Generate review item when flag is resolved by "Take Action..." feature

[per1234]

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:

1. Log into a Discourse forum in which you have staff privileges.
2. Click the flag icon on a throwaway post.
3. Select the “It’s Off-Topic” radio button.
   The “Take Action…” button will become enabled.
4. Click the “Take Action…” button.
   A menu will open.
5. Select “Hide Post” “Silence User” from the menu.
   • ⓘ The behavior also occurs if you select “Suspend User”.
   • The “Silence User” dialog will open.
6. Select any option from the “How long will the user be silenced for?” menu.
7. Select any option from the “Why are you silencing this user?” menu.
8. Click the “Silence” button.
9. 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.

[ondrej]

Take action does what it says on the tin.

For me when I take action on a users post as ‘off-topic’ if I look on the review queue there is a record after I filter everything against flags for that specific user:

However, you could use the ‘queue for review’ feature which puts the post in the review queue and there is a moderation record left on the user too but you choose what action to take on the post like a regular flag.

[per1234]

@ondrej

Take action does what it says on the tin.

But “flag post” does not. If I click a flag icon, then a flag should be created.

Do you do moderation of a forum? I an sure that any experienced moderator would understand why it is important for an easily accessible record to be created for any such action.

And of course any of us who are unfortunate enough to be responsible for preparing a DSA transparency report from the already far from ideal data provided by the Discourse framework will understand it even more.

@ondrej

For me when I take action on a users post as ‘off-topic’ if I look on the review queue there is a record

Thanks for pointing this out! You are absolutely correct. I see now that the behavior I describe does not occur when the “Hide Post” action is selected. It only occurs when one of the other actions is selected. The fact that a review item is created by the “Take Action” feature under certain conditions makes it seem the failure to create a review item under other conditions is a bug. I did test the instructions I provided while writing the feature request, but I must have made a mistake during the test. I apologize for the confusion.

We don’t actually use the "Hide Post” action on my forum, so I don’t have experience with those specific conditions, but I chose it as the easiest to use in a quick experiment.

I have updated the instructions in the feature report accordingly.