Staff Review Queue: Turning A Flag To Conversation

[Rubi]

Hi,

I hope I am asking the right question here.

When a user or moderator flags a post it goes to the Review Queue.

If no action is taken then it turns into a conversation, I believe 24 hours later but am not sure of this.

Is there a way to adjust this to make it a conversation at a pre-defined time, say after 3 hours of inactivity/non-interaction with the flag?

I am not talking about spam or system generated flags but specifically when a user or mod flags something.

We are all in different time zones and it would be nice to add comments before taking action.

The screenshot shows what I am trying to convey. That only appears after some time has elapsed. Can we trigger it earlier in settings somewhere?

Or would a custom script or plugin do the job?

Or are we misunderstanding how this functions in the first place?

Thanks in advance,
Rubi

[JammyDodger]

@Rubi

Or are we misunderstanding how this functions in the first place?

The way you’ve described it doesn’t sound like it’s a current feature of the review queue.

You generally see the view full conversation option on flags that also create a PM to the moderators group (the ‘something else’ and ‘illegal’ flag types). Pressing that will take you to the PM itself rather than the reviewable in the queue.

There’s no time delay on when that option becomes visible, it should be there immediately on the flag landing in the queue. And the spam, off-topic, and inappropriate flags don’t have that button at all (as they don’t generate a PM with extra detail in).

Does that match up with what you’re seeing in your Review Queue?

[Rubi]

On closer inspection, yes.

Is there a way to change that behaviour for the other flag types?

[JammyDodger]

For the default ones of spam, off-topic, and inappropriate, I don’t believe it’s possible to edit their behaviour.

Though there is the option to create custom flags where you can set whether they require extra detail (and therefore would create a PM as well as a reviewable in the queue, which would give them the view full conversation button). I think it should then be possible to disable the default ones and replace them with similar custom versions that have the ‘Prompt users to provide additional reasons’ option checked.

You can find the custom flag options under the moderation section of your admin area (/admin/config/flags)

[Moin]

Do you want to reply to the user who flagged the post or do you want a conversation with staff members?

I think usually you use the staff category for the latter. As a workaround you could flag the post as “something else” yourself.
Maybe Review with reason would also help you but I think it only works for comments while you take action

[Rubi]

With staff members.

The issue first came up when one of the mods pointed out that they wanted to comment on a flag without taking action but that the view full conversation option was not there.

I will look into the custom flags option mentioned by @JammyDodger

@Moin

As a workaround you could flag the post as “something else” yourself.

Is it possible to do that after something was already flagged?

[Moin]

@Rubi

Is it possible to do that after something was already flagged?

I think so

There are also some topics about how to discuss flags. For example How can moderators coordinate their efforts? - #4 by Dan_Eastwood
Looks like it’s still on this list of planned features (but I doubt it’s still up to date)

@codinghorror

add a “Discuss” button to all flag handling, so you can create a new staff discussion about the flag as needed

[Rubi]

We created a custom flag that allows for input to create a conversation.

But, there seems to be no option to delete the default flags, only enable or disable. Is this correct?

Trying to understand if these are our only options at this time?

[JammyDodger]

Yes, you can’t delete a flag (even a custom one) once it’s been used as you need the data for historical reasons so it doesn’t break the review queue.

Disabling one will remove it from the flag menu and leave only the enabled ones as ‘live’ flag options for your community to make use of.

Though as you’re looking for an option where staff can discuss flags you may want to consider Moin’s idea. It may suit your site to ask for more details on every flag, but if that’s not the main intention then the flipside to consider is that it adds more effort/friction for the user flagging a post (which may lead to them giving up before reporting something)

[Moin]

@Moin

As a workaround you could flag the post as “something else” yourself.

Maybe a theme component which makes that possible directly from the review queue would be helpful. Something like this:

[Rubi]

Follow-up question:
is there a way to set a custom flag to be only visible for moderators?

The custom flag we created does work but all TL users who are able to flag something can see it.

Not the end of the world if this cannot be changed but just wanted to check.

Thanks.

[JammyDodger]

I think you could likely do this with a little extra CSS in a custom theme component, but I’d need to be on my laptop to check properly. Hopefully someone can jump in with a more specific answer.

Hiding it for non-staff with CSS would be cosmetic, so it could still be revealed by a savvy user piddling about in their browser inspector, etc. But if it’s not personal info or security related then this approach is generally considered to be acceptable.

---

@Rubi I think something like this would do the trick: (though you’d need to put in the correct custom name of your flag rather than custom_inappropriate)

.flag-action-type.custom_inappropriate {
    
    display: none;
}


.staff .flag-action-type.custom_inappropriate {
    
    display: initial;
}

Extra details on how to add it to your site

• Go to /admin/config/customize/components
• Click on install and then create new
• Give it a name, and select ‘component’.
• Create
• Go to Edit and add it to your theme
• Click on the Edit CSS/HTML button and paste the code into the Common tab

And save.