Even that would help besides the currently just one setting. Our most severe abuser is TL1, and is indeed contributing interesting topics (despite the mass flag spamming), so downranking to TL0 (with all its other limitations) and only allow flagging for TL1+ is not an option here. So, yes, max flags per day per TL would be nice and tremendously helpful here. If users progress to higher TLs, they can flag more. Makes perfectly sense to me, and those communities that don’t need those settings can default them.
The threat of being locked at TL0 (with a reminder of what they cannot do) could be added to a warning notice. That may jar them into thinking twice about being so free with their flags.
Thank goodness the only flags we had were for Discobot. 
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You have three options (well, four)
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directly intervene with the user and indicate there will be consequences for future negative behavior (casting lots of inappropriate flags)
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turn down “max flags per day” globally in your site settings
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lock this user to TL0
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reduce flag sensitivity in your review dashboard, so it takes a higher cumulative flag score for thresholds to be met
I suggest you try those out before jumping to “discourse must add a new feature because of {problem user}”.
That said I am not opposed to limiting flags per day for low flag reliablity users, it is a sensible direction.
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Thanks, @codinghorror, I opt for option 5, patch core in our case as our communtiy seems to be a border case, compared to others.
BTW: “Reduce flag sensitivity in your review dashboard” is not set in the review dashboard, but in Admin > Site Settings > hide post sensitivity
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I’m having this problem too. One user abusing the flag system. Kicked up a huge fuss when demoted to TL0. The flagging is the only problem so I already reduced flags to 2 per day.
I wonder if there’s a way we could add a user to a ‘no flag’ group and stop them from flagging completely?
I’d also welcome an algorithmic temporary ban on flagging triggered on a bad flag together with a low flag score.
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This seems like a challenging issue, does there seem to be any legitimate reason why they are flagging things or no?
If there are not, that may be grounds to suspend or ban their account for that.
If you ask the person who is making these flag reports about if they have any reasons they can explain for those, don’t see what the problem would be unless their reasons aren’t considered to be valid by the site management + moderation team.
One potential strategy is for there to be some kind of a price for flagging, as in whoever is making these flag reports will be asked to explain their reasons for the flags. In addition potentially they could be asked to help with mediation in talking with the person/account that is being flagged about what is causing them to flag things that other folks don’t agree need flags.
Make flag spamming part of your user code of conduct or terms and then use the Discourse moderation tools - warning, silencing and suspension. Treat flag spamming like any other disruptive forum behavior - set out clear standards of what is acceptable flagging and also consequences when the system is abused.
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That is important the terms and conditions + code of conduct and community guidelines, here is quote of the official statements for this support site and the default for new sites unless edited/changed:
If You See a Problem, Flag It
Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.
When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.
In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts in any way; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.
This clearly recommends and encourages people to flag anything and everything considered to be “bad behavior,” which can definitely be a reason why people are flagging things more often than not. This also puts a lot more responsibility on moderators to deal with problems/arguments, as opposed to guest members having more opportunity to work through things amongst themselves.
Could start a new topic about overall moderation + flag philosophy and to develop drafts for alternative community guidelines to this. I spent a lot of time reading through these guidelines and have found difficulty with a lot about how these are written for my own ideals about launching new sites, may be best to start over completely with independent policies for each site.
Yes it does encourage users to flag bad behaviour, but I disagree with you saying that the forums FaQ is the reason behind flag spamming. A reasonable person would know what to flag and what not to flag depending on the context of the post etc.
The behaviour is problematic for moderators as it creates a higher workload. As Lilly said above, you need to create rules around flagging or go down the official warning and suspension route.
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That would have been quite a different statement to say those community guidelines are “the” reason for spam flagging, what I wrote was just that they “can be” one of many possible reasons why there are many flags.
Difficult to know what all is happening without more information about context and hearing both sides of a situation. I am very cautious to accept any one person’s testimony as an absolute truth.
I agree with those urging communication with the user before implementing settings changes.
Ultimately, I would guess that you want the behavior to change. Restricting the user’s ability to flag won’t give them that opportunity. I think a really important piece of moderation, especially in political forums, is to lead with communication and not punishment. Be clear about what behavior needs to change and why, with examples, and what will result if the user doesn’t change.
I think it’s good to start with an open-ended question to the user, like: “Hey [user], I noticed you flagged [other user’s] response to your post. Can you help me understand why you flagged it?” Or something similar, so you can gain an understanding of where they’re coming from, and respond to them accordingly.
Culture shifts can’t be legislated or settings-changed into existence. Settings help us design guardrails but it’s communication and enabling users to demonstrate change that will do it, at the end of the day.
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