[Zikes]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14693109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14692712

These are entirely reasonable statements, and they're flagged. Not just downvoted, flagged. Censored. Removed from the discussion.

That's my only problem right now. I understand user comment flagging is useful in lieu of moderation, but I'm personally seeing myself silenced persistently in this discussion and it's extremely discouraging.

In at least one instance, I've even been told that directly challenging a sexist call to action is "off-topic" and "insensitive".

This is all happening on an article that is a direct result of sexism being repressed in the industry. Should I just wait a few years for the sexism to fester, then make a blog post of my own once the damage has already been done? Because that seems to be the only acceptable way to express myself here.

[dang]

Ok, I've now had time to look at those comments and they're not 'entirely reasonable'; they contain elements that many people could reasonably object to and indeed flag as inflammatory.

To pick the most obvious, you use the word 'sexism' in a contentious way that is bound to land with many readers as trolling—and you didn't just do that once, you dropped it in numerous times. That's the sort of thing that leads to the feeling that the reasonable aspects of your comment are just a pretext, while the subtext is gratuitous provocation. I don't think you did that on purpose, but your claim that people were flagging 'entirely reasonable' comments arbitrarily is inaccurate. Just to be clear, my point isn't about the correct meaning of 'sexism'—it's that if you throw explosive footballs around, however unintentionally, your comment becomes subject to flagging for the sake of a non-flamewar discussion.

Many commenters are blind to the things in their comments that land objectionably with others. They're much (much!) too quick to conclude that the fault is all on the other side, that my 'entirely reasonable' comment is unjustly suppressed, and so on. If you want to get out of that loop you need to take a deeper, more reflective look at your own expressions. Then you can find ways to express your substantive point of view that aren't accidentally bound up with things that produce troll effects and you can participate in a (hopefully) higher-quality discussion.

As I mentioned upthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14693838) flagging provides an important service by making a distinction between gratuitously provocative comments and the ones that express similar points of view more thoughtfully. The actual effect in the threads is to make substantive discussion between opposing points of view possible, because otherwise the flamebait would be overwhelming. Indeed it has been so impossible in the past that it's rather astonishing to see it beginning to happen, i.e. people beginning to hear each other and offer at least tentative respect across division lines. That would definitely not be happening if the more inflammatory comments weren't being flagged.