I just acted on a flag with the “Hide post + PM user” action. I think this was the first time I did it, and I wasn’t expecting it to just send a automated PM for me. Every other “send a PM” action in Discourse triggers a self-composed PM.
I also didn’t know that it would be sending from our designated site_contact_username, in Meta’s case @codinghorror.
I’m suggesting two changes:
Create pre-composed message instead of sending it straight away
I would have preferred to add an extra line or two about why I exactly I was hiding this post. It was from a brand new user who had just misunderstood the difference between Meta and Try.
The PM should be sent by the moderator
It makes much more sense that the PM comes from me. I’m the one who did the moderation, and I’m the one who should be notified if the user replies to the PM.
In cases when the moderator should be kept anonymous, just log in as the @system user.
I would like to agree with this idea in full. Recently, I had to flag a post and send a PM, and was also surprised that I was not able to customize the message.
First, I have never seen the message myself, so I have no idea what exactly was said to the user! Second, my guess is that the message is a generic (this message violates the site rules and guidelines, please edit) sort of thing, and I would have wanted to customize it. In my case I would have wanted to explain that the use of http://lmgtfy.com is not allowed on our site, and why it was rude and incosiderate to do so. Instead, the user edits the post asking who flagged it and why (resulting in me flagging and hiding it again!) and having to manually send a PM explaining the situation.
One, I am not an Admin, and more importantly, two, I should not need go to site settings to customize text every time I want to explain why a post was hidden! My concern is not what the generic message says, it is that it is generic. No real info for the user on why the post was hidden. Sometimes it might be obvious (lots of swears, inflammatory to users, etc.), many times it is not (like the example in my previous post.
Not against doing so, but I still feel that the option to “Hide post & send PM” is odd in that I cannot choose what the PM says. Having to PM the user beforehand is another step to take, and that PM is not tied to the flag in any way either. If an admin wanted to track what was going on, they would have to look into my PM history to see a post to this user at the same time as the flag, as opposed to seeing the conversation with the flag like what happens with the “Something else” flag. (Though that conversation is with the person flagging, not the offender, but similar idea).
It’s about the guidelines, so making those correct and reflective of what actually happens is the best option, versus a bunch of one off private conversations with a dozen people.
I am going to respectfully disagree here. Guidelines can only cover so much, and even if they appear to be written such that there can be 0 room for confusion, someone will still not be fully clear on what is/is not allowed. @erlend_sh’s original suggestion for a pre-filled composer is good (I feel). For most flags you can just hit send. For the time where some extra clarity is needed, add a line or two and then send it.
I am going to respectfully disagree in this case, since these kinds of “jokey” link shorteners were also a problem at Stack Overflow early on and a public policy and statement about it was required. This should be in the guidelines.
That said I do like the idea of the message coming from the mod who took the action, but then they might complain every word wasn’t one they personally typed, so it opens another can of worms.
It is a slippery slope here to adding a ton of manual thinking and “oh no what do I say” work for mods, which I strongly oppose. Have good guidelines, and automatically refer people to them. If what is happening is so incredibly exceptional, then tap the message button on the user and handle it manually.
OK. “jokey” link shorteners can absolutely be clearly banned via the guidelines, but this feature request is not just for link shorteners, that was just the recent example I had to deal with.
Just an FYI, we struggle with this too, to the extent we don’t use the Agree and Take Action option with Flags because we don’t like how the PM is auto-sent and has to be generic. So we always just PM the user directly. Always.
Just to clarify on this, we use the “notify @member” on the post flag system, so the message is tied to the flagging system. It records against the post the fact that a message was sent, and by whom.
I just had another situation where this feature would have been very useful. Long story short…a user has a discussion going on about a Discord server in a topic. This user went and posted what was essentially an advertisement in other topics. A user flagged the posts, and I dealt with the flags.
The posts were definitely spam by my definition, but I did not have an ideal option to deal with the flag! The flag wasn’t going to be deferred or disagreed with, so those options are gone. That left Agree with flag, Hide post + PM user (agree), and Delete post (agree) as the only valid options. I would have liked to have hid the post and PM’d the user, so I could explain why this cross-posting was not allowed, and asked them to keep discussion in their original thread, but I could not do so. Instead I used the delete option, and will have to PM the user privately. Everything else done via the admin/flags interface is visible to other admins/mods. Needing to PM a user regarding a flag should be too, especially considering that mods (unlike admins) cannot see my PM history…