My flag link disappeared one day without notice or explanation, and stayed disappeared for a year or so. I continue to fear using the flag link, even when I think something should be flagged. There's no chance I'm going to vouch for something other people have flagged: I'd never have enough certainty that I'm more right than they are in your eyes. I value my ability to participate in this community too much to help moderate it under threat of punishment for doing so poorly.

Re: the replies below, the worst that can happen is not losing the vouch button, it's being silently shadowbanned for something else, when that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't put yourself on the admin's vouch review list for extra scrutiny. I already fear that happening any time I participate in one of those "what are you working on / what are your side projects" threads and include a link to my site.

This is confusing to me. Unless there's something nobody told me (always possible!) the only "punishment" they'd institute would be removing your vouching privileges. Not making use of the vouch feature out of fear you won't be able to use that feature seems entirely paradoxical. It's similarly paradoxical to say "I value my ability to participate too much to actually participate" unless I've simply missed some part where they say "we'll take away your submitting/commenting ability."

You mean you had it once, but now you lost it?

EDIT (after downvotes): Because the mod team is responsive to discussion, and they would probably have let you know how you'd tripped the filter, and would possibly have reset it for you.

But I do upvote stuff I like and especially stuff I think is being censored by group think... so that could explain why my flag priviliges where never given or taken away before I could notice it..

The system does screw up sometimes. For about six months I couldn't submit articles without running into a "You are submitting too fast--slow down!" message. I don't submit all that often, so it took me a while to realize that it wasn't just responding to multiple recent comment posts and that something was wrong, but when I finally did email support, they said that my account had been flagged by mistake and fixed it promptly.

Is it more of a concern about not being able to flag something when you feel very strongly it should be, the avoidance of feeling reprimanded by a community you care about, or something I haven't thought of?

Edit: At the heart of it my question is essentially the same as masterzora's. Perhaps I phrased it poorly? I don't mean to be dismissive or rude, I'm just trying to understand the psychology behind this.

This "feature" needs to crawl into a hole and die anyway.

Sarcasm? Irony? Or am I really thinking like that?

Depends on my mood and the experiences I had that day with people. ;-)

Editorial independence is a big vote of confidence; they don't toss that set of keys to just any old schmuck.

And will YC companies still get what appears to be preferential placement ("appears to be") for stories? [1] Some "more equal" than others?

If this is true independence then those benefits would be extended and/or eliminated.

[1] Or do stories about YC companies simple get more upvotes because of the balance in the community here toward people working at YC companies?

If you want to make claims about preferential placement (and yes I realize you're just saying "appears", but still, people are quick to believe these things), I'd appreciate concrete links so we can look into them. We try hard to be even-handed and when there are marginal calls, err on the side of not playing favorites.

YC founders and current/former employees are a large and valued part of this community, stories about YC startups often are interesting (by HN's definition), and lots of HN users like to follow them in particular, so of course you'll still see plenty of YC-related stories on the front page. It would be weird not to. Of course those stories are subject to upvoting and flagging as much as the others are.

But I agree, this is a huge vote of confidence

Do you think we could maybe work towards removing hellbanning/shadowbanning of site features for non-spam users at some point?

That's a little uncharitable, considering this feature is acknowledging that the moderators can make mistakes.

Best wishes.

It seems to me the whole point of the vouch features is to have an easier recourse for other commenters to respond to people being shadowbanned (or otherwise dead for mistaken reasons, like tripping a filter or unfairly flagged by other users), rather than actually having to find the mod email and send an out of band message.

That said, Dan Gackle (pronounced Gackley, like the town in North Dakota: http://www.gacklenorthdakota.com/) should consider adding his full name to his HN profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang

And much as I like the opacity of the Bruno Schulz quote, it probably would be a good idea for him to also mention there that he is the moderator of the site, and thus the likely recipient of those questions emailed to [email protected].

Once the [mod] tag is invoked the communication is to some extent out of band and fully public. It's a potential gasoline pour.

For example, in the past dang has posted some really interesting content, but that should not be distinguished with a [mod] tag. Similarly interesting but non-moderator comments should not be distinguished.

I think a "mod" tag makes sense.

I have mentioned that also in the past as I am sure others have.

Likewise for sama, for pg, for that matter anyone else that is involved in HN or YC. (Some do of course but for the life of me I don't know why sama and pg do not). All not listing info like this does is simply enforce some secret society of HN. Which is funny given how many comments seem to rally against things like that. It's like "let's shun the newbies and put them at a disadvantage vs. established people who know the ropes and the players..". "Isn't it funny when a newbie doesn't know they are speaking to Sam Altman in their reply haha.

I don't think the way it is handled is perfect or ideal, but community is a hard problem.

https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hac...