Feature description
The history of moderation actions is valuable context for a moderator to use when determining appropriate disciplinary action against a user.
It is necessary to have a record of moderation actions in order to prepare the legally mandated DSA transparency report.
In addition to acting on flags raised by the users, staff members may monitor the forum and act on inappropriate posts they notice. When a staff member flags a post and selects “It’s Off-Topic”, “It’s Inappropriate”, or “It’s Spam”, the “Take Action…” button is enabled. The staff member can then use that button to immediately act on the post instead of the alternative less convenient approach of added the flag to the review queue and then acting on it there.
Please always generate a review item, even when the flagger used the “Take Action…” feature. In this case, the added item should have a reviewed status rather than “pending”.
These moderation actions will be visible in the history of other flags of the user’s posts.
It will be possible to obtain the data for these moderation actions via the review data that will be the logical way to obtain general data about content and account moderation, as needed to prepare things like the DSA transparency report.
The reason for the action will be recorded.
Current behavior
If a flag is is resolved via the “Take Action…” feature, it is not recorded as a flag.
Moderators will be unaware of this significant action when reviewing the user’s flag history.
The reason for the action, which the flagger made the effort to provide, and which is required for preparation of the DSA transparency report, is simply discarded.
Reproducible steps:
- Log into a Discourse forum in which you have staff privileges.
- Click the flag icon on a throwaway post.
- Select the “It’s Off-Topic” radio button.
The “Take Action…” button will become enabled. - Click the “Take Action…” button.
A menu will open. - Select
“Hide Post”“Silence User” from the menu.- ⓘ The behavior also occurs if you select “Suspend User”.
- The “Silence User” dialog will open.
- Select any option from the “How long will the user be silenced for?” menu.
- Select any option from the “Why are you silencing this user?” menu.
- Click the “Silence” button.
- Open the forum’s
/review?status=all
page.
There is no record of the flag.
Discourse version
3565ddcc3672fc73614a8e2aa99ed8b8df2164f3
Additional context
The “current behavior” I describe is observed on a forum in which I have staff privileges. I was not able to check the behavior on try.discourse.org, as this requires staff privileges. However it is my belief that this behavior is coded into the Discourse core and will be present on all Discourse forums.