It seems public topics and private messages are no longer distinguished in the review queue. I believe this used to be the case: didn’t PM’s have a little ‘envelope’ logo before?
We got into some debate as a moderator unknowingly got involved in a PM conversation that was flagged. From a privacy perspective, it would be great if:
PM’s are clearly marked as such.
We could limit moderation of PM’s to admins or specific groups of users/moderators. It is understood that admins can access PM’s, but we feel it would be better if not all moderators have access to them through the review queue.
Flagged PMs are now distinguished using the envelope icon, and only admins can review them. The latter it’s not retroactive and will only affect new reviewables.
I know we’ve gone back and forth on this, but I am still of the opinion that it would be very nice to be able to pin the reviewable filters to a certain custom score, in addition to the low/medium/high. On large forums with a lot of single-flag posts, I’m seeing cases where the “medium” score (50th percentile) is the same as the lowest score, giving rise to situations where the “medium” filter isn’t filtering anything at all.
We can try it first. My concern is that even with a shortened auto handle age, the 50th percentile for medium will still potentially match the lowest scores, if there are enough single-post flags spread out daily to skew calculations.
Our moderators find that the labels on the actions in the review queue are confusing at times. For example, on messages marked as spam, the (a ‘negative’ action in my mind) button will keep a message, while on messages that need approval, the X (also a ‘negative’ action) will destroy the message. We end up with the occasional incorrect action now and then, and sometimes we can’t undo them.
To help ourselves a little we highlighted the ‘dangerous’ actions with a signal color using some CSS. I’ll share our CSS in case other people find it helpful (it’s not rocket science, but ). Enjoy!
I had the same confusion the first time I saw it too, because suspected spam has “approve” mean “reject the automatic flag” — the “” in this case is a it is a little weird, but it might just be something to learn, I can’t think of a better iconography for that case.
I fully agree from a developers perspective. As a moderator though, you sometimes have to work through a LONG list of items and you want to make quick decisions. While the flag-type information is there, they all look really similar and you’re forced to read really well—making it easy to slip up. Adding the color coding was a big help for us.
I agree, I don’t think the issue is the iconography.
Perhaps one small thing we can do is extend it (either on the button labels, or on the label titles) to state more explicitly “disagree with flag/agree with flag/ignore flag” - It might help to dispel any remaining ambiguity.
Yeah, that was my thought as well! I say this as someone who tried to inform themselves on what the buttons were going to do by tooltips/titles (and learn what I was agreeing/disagreeing on), and maybe I’m not alone. There must be dozens of us, DOZENS!
I had a score filter in there before but @codinghorror found it confusing. I think for power users like big game companies with many forums it can be useful and we should consider putting it back in somehow. Maybe behind a site setting so it doesn’t confuse other users?
(a ‘negative’ action in my mind) button will keep a message, while on messages that need approval, the X (also a ‘negative’ action) will destroy the message. We end up with the occasional incorrect action now and then, and sometimes we can’t undo them.
). Enjoy!
or you disagree with the flag 
it is a little weird, but it might just be something to learn, I can’t think of a better iconography for that case.