dang, one other option (in addition to/instead of a confirmation):
Simply remove the link from the listing. This may work out better, anyway, to add at least one more click of friction to flagging (e.g. for people that may just flippantly/habitually flag stuff based on title alone).
This would also probably remove 99% of the accidental flags, since I’m guessing most happen from the listing vs. the thread.
All my flagged are by mistake. This is a UI issue for mobile. Flag and hide really should not be put next to discuss on the equal footing on the front page (the usage ratio should be more than 10x). I use discuss many times a day but never hide or flag. Maybe it is better to only show these on the discussion page (better for more thoughtful actions too, less incentive to flag without even having a chance of glancing the discussion).
I just checked and every one of mine are by mistake. Small suggestion for @dang and the dev team but you could put the flag behind a `confirm(...)`, it would be an extra click but would prevent posts from being erroneously flagged.
I have this site set to 125% on tablet, and I still misclick on shit all the fucking time. I only don’t bitch about it because Reddit is even worse.
24 pixels. Thats the minimum affordance suggestion by W3c (and it probably should be 32px IMO) for a click target on mobile if you don’t want to be the asshole. You make the padding clickable if the target is smaller than that.
> Undersized targets (those less than 24 by 24 CSS pixels) are positioned so that if a 24 CSS pixel diameter circle is centered on the bounding box of each, the circles do not intersect another target or the circle for another undersized target;
Also: the meaning of ”flag” isn’t obvious to me as non native (could this be for bookmarking a thread?) so a confirmation dialog explaining what it means could also ve helpful.
Not important, but to whoever maintains this site, on mobile, on the front page of HN, the text goes right to the edge of the screen if the word break does not occur. A few px of padding would be nice!
Same for me. I very rarely flag and I never thought I flagged accidentally but apparently I did in about two thirds of flagged submissions.
I am also never sure if I downvoted by accident or if downvotes are a thing here at all. Sometimes I see up and down arrows, but they are dangerously close on mobile and no matter where I touch they feel
like one button anyway. I also could not find a way to see my downvotes, so I am not sure if downvoting is even possible.
EDIT: The up/down arrows work. If I touch the lower half the arrows disappear both and the comment does not appear in my upvoted list. I do get the option to "undown" however (as opposed to the usual "unvote").
My attempts hacking the upvoted comment list URL to find a downvoted list were not successful.
Sorry to parent comment, you were my guinea pig. I restored the upvote, hope the temporary downvote does not hurt.
Yeah. I had probably around 70 flagged submissions, and maybe 5 or 6 of them were on purpose. I read HN on mobile a lot, and didn't even notice that I accidentally flag things (although I know I accidentally hide things all the time, so it's not a surprise)
Same here. Many use it as a mega downvote button to kill stories they don’t like.
Some dupe posts I flagged are missing last time I looked at it. Possibly working as intended. Comments from another section are missing from my account that I had wanted to save criticizing the moderating down-weight system too.
I wish there was a way to manually enable more friction for flagging. When I use the site on mobile I find it very easy to accidentally flag when I am trying to hide a post, a setting to enable a confirmation window would be quite useful to help prevent this.
I liked Slashdot's old moderation system, where you had a drop-down, and you at least had to choose from a few preset "reasons" for your moderation action. It's not perfect, but it might at least cause a few people to pause and reflect on why they feel such a strong urge to get rid of that headline.
For HN, you could map the drop-down contents directly to submission guidelines:
Like others in the thread, the first time I looked at my list of flagged submissions, there were 20+ just random things on there that I had obviously just fat-fingered on mobile.
I'm always accidentally hiding things while scrolling, which I only notice when I see something vanish with no obvious way to bring it back. Who knows how many other things I've done by accident that don't have obvious visual cues. Likewise, I'm always fat-fingering downvote when I mean to upvote, but at least nowadays there's an indicator of what you've done and a way to undo your vote (for a long time, there wasn't!).
This and voting up/down are a pain on the mobile UI. It's too easy to downvote instead of upvote, or flag something without even noticing in this case. (I just found two perfectly normal posts I've flagged)
I think the main reason is the Web1.0 design of HN doesn't translate well to small screens.
I opened that page expecting maybe one or two accidental flags, since I thought myself to be quiet careful when looking at hn on mobile. Instead, it's more like 70% for me. I'll now try to make it a habit to check this page quite often, but this is just fighting the symptoms. I believe a confirmation popup or something similar would help a lot more.
The flag button sits right in the zone I swipe with my right thumb on mobile. Occasionally I notice and go unflag something. Clicking through this, I found several pages of posts I’ve flagged. I’d guess I’ve done no more than five posts intentionally. The rest were just the big dumb thumbs.
I wholeheartedly agree with the recommendation to add a confirmation to the action.
It seems I have flagged quite a few things while dozing off to sleep reading HN in bed. Would these more impactful actions be better served with a confirmation? Even a prompt would do
Folks with trouble hitting the little links and arrows on mobile: reverse-pinch to zoom works great on HN. Make the arrows huge on the screen and it’s easy to hit the one you want.
I can see dozens, maybe hundreds,q of submissions that were all flagged accidentally. I wish Hacker News paid a minimum of attention to UX on small touchscreens.
Any type of "wrong think" on my account gets flagged these days, makes commenting on debates pointless. I said this about SpaceX vs Nasa and my comment got flagged:
"SpaceX has shown us that private enterprise is the way. Giant decades long projects are slow, stifled by bureaucracy, and less effective."
