I don't submit my own articles here but always appreciate when they reach the HN audience. I admit I find the system here quite opaque and have a hard time understanding what gets flagged and why. Is it because my articles often explore controversies and might get undue attention over some of the more technical content here? Is there some way I could reach out to someone for more info on why my articles keep getting flagged?
In general, I agree with your complaints about the flagging system on this site. It seems pretty indefensible, to provide no disclosure at all about who the judges (admins) are, and to require no public explanation of judgements.
They often hide behind "users flagged it". How many users? Which users? Perhaps user flags should not be anonymous, perhaps even require a user to publicly state why they flagged it.
We wouldn't allow that in our court system in the real world, why allow that in this impactful online forum?
My older articles didn't get flagged and were often quite successful on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=tracingwoodgrains.med... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32898573
I don't submit my own articles here but always appreciate when they reach the HN audience. I admit I find the system here quite opaque and have a hard time understanding what gets flagged and why. Is it because my articles often explore controversies and might get undue attention over some of the more technical content here? Is there some way I could reach out to someone for more info on why my articles keep getting flagged?