I'm really sad this got downvoted off the front page (this article is only one hour old with 9 points, things 3 hours old with 9 points are still on the page). It's cool if not everybody is interested in talking about this, but I feel like the entire point of this article was that making whistle-blowers harder to hear is not good for society.
It didn't get downvoted; medium.com is in a class of websites that get mildly penalized by default pending moderator review. Not a great solution, but the alternative is reams of blogspam and fluff making the front page just because so much of it gets posted. We remove the penalty from solid articles (and typically reset the clock on them to restore a fair time window for upvotes), but it sometimes takes a while before that happens.
In the long run we intend to have the community do most of this, but finding and implementing the right mechanisms for that is a lengthy process.
I appreciate how moderators sometime join in comment threads to explain their approach. HN moderation used to feel like a black box but I find the interaction with the community much better nowadays. Thanks!
"We remove the penalty from solid articles (and typically reset the clock on them to restore a fair time window for upvotes), but it sometimes takes a while before that happens."
Good to see people speaking up with their experiences on this topic, however painful it is - whistleblower is definitely the right word for coming forward about sexual harassment and rape in the workplace.
Re the story dropping down below other stories - it might not be flagging, it seems there are many complex rules all interacting to rank stories so it's hard to know what causes story placement here but it's probably mechanical rather than deliberate. Seems to be moving up again now.