This was in a political post about Nasa gets their budget cut, a political position I support with the above rational.
This is a big problem with the flag system - it constantly gets abused as a "I hate this person's opinion" button. It's very common to see comments flagged to death simply because they expressed an unpopular opinion (especially about politics), even though the comments are perfectly polite and on-topic for the thread. I keep show dead on and vouch for comments when I see they have been shouted down in this way, but unfortunately the user behavior is deeply ingrained and unlikely to go away.
I notice downvote button isn’t always available on some of the debate-y threads. Sometimes the reply button isn’t available for some time too. I assume high response velocity is more so enabling arguements to take place, like happens on Reddit more commonly. Anyways, I wonder if you’re being flagged in absence of a downvote function/button being available.
There has been a lot of flagging lately. Of my recent submissions there are a couple expected flags (subjects that tend to descend into uncivilised discussions - Musk, DOGE, Tesla), but also some very harmless ones as well (one about Apple’s Severance online series-related goodies).
I keep accidentally tapping "flag". This is a good reminder but I do occasionally go back and unflag them. My bigger concern is that the act of flagging does something that's not just being flagged.
If I flag a comment (or submission), does that immediately flag it for everyone, or must it reach some threshold of flags before that happens? I’ve always assumed the latter.
Nevertheless, flagging is a tool I make sure to use only if a comment is a personal attack against someone, or a story (in the New view) whose content doesn’t match its headline. For most other scenarios, either moving on and ignoring it or perhaps downvoting it is enough.
[+] [-] dang|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jader201|1 year ago|reply
Simply remove the link from the listing. This may work out better, anyway, to add at least one more click of friction to flagging (e.g. for people that may just flippantly/habitually flag stuff based on title alone).
This would also probably remove 99% of the accidental flags, since I’m guessing most happen from the listing vs. the thread.
And it would be easier! :)
[+] [-] lzlarryli|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] _fat_santa|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|1 year ago|reply
24 pixels. Thats the minimum affordance suggestion by W3c (and it probably should be 32px IMO) for a click target on mobile if you don’t want to be the asshole. You make the padding clickable if the target is smaller than that.
> Undersized targets (those less than 24 by 24 CSS pixels) are positioned so that if a 24 CSS pixel diameter circle is centered on the bounding box of each, the circles do not intersect another target or the circle for another undersized target;
[+] [-] savolai|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] TriangleEdge|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] weinzierl|1 year ago|reply
I am also never sure if I downvoted by accident or if downvotes are a thing here at all. Sometimes I see up and down arrows, but they are dangerously close on mobile and no matter where I touch they feel like one button anyway. I also could not find a way to see my downvotes, so I am not sure if downvoting is even possible.
EDIT: The up/down arrows work. If I touch the lower half the arrows disappear both and the comment does not appear in my upvoted list. I do get the option to "undown" however (as opposed to the usual "unvote").
My attempts hacking the upvoted comment list URL to find a downvoted list were not successful.
Sorry to parent comment, you were my guinea pig. I restored the upvote, hope the temporary downvote does not hurt.
[+] [-] rstuart4133|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] NobodyNada|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jjcc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] instagib|1 year ago|reply
Some dupe posts I flagged are missing last time I looked at it. Possibly working as intended. Comments from another section are missing from my account that I had wanted to save criticizing the moderating down-weight system too.
[+] [-] TheFreim|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|1 year ago|reply
For HN, you could map the drop-down contents directly to submission guidelines:
- Poor/incorrect title
- Non-original source
- Promotion/spam
- ...
[+] [-] k1t|1 year ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40958364
Like others in the thread, the first time I looked at my list of flagged submissions, there were 20+ just random things on there that I had obviously just fat-fingered on mobile.
[+] [-] oezi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nh2|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kibwen|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aranelsurion|1 year ago|reply
I think the main reason is the Web1.0 design of HN doesn't translate well to small screens.
[+] [-] crazygringo|1 year ago|reply
Definitely feels like there ought to be some kind of confirmation required.
Especially when it only takes, what, 2 flags for something to be killed? (Or is it more, or does it depend on votes?)
[+] [-] fnordian_slip|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] matsemann|1 year ago|reply
Feels like that's being gamed at the moment, certain topics are killed instantly.
[+] [-] clcaev|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cjcampbell|1 year ago|reply
I wholeheartedly agree with the recommendation to add a confirmation to the action.
[+] [-] lucasyvas|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] r721|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kogens|1 year ago|reply
(I literally just accidentally pressed hide on a post and was wondering how to un-hide it when I saw this post, nice coincidence!)
[+] [-] deanc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwrestler|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] matsemann|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Flimm|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sanbor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] EcommerceFlow|1 year ago|reply
"SpaceX has shown us that private enterprise is the way. Giant decades long projects are slow, stifled by bureaucracy, and less effective."
This was in a political post about Nasa gets their budget cut, a political position I support with the above rational.
[+] [-] bigstrat2003|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] conductr|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Beestie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Neywiny|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] therealdrag0|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jv22222|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DanAtC|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] filoeleven|1 year ago|reply
Nevertheless, flagging is a tool I make sure to use only if a comment is a personal attack against someone, or a story (in the New view) whose content doesn’t match its headline. For most other scenarios, either moving on and ignoring it or perhaps downvoting it is enough.