Actually that's precisely what flagging is for - getting a human moderator to look at the story and decide whether it is worthwhile. Information transmission and copying are easy, filtering and management are hard. There are a billion things going on in the world right now. What interesting stories didn't get HN exposure because someone else seized the moment for 15 minutes of twitter-fame?
Actually that's precisely what flagging is for - getting a human moderator to look at the story
Do you know that is what happens? Because I don't think it does. I imagine an algorithm is applied that weighs votes/views against flags and acts accordingly- I haven't seen anything suggesting that a human moderator is involved here.
I know for a fact that duplicate comments, hellbanned accounts, and banned domain names are automatically killed on submission. I'm pretty sure I've seen comments after a popular story being killed where a moderator is saying why they killed it. Whether the algorithmic methods apply to popular stories I've no idea, but front-page killings aren't frequent enough that an automated method would be desirable. I also figure there are a bunch of early-YC users with adminlike powers. Once you have a financial partnership with someone, trusting them with elevated privileges on a tangential news board is small change (for example, YC startups can post clearly unreviewed job ads).
I don't doubt that yc.starups can post job ads without a middleman. But what about the content makes it clear they were not reviewed? Profanity? Nudity? Ugly kitten clip art?
What are the tell tale refinements that demonstrate a job ads has been reviewed?
Maybe around several months ago there were a few right in a row that were clearly written without thought to how they'd be perceived (sorry, I don't remember actual details and it doesn't look like they're archived). Nothing outright offensive, just immature sounding. Think 'brogrammer' but less deliberate.
There are sites that are automagically banned by software and those are made Dead as soon as they are submitted. And the HN community itself does a very good job of selecting what's worthwhile by UP voting -- not by flagging.
Edited this post after I learned Mindsight has actually been here twice as long as I have! Oops.
