In a real tug-of-war, the teams are balanced. In the HN tug-of-war, flaggers have an advantage because flagged posts are invisible to people who might otherwise upvote them.

Perhaps, but the system has been so stable for so many years that I think it's balanced enough in practice.

We aren't opposed to tweaking and testing it, but the tweaks would need to be small.

The power of local equilibrium

I'd hazard that someone is waiting-not-waiting, like Smaug, for a systems quant (bonus: lisper) to enter the cave to do equilibrium teleportation experiments on votes and flags

(I am secretly hoping that this is a silent-smoke-out-of-ears --and not self-extinguishing-- comment)

Almost any moderation system working under consistent rules will be stable, because the people and topics disadvantaged by the moderation will simply leave your platform.

Many protest that they are disadvantaged while continuing to participate.

All that would be needed is a properly sized delay to the post going dark.

A couple hours at least, would be my guess.

That, and flags have more weight than upvotes.

How does a vouch differ from an upvote in this context?

What's the reasoning for not having a vouch feature for stories like comments?

Vouching works the same way on stories and comments.