens. None on purpose.
           | 
           | I have just unflagged all of them, hopefully It helps
        
             | pjot wrote:
             | Same here. I use the favorite button a lot and that it is
             | next to flag, I assume this is most likely what's happened
        
             | dageshi wrote:
             | Me too, like 20+ over the years. I had no clue I was
             | misclicking. Some kind of confirmation would be a real good
             | idea!
        
               | sshine wrote:
               | On mobile, up/down voting is super close.
               | 
               | I probably downvoted 20% of the time I tried to upvote
               | until I realized I need to pinch-zoom super close and pay
               | attention to the "on clicked" look of the link for the
               | few milliseconds it appears.
               | 
               | Those arrows are not mobile friendly.
        
             | throwanem wrote:
             | Judging by the reaction in this thread, I feel like it
             | might noticeably lower the noise floor on the moderation
             | queue!
        
           | c0brac0bra wrote:
           | Same here. I assumed flagging was something that required a
           | certain amount of reputation. I've never even purposefully
           | tried to see _how_ to flag something, and I have 4
           | submissions flagged.
        
           | xupybd wrote:
           | I've flagged articles I don't recognize. I'm not sure how.
           | There might need to be a UX change here.
        
           | ehPReth wrote:
           | me too! some of them looked kind of interesting too, probably
           | just hit the wrong thing on mobile I guess?
           | 
           | there was some stuff I definitely meant to flag like spam or
           | whatever but definitely some stuff that was not supposed to
           | be
        
           | sdflhasjd wrote:
           | If it's any consolation, the page doesn't show flagged
           | submissions that ended up being removed, so you're likely
           | only going to see stuff you've accidentally flagged.
           | 
           | Flagging could do with a confirmation prompt perhaps.
        
             | gjulianm wrote:
             | It does show removed flagged submissions if you have
             | "showdead" enabled in your profile.
        
               | sdflhasjd wrote:
               | Does that still show really old removed items though?
               | Some items I remember deliberately flagging don't show in
               | the list.
        
         | SllX wrote:
         | I used to think I caught accidental flags very well... I no
         | longer believe that after reviewing my list of flagged
         | submissions. I just unflagged anything I didn't think was worth
         | flagging in the first place but some of these are years old.
        
           | napsterbr wrote:
           | Heh, same here, although I always held the thought "well, if
           | I did not do such a good job at detecting accidental clicks,
           | I'd never know about it". Now I do!
        
         | leros wrote:
         | Huh. Apparently I've flagged and voted lots of stuff by
         | accident.
        
         | marginalia_nu wrote:
         | Hmm, I have flagged like 15-20 submissions, maybe 3
         | intentionally... A confirm dialog may help.
        
           | matsemann wrote:
           | My 9-10 pages of flagged _comments_ seem mostly good, almost
           | all of them are dead and things I think I intentionally
           | flagged.
           | 
           | My 3 pages of flagged _submissions_ seems a bit more random.
           | Perhaps I don 't remember the reason just skimming through,
           | but some of them are certainly accidental.
        
             | kelnos wrote:
             | My list of flagged submissions is more or less like yours.
             | I think the reason is that I flag things that I don't want
             | to see on HN (not just that I don't care about them, but
             | that I think some topics or specific articles are
             | harmful/toxic to a community), which is often contrary to
             | what many other HN readers think. There's no downvote
             | button on submissions, so there's no other way for me to
             | give that signal.
             | 
             | For comments, I usually only flag when people are
             | egregiously violating site guidelines or are just being
             | dicks in general, and I think most other potential flaggers
             | often agree with my flags in those cases, and pile on. If I
             | just think that a comment doesn't add anything substantive,
             | I'll merely downvote.
             | 
             | I'll also downvote if I strongly disagree with someone's
             | position, after reading an older post on HN from pg saying
             | that's an accepted use for downvotes[0]. I'm still somewhat
             | torn on this, as I'm not sure a nearly 15-year-old post on
             | policy (from someone who seems not to be much involved with
             | HN these days) should still be considered authoritative, as
             | community norms change over time. I also don't love that
             | using downvotes to express disagreement also has the effect
             | of hiding contrary opinions, which can often hold a lot of
             | value. So I try to reserve my disagreement downvotes for
             | cases where I believe I have evidence the poster is
             | objectively wrong about what they're saying.
             | 
             | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
        
             | sshine wrote:
             | I had 4 out of 4 accidental flagged submissions.
        
