Is there a way for flagged posts to be automatically taken down completely from public view if there are a lot of flags or any other settings?
With the current system to hide flagged posts, they are still visible if anyone clicks the “see ignored content” link, so that only really seems to be effective for anyone who just skims over without bothering to investigate why something was flagged.
This might not be too critical at sites where there is active moderation being done, but with some sites with no moderators posts will still exist for all of infinity if there is no administrator or moderator response to the flags.
They are only visible to users, who are author of the post, staff or member of a group, which was allowed through the “hidden posts visible group” setting. You can see it here https://try.discourse.org/t/spam-post-to-flag/1482
Oh good to know, that is a change with the more recent version then looks like.
Had noticed this happen at an older site that must be using a previous version of discourse, flagged posts are still visible to the public not just logged-in users.
That other topic that was linked has been closed, could continue talk from there if anyone wants to talk more about this here is quote of original post:
This isn’t always necessarily true, overall I would say respecting freedom of speech is much more important to most people than for flagged posts to be censored. However it can be important for there to be active leadership in talks and not let things descend into chaos, which usually happens when there is no leadership.
Lastly would say for this flag system could help if there is a setting (if there isn’t already) for posts to be fully removed just initially/temporarily if they are flagged past a certain threshold, until they can be reviewed by mods/admins who can then decide if anything needs to be edited/censored.
If you don’t know which features are already there, you can try to find a (documentation) topic and read about it. Then you can find for example User Reputation and Flag Priorities which explains some settings.
Can specify who can see the hidden posts. From the topic you linked:
I would disagree - from what I’ve seen, most forums prefer to have posts that are against forum rules to be flagged and moderated, as opposed to a free for all of “free speech”.
Well indeed, private communities do have the right to enforce their own rules and policies in addition to public laws.
There is always a cost to speak, or write, even typing comes at a cost of the energy to manually type letters in addition to the cost of what people will think of what has been said or written.
For public realm sites meant to provide opportunity for people to be able to speak and write freely without their words being changed or censored unreasonably is what I was talking about, especially if they are government funded then they represent the tax-payers and therefore must respect their freedom of speech if they are to be considered a lawful branch of government.
I agree with @Lilly here. People can say quite nasty things and claim its freedom of speech
For example… I login to a community to read and contribute about its purpose eg. Meta = Discourse. If people began posting things under the argument ‘freedom of speech’ discussions would derail and quickly become off topic/inappropriate. I’d much rather those posts be moderated.
But ultimately, it all comes down to what the staff allow on a community. When a user creates an account they are agreeing to comply with the sites terms of service, in which somewhere (hopefully) are content guidelines.
You would definitely expect a professional approach if it was a branch of the gov but again my points above stand.
Well that certainly can happen, but I don’t agree that anytime people can speak freely the conversation is always going to go completely off the rails like that. If that does start to happen that can be a good time for there to be some moderating or statements made by leadership in regards to community guidelines.
Marked this topic as solved but there is more that could be talked about.
