I believe that MichaelApproved is reffering to the comments. You cannot flag comments below a certain karma threshold. Actually, I'm not sure if you can flag comments at all? Maybe someone with higher karma could shed some light on this?
Ah yes, I see it now, thank you. I still believe that the 'flag' option should only be used for spam and completely offtopic comments. This is because it 'hurts' more (with regards to your karma) when your comment gets downvoted than when it gets flagged. AFAIK, flagging has no impact on karma, or am I wrong here? So, i see no reason why a person who merely has a different opinion than you should get punished more than the person who is actually breaking HN rules.
The ranking algorithm is much more subtle than simply counting karma. Some votes are worth more than others. The exact mechanism is secret, but I believe upvotes on replies to your own comment are counted differently to other people's votes for example, similarly to how one cannot downvote replies to ones own comments. This may obviously be wrong.
It is very possible that flags are invisibly counted and this also factors into the ranking algorithm.
But.. I wasn't talking about ranking here. I'm aware that flagging a comment probably pushes it further down the thread, but as far as I know, it has no impact on karma, right?
No, not as as far as I know. The reason I was talking about ranking is because that is the only real outcome of karma.
Obviously karma is publicly displayed, but posting just for the dopamine buzz of numbers ticking up should surely be discouraged. That's what WoW is for. Or even better, the gym :)
