Hey, Dan. I'd be really interested if you could share more about the metrics. As the climate of the world around us has changed, I think a lot of us at least feel flagging has become a cudgel used to silence opposition. Me, for criticism of the current administration. Others, for their views on topics like gender.

Maybe we just care more and notice it about that subject now. Maybe it's always been this way. But while you often leave long comments that go into how these systems work and the struggles with trying to adjust them or understand of it's even necessary (good stuff), I would be fascinated to see a blog post or something where you really give us a talking to about the state of the community and anything y'all have been trying on your end.

Just a thought, obviously, you have a whole job moderating already! Have a good day!

Dan and Tom can speak to this, but by my reading of the guidelines, "criticism of the current administration" and "views on topics like gender" are both explicitly prohibited:

"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

It has nothing to do with being on the side of "the opposition" or "the man," it's because those sorts of posts inevitably lead to the same, repetitive, off-topic debates and flame wars.

Flagging should be used as a cudgel against posts that break the rules. There are plenty of places on the internet to debate politics and gender; HN is not one of them.