Confused by "Approve" and "Reject" in the review queue

Product Support

AI-generated summary

Several users are expressing confusion over the “Approve” and “Reject” buttons in the review queue, particularly when dealing with flagged users and posts. tobiaseigen suggests including text or mouseover helper text to clarify the meanings of these buttons, which can be counterintuitive.

david agrees with the suggestion and notes that the dropdown descriptions that appear after clicking the “Agree” or “Delete” buttons are helpful, but not present for the “Disagree” or “Ignore” buttons.

eviltrout proposes changing the button labels to “Grant Access” and “Delete User…” to make their functions clearer. This change has been implemented, and tobiaseigen and others have responded positively to the change.

However, some users are still experiencing confusion, particularly with the “Agree” and “Disagree” buttons when reviewing flagged topics. John_Lehmann notes that the actions taken after clicking these buttons are not always clear, and it can be difficult to reverse a decision.

bartv suggests using more descriptive button labels, such as “Keep” and “Delete”, to reduce confusion. stephomi agrees with this suggestion.

bartv also shares a CSS code to highlight “destructive” buttons, which can help draw attention to potentially irreversible actions. merefield suggests putting this code into the core and submitting a PR.

Overall, the discussion highlights the need for clearer button labels and more intuitive interfaces in the review queue to reduce user confusion.

1

Continuing the discussion from Feedback on the new Review Queue:

Am I the only person who often gets confused by the “Approve” and “Reject” buttons in the review queue? I do not get alot of flagged users and posts in my community, thank goodness, but that means that I am a bit unfamiliar with the flagging system and terminology as it was in the past and still today don’t have to interact with it very often. I also am a self-diagnosed slysdexic, for sure. As a result,when on that interface my mouse cursor or finger often hovers indecisively over the two buttons not being sure which one to choose.

I have to remember to tell myself the buttons mean:

  • Approve (keep flagged user or post)
  • Reject (delete user or post)

The buttons do NOT mean:

  • Approve (delete user or post)
  • Reject (keep user or post)

In case I am not alone in my confusion here, I’d suggest including text like the above on the button itself or at least in mouseover helper text. Perhaps there could even be a short para somewhere on the review queue page explaining how to use it, or a link to a guide here on meta that explains how moderators are expected to use the review queue.

2

I would put myself in the same group here. I don’t regularly interact with the flagging system, so it feels a little unfamiliar. It isn’t 100% clear what the buttons will do when you click them.

Once you click on the Agree or Delete buttons, you do get some more detailed descriptions of what will happen.

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I like this idea for the disagree/ignore buttons, which do not have a dropdown.

3

And to make matters worse, the icons mean different things in different contexts. I’ve been bitten by this before:

4

Thanks, David! I like that dropdown very much.

I guess I am looking mostly at flagged users. In this case you hit APPROVE or REJECT and the user is just instantly approved or deleted, apparently. There is no drop down, and I also wonder what’s actually happened.

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If I hit REJECT, does it just delete the user or does it also block the email and IP as I can choose on the user admin screen?

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5

I feel like the drop down on flags is fairly clear (although if anyone has a suggestion for making them more clear I would be interested in hearing what you have to say.)

For reviewing users, I’m wondering if it makes sense to change from:

:+1: Approve :-1: Reject

To:

:heavy_check_mark: Grant Access :x: Delete User…

Where Delete User would pop up to say “Delete the User” and “Delete and block”

Would that be more clear?

6

Thanks, Robin! Glad to know I am not going crazy on my own and that you think changing this is a good idea.

Your new labels look good to me and are much more clear. I am also looking forward to the popup to delete the user or delete and block. :rocket:

One note - we still have “Approved” and “approved by..” in various places in the UX, like on the user admin settings. Maybe you want to make the connection clearer?

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7

That’s a good point. I think we have to keep the word “Approve” to make sense with other terminology. Here’s what I went with:

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https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/14f9d40e486c39e74abfacdebbda86db1a8afd70

8

Sweet! I just tried this to delete some spam users and it’s super clear and easy. Man, this is light years better than what we had before.

Thank you again for taking on this mondo project and always looking out for us. :rocket:

9

I just dealt with a flagged topic, and was confused again by what to select in this interface. There is no indication before clicking what will happen, and I was not sure what to select.

When I selected APPROVE (or was it AGREE? I forget) it showed a pulldown that seemed to indicate I was agreeing it is spam and should be hidden. I then selected the other one (DISAGREE?), and it took action right away without a pulldown. The post was no longer flagged and was active in the forum. As it turns out that is the action I wanted, and I then made it into a PM and discussed it with the poster.

10

I have to agree (no pun intended) with this topic. Agree/Disagree confuses me when I occasionally do a review. I just disagreed and am not really sure what happened. Now that post is under “rejected” and I don’t really know what that means either (in both cases, is the question about the post or the flagging itself? Disagree → Rejected makes it sound like the post was removed).

To add to my confusion, I feel that I may have removed this post which I didn’t want to do, and I can find it under the “rejected” search. But I don’t see a way to revert my decision. Also it says post removed by author, so I don’t know if that was a result of my action or something they did independently. Maybe they actually did that after it was initially flagged, and that’s why I have no way to restore it. But if so why was I being asked to review it in the first place.

Trying to wade through this makes me feel like a dumb user, and although I know I could figure this out I also know this is usually a smell of user experience that needs a rethink. At least that’s how I approach the “dumb users” on my site.

11

+1 from me. The whole agree/reject/:+1:/:-1: feels inconsistent to me and really forces me to carefully read both the flag reason and the action. As an extreme example, I’d much prefer a green and a red button for ‘keep this post’ and ‘nuke this post’. Regardless of the flagging reason, this would immediately tell me what will happen when I click a button.

12

I don’t receive lot of flagged user/posts but I’m always confused as well.

Avoiding the “agree”/“reject” words and simply states the action (keep/delete) might be better as @bartv suggested.

13

Hey Stéphane, nice to see you here!

I added this CSS to highlight ‘destructive’ buttons - it helps a little.

button.reject-post,
button.confirm-spam,
button[data-name="Delete..."],
button[data-name="Delete User..."],
button[data-name="Agree..."], {
	color: #fff;
	background: #e86800;

	.d-icon {
		color: #ffe8d5;
	}
}

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14

Excellent idea! To this day, this still confuses me (I understand the challenge though). We should put this in core? Submit a PR? :wink:

It reminds me of some mute buttons on video conferencing. Does the mute button icon reflect the status of mute or should it show the action of pressing the button?! :confused: I’ll get my :lab_coat: …

15

Slightly off-topic: I also never understood what ‘Ignore’ means. Some of my moderators thought it would remove the flag from their queue but keep it for other moderators, but no.