It's funny... I hadn't realized the extent to which my subconscious was trained to scan down the right-hand side of the links, evaluating the "X comments" display and using it as a guide for what to click on.

When I hit the homepage I got this sudden feeling of wrongness in my stomach, like vertigo. Only then did I consciously see the new "flag" links.

So, yeah, I also vote to move the flag links to the left.

(This reminds me of Teresa Nielsen Hayden's stories about the superhumanly-talented copy editors who perceive typos as literally jumping out of the page, or blinking, or who feel physical pain at the sight of misspelled words.)

I agree with this. At the moment the "flag" link, which you want to use very rarely, is more prominent than the "comments" link, which you want to use often. Maybe changing the colours to make "comments" dark and "flag" light might work as well.

Yes, but what is considered kosher to report?

1. Blatant machine-generated spam?

2. Really nasty stuff? (child porn, incitement to violence)

3. Slightly nasty stuff? (ordinary porn, Rick Astley)

4. Slightly spammy stuff? (unjustifiable advertising-like links?)

5. Comments which are insulting or nasty?

6. Comments which are just plain stupid?

7. Comments which only slightly stupid?

8. Things which you think are "not appropriate for HN"?

9. Other categories of stuff you don't want to see?

update: Never mind, answered by pg elsewhere.

Agreed that right now its positioning is too prominent: at the row-end it's easier to see and click than other more frequently-used links. The problem is especially evident on the front page: it was rare for spam to reach there, but now it's harder to visually target every 'comments' link.

Moving 'flag' leftward on the line would help a bit. Making it only appear on the clikthrough page for an individual story or comment would help a lot -- requiring an extra click to flag something but not imposing clutter on all good contributions.

At some point anti-crime measures themselves become a community bummer. 'Flag' links everywhere are a little like walking through a neighborhood where all the windows/doorways are protected by metal bars.

What percentage of our attention is soaked up by defense? Over a certain threshold and the spamorrists have "won".