ghjjuo

Why not automatically punish users that abuse flagging to censor stories (e.g. users start with 100%, each flagging that’s removed decrease their flag-weight with 50%, so 3 wrong flags means 100->50->25-12.5%, and similarly, correct flags increase by 50%, and stories where mods haven’t accepted/rejected the flag will have no impact)? This way good actors that flag blog-spam and whatnot will not be impacted, whereas bad actors/nationalists will quickly lose their ability to abuse this moderation/censorship tool (which is clearly being abused to a degree where your manual intervention, if any, doesn’t cut it).

Why even allow flagging to influence a submission’s ranking without mod intervention in the first place? Spammy links won’t reach the frontpage anyway (although they sometimes stay on Show HN for a while, so can make special exceptions for Show/Ask submissions).

And how about if a user flag a post, then you might consider making the post completely inaccessible to said user (and if they posted a comment in the submission then set their flag weight to 0 for said submission)? After all, good actors will have no interest in engaging in the submissions they flagged, whereas bad actors will want to attack the submission from all angles (flag submission, downvote comments, post own comments).