> 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, not enough to risk your retribution. I value my ability to participate in this community too much to help moderate it under threat of punishment for doing so poorly.

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."

Welcome to human psychology! Yes, people are far more affected by losing something than gaining it or even using it. If you give someone $50 and then take it away, they will generally be very angry even though it's not like they really lost anything. I read a study on it once, but I can't find it now.

> I read a study on it once, but I can't find it now.

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

Did you email HN to ask why the flag button went?

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.

Just to vouch (har!) for the responsiveness of the mod team – I've reached out to them a few times for one thing or another and they've always responded in a prompt and friendly manner that has reinforced my willingness to reach out to them.

Is that flagging on stories or on comments? For example, the flag button on comments only appears when you're on the comment's page, for example, I can see it right now, but when I was reading your comment, no flag button.

To prevent abusive flagging by making it too easy to flag comments, the 'flag' link on comments only appears when you're on the /item?id=... page of the comment, or the /reply?id=... page.

Ah thanks I forgot about the reply page, kind of silly given I was writing a reply... I like it as a feature, personally.

Don't feel too silly; I regularly lose my sunglasses when I'm wearing them. It's even worse when they're perched on top of my head. ;)

I don't remember ever seeing a flag link.. so have never downvoted.

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 flag link is visible if you reply to a post or click on its timestamp.

The flag link for comments is a little hard to find if you don't already know where it is. If you don't flag things, there's no way your flag privileges could be taken away.

> My flag link disappeared one day without notice or explanation, and stayed disappeared for a year or so.

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.

Oh hey, my flag button is back! It had been gone so long I stopped looking for it.

I don't entirely understand the logic here, you're afraid your ability to use X will be taken away, so you choose not to use X altogether? Isn't that sort of self-defeating?

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.

> silently shadowbanned for something

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

I would really love the world to have this feature, when all of these egomaniac trolls out there would have a invisible gag, shielding me from them.

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

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