HACKER Q&A
📣 bnormative

Why is my post flagged?


I submitted a simple ask post, which was not spam or fraudulent.

It was flag within 3 minutes.

Ask HN: Who Is Firing? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41436298

can anyone guess why it was flagged?


  👤 mindcrime Accepted Answer ✓
Flags are submitted on posts by individuals for reasons that are of their own choosing.[1] If enough users flag a story, it goes into the [dead][flagged] state you see. But unless the users who flagged it choose to chime in, there's no real way to be sure why it was flagged.

That said, if I had to guess, I'd say @Udo nailed it. The topic just doesn't seem like something that is going to lead to high-quality and interesting discussion. I mean, I wouldn't have flagged it myself (I'm pretty laissez-faire on that kind of thing) but I can see why others might have.

[1]: within reason. I don't know if it's been explicitly stated or not, but I suspect that if a user kept flagging stories for no good reason, they would lose their ability to flag, or have some other consequences. But that's just a guess, I have no insider knowledge or anything.


👤 Udo
My guess would be that it was flagged because the subject invites unproductive controversy and low quality discussion.

👤 bell-cot
Publicly announcing that someone will be fire is very unprofessional, or an extreme measure. And (IANAL) publicly talking about details is profoundly unwise.

Add things up - your item requesting that people violate a number of social taboos.