Suggestion: flag-clearing by author edit-to-zero i.e. delete post

Scenario:

  • I post something careless
  • I get flagged
  • I look over my post and instead of thinking “okay, I could say this much more nicely”, I think “I didn’t need to weigh in here at all really”
  • I want to be the gracious, learning user who takes the flagging to heart, but the edited-post I want to see is just to delete my post.

It seems kinda weird that the only way for me to clear my flag is to post something in an edit. Maybe it’s okay enough to be required to post something constructive. But I could see a case where if I then actively manually delete my own flagged post, that clears the flag at least similarly to editing and reposting.

4 Likes

Hmm. Maybe. Interestingly, this hasn’t come up even as an idea until now, but it’s not a bad one.

You could edit for flag reinstatement, and then self delete so it’s only one more step.

3 Likes

Yeah, that’s a fine enough workaround.

This came up when thinking about describing to flagged users what to do and my concerns about the messaging.

I realized that “you can just leave it hidden or delete it” wasn’t quite a just-fine option, even though it could certainly make sense in many cases. I don’t know the portion, but it’s gotta be a decent amount (majority even?) of bad posts from good people are things that should just never have been posted (versus badly worded posts that have other valid points).

1 Like