Well, I am sorry if you misunderstood what I am talking about... maybe because I did not tell the whole story.
I lost more than 7 points of karma in 20 minutes!
All of that because I commented on that story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516027
And I was telling users NOT to flag that story, because those people are in trouble, and we should help them. So everyone down-voted that comment, and when I deleted it, it looks like they wanted to continue down-voting my other comments!
I always had serious doubts that Google is going to track users in such a way, as Google is always looking for a way to collect users' info - Look at Youtube and all of other Google's acquisitions!
Specially after their acquisition of Urchin - currently known as Google Analytics.
In fact I was asking myself, when Google will use these huge data sets that it has about us?
The interest based advertising is something that I am working on (research), and I am trying to code algorithm that would understand users' interests...
In fact, you can flag comments regardless if you reply to it or not. Once you pass the karma threshold - I think it's 50 - then you can flag any comment.
If you want to flag a comment, you will find beside the comment headline: link
Click on the link link , and you will be moved to another page that you can see the flag link.
Thanks for the tip (no sarcasm intended). That's how I've been flagging the two or three comments I've found inappropriate but it wasn't clear to me at first. On the other hand I can see how keeping the flag link off the main comments page may be desired to prevent mass random flagging.
I lost more than 7 points of karma in 20 minutes! All of that because I commented on that story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516027 And I was telling users NOT to flag that story, because those people are in trouble, and we should help them. So everyone down-voted that comment, and when I deleted it, it looks like they wanted to continue down-voting my other comments!