           | xoa wrote:
           | > _A confirm dialog may help._
           | 
           | I'm not really a fan of dialogs in flow if it can be avoided,
           | at least not without trying other indicators first, but I
           | would agree some UX experimentation might be worthwhile. Like
           | rather then have it simply go to "unflag", a two letter
           | difference purely in gray, also have it turn bold/bright red
           | for an hour? At least as an option? I just tried playing with
           | the CSS and flagging/unflagging your post, and setting
           | [unflag] to color:red;font-weight:bold makes a real
           | difference without being obnoxious.
        
             | kelnos wrote:
             | Another option would be to add more statuses. When a
             | comment gets enough flags, it gets "[flagged]" added to the
             | top of it. Perhaps something like "[you flagged]" could
             | help.
        
               | nmstoker wrote:
               | I suppose you could change further aspects of the current
               | behaviour, but the issue with that idea is that the
               | flagged items disappear currently, so you wouldn't get to
               | see the "[you flagged]" entry, unless you got to the
               | comments page for it via some other means (eg jumping to
               | it from your browser history)
        
           | codetrotter wrote:
           | I intentionally flag posts sometimes.
           | 
           | I think a free-form text input for reason would be nice. No
           | one even has to read the reason most of the time.
           | 
           | Providing a reason for flagging serves multiple purposes:
           | 
           | - makes it so that you don't accidentally flag something when
           | you don't mean to
           | 
           | - discourages overly aggressive flagging
           | 
           | - in some cases the reason for flagging might be more subtle.
           | So casual review of flagged posts by mods might miss the
           | subtle reason it is being flagged by people. If we explicitly
           | state the reason, it can help mods see why a post is being
           | flagged by people in such situations
        
           | toomuchtodo wrote:
           | I would like the ability to disable flagging for my account.
           | Too easy to accidentally flag when scrolling. Or perhaps only
           | offer flagging when you're on a thread or viewing an
           | individual comment.
        
         | cube2222 wrote:
         | I occasionally accidentally flag and unflag... I didn't expect
         | to find 30 accidental flags there.
         | 
         | I think it'd be great for the flag button to show a
         | confirmation popup before actually flagging.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | I checked again and have a bunch of flagged submissions, mostly
         | deliberate, but there were certainly some accidental ones in
         | there. Great feature indeed.
        
       | ratg13 wrote:
       | Tangentially related .. can we bring back average karma score or
       | whatever it was?
       | 
       | I really felt like it was a good tool to help curb people from
       | posting useless throwaway comments.
       | 
       | Anyone know why this was removed?
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | Wow, looks like I flagged several posts ver the years, 100% by
       | accident.
        
       | dragontamer wrote:
       | I just checked my flags.
       | 
       | Everything earlier than 2017 or so was straight up a mistake. I
       | didn't know what "flag" did, so I must have clicked it to
       | experiment back then and just never realized I kept the flag this
       | whole time. I just undid those flags.
       | 
       | There were 3 or 4 submissions I actually flagged for real that
       | I'll keep the flag on. A bunch of comments that I've flagged.
       | 
       | ----------
       | 
       | This seems like a good feature, in practice, I seem to have a
       | fair number of mistaken flags (albeit from earlier before I knew
       | what the feature did). But even today I've got a few misclicks,
       | perfectly normal topics I must have accidentally hit the "flag"
       | button on that I really shouldn't have.
        
       | pmontra wrote:
       | I'd like a setting to disable flagging. I saw that I accidentally
       | flagged some submissions and unflagged then now. I probably
       | upvoted many of them and flagged them instead of tapping the link
       | on my phone.
       | 
       | I'm always surprised when I see some submission flagged on
       | purpose by others. They are often interesting stuff. I upvoted
       | and commented some of them.
        
       | johtso wrote:
       | All 10 on my flagged posts were accidents. Think this probably
       | highlights a UX issue and the need for an "are you sure?" popup.
        
         | kelnos wrote:
         | I think a popup would be annoying and get in the way. A better
         | option might be to highlight in some way (perhaps via a change
         | in text color) items that you have flagged, so you can easily
         | see that you may have made a mistake.
        
         | komadori wrote:
         | Ditto I have accidently flagged 12 submissions without noticing
         | (but no comments). This is in addition to the many times where
         | I've noticed an accidental flagging and immediately unflagged
         | it. In my case, it's entirely a consequence of reading HN on a
         | phone.
        
       | rmellow wrote:
       | On mobile it's too easy to accidentally click Flag.
       | 
       | I checked my profile and noticed a handful of accidental Flags
       | this year alone.
       | 
       | Perhaps a confirmation dialog would solve it.
        
       | ed25519FUUU wrote:
       | Wow great feature. Apparently I accidentally hit the "flag"
       | button all of the time because every one of my flagged posts was
       | an accident. Now I get to go through and unflag them all. Sorry
       | about that whoever made the post!
        
       | amccloud wrote:
       | Thanks for the tip. Every flag for me was accidental.
        
       | lumpa wrote:
       | Nice to see it added, quite a lot of people found out they had
       | fat finger flagged some content when I told HN about these (then)
       | hidden pages: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253799
       | 
       | Edit: as stated in that post, you can also see your vouched items
       | by accessing https://news.ycombinator.com/vouched
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | wodenokoto wrote:
       | Apparently I've flagged about 100 submissions since 2015, and I'd
       | wager none were intentional.
       | 
       | Apologies to posters that didn't get the complete chance their
       | submissions deserved.
        
       | eimrine wrote:
       | Sometimes my comments get flagged, that is always a good lesson
       | on what is possible to say in some abroad communities. In some
       | areas of possible opinions I do not even receive a single
       | downvote, but a flag and it is always instant. I have no opinion
       | about the topic, just a little observation.
        
       | howard941 wrote:
       | Happy to see the link to Hiddens. Sometimes I hide the wrong one
       | and there was no way out.
        
       | skilled wrote:
       | I have like 200+ flags and every single one has been intentional.
       | I am not sure the accidental excuse applies here. You either flag
       | something or you don't.
        
         | scandox wrote:
         | It's not an excuse. It's a fact. Just read this thread.
         | Thousands of flags of totally innocuous material by accident by
         | scores of users. Including myself. Or maybe you think I
         | subliminally love flagging articles concerning improvements to
         | the Python programming language...Which would be worrying.
        
         | antoineMoPa wrote:
         | It's surprisingly easy to flag something by mistake while
         | scrolling & browsing HN on iphone.
        
           | Jtsummers wrote:
           | Probably on Android as well. The "flag" link is right under
           | my thumb as I scroll through the page.
        
         | yongjik wrote:
         | I flagged the parent. Yes, intentionally.
        
       | LinuxBender wrote:
       | _When were flagged submissions /comments added to the profile
       | page?_
       | 
       | Not sure but here [1] are some of the other URL's on HN one could
       | bookmark.
       | 
       | [1] - https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-
       | undocumented#public... [not my repo]
        
       | johnchristopher wrote:
       | Jeez, I knew I sometimes misclicked but I have to do something
       | about it.
        
       | IAmLiterallyAB wrote:
       | I had 10, all of which were accidental. It's so easy to
       | accidentally hit flag with this UI
        
       | mistrial9 wrote:
       | the list clearly includes actions from long ago, so this data was
       | recorded, just not visible to the account holder
       | 
       | in that sense, it is somehow a benefit, to see more of what is
       | tracked behind the scenes. It seems obvious that these simple
       | values are easily used make profiles of profiles, in aggregate.
        
       | code_duck wrote:
       | Glad to hear I wasn't the only one accidentally flagging
       | submissions! I had about 20 on my list going back to 2011 and
       | only 1-2 were legitimately flag-worthy. Far fewer comments, only
       | 4, and of those only 1 was by error. However my account can still
       | flag submissions, but I noticed recently I don't have the ability
       | to flag comments for whatever reason.
        
       | mschuster91 wrote:
       | Gotta be in the last 14 days. Wonder what the use is though, when
       | looking at my reports I see a couple spam flags and a dozen
       | utterly vile and down-greyed comments. Not sure why anyone would
       | want to see what they have reported...
        
         | Kiro wrote:
         | I often accidentally flag something (on mobile) and this helps
         | me undo that.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | idlewords wrote:
       | Flag 'em all; let dang sort them out.
        
       | phkahler wrote:
       | I had no idea I ever flagged a submission.
        
       | faizshah wrote:
       | @dang can we add more friction to the flag thing? Maybe just a
       | yes/no after.
        
       | O1111OOO wrote:
       | When I saw this post, I thought the new flagging links were added
       | to help track biases from users. For example, there might be
       | users on this platform that will flag anything that might be
       | critical of their fav tech company or political ideology.
       | 
       | I did not expect to see so many comments (nearly all of them, ~2
       | hours into this post) referring to accidental flagging.
       | 
       | Whatever the reasons, I like the new links.
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-09 23:02 UTC)