The persistence of posts hidden by flags are a bane to our community

Community moderation is great – if enough people flag a post to hide it, moderators don’t need to get involved. What’s better is that the user who made the post is given an opportunity to improve the post so that it abides by the rules. But what if the user opts not to improve the post, and just lets it sit? The post remains “hidden” for all eternity.

In this perpetual state of being hidden, the post continues to waste a bunch of space on the thread, as it is as large as a normal post:

this is awful, as if the community flags a bunch of spam posts or some argument on a thread, even after the posts are hidden, the topic is still clogged by them.

To resolve this:

  • Hidden posts should collapse into something similar to what the moderators see for deleted posts: “click to view x deleted posts”. This is super small and does not detract from topic readability. If the user edits their post to improve it, it will be moved out of this section and back into the thread.
  • Posts that remain hidden for long enough without action (24 hours?) should be automatically deleted so that users can’t go prowling through another’s posts and find all the bad stuff they posted in the past
إعجابَين (2)

There is aready a site setting for this

delete old hidden posts

Auto-delete any hidden posts that stay hidden for more than 30 days.

Make sure that’s checked.

إعجابَين (2)

We do have it enabled, but a full month is so long that we thought they were never deleted. Can this be changed so that site admins can configure the amount of days? We would want to set this to 1-2 days.

إعجابَين (2)

We don’t generally prioritize these kinds of site specific requests unless you’re a customer. Did you want to move back to our hosting?

So these posts show up in the moderation queue, right? Can’t you delete them from there?

We delete the majority of flagged posts because we’ve found that users will still quote and reply to them otherwise.

5 إعجابات

Wow even after they are hidden, people will quote and reply to the hidden post?

إعجابَين (2)

I’ve seen users dig up old post revisions to respond to. If they can do it, they will.

4 إعجابات

Absolutely. And surprisingly often!

When someone is wrong on the internet, and someone has a chance to respond, it seems some folks just can’t resist the urge.

11 إعجابًا

A css tag (post-hidden) is added to the hidden post, and this can be used. You can change the design of this post at your discretion. For example, remove the avatar, make the font smaller, change the indentation. Huge selection.

.post-hidden .topic-avatar {
    display: none !important;
}

For example, so:

Maybe this will help to solve the problem of"space saving".

7 إعجابات

Yes, we’re having the same problem. My moderators were all confused about how this was happening, and then I discovered using incognito that “hidden” doesn’t really mean hidden in the removed sense, as we would have thought, it just means collapsed.

And the problem was discovered because we had several user replying to the original hidden post debating about whether it should have been hidden. This led to a total of 7 hidden posts in a row.

My takeaway is that if our mods want to actually remove a post their action needs to be to delete not hide it.

4 إعجابات

Precisely this. We long ago moved to deleting posts (and replies) that are moderated, because otherwise those hidden posts are invariably a new derail on the topic otherwise.

4 إعجابات

In the context of flagging, mods can’t hide posts, as far as I know. Hiding happens automatically as a protective measure when a post meets a community flag threshold.

The mods at that point are notified and can take action as they deem fit, which includes deleting the flagged post.

My point is that hiding is a) automatic and b) meant to be a temporary state.

إعجابَين (2)

If that’s true, why does ”Agree”-ing with flags not delete the post? It should move the post from the temporary status?

إعجاب واحد (1)

Agree means “yes, I agree the community was correct to hide this post”.

It’s not a foregone conclusion that every flagged post is so bad it has to be deleted. Sometimes (as long as it’s not too toxic of course) leaving hints in the conversation about the kind of content you frown upon is a way of educating future readers.

6 إعجابات

أتفق أيضًا مع المستخدمين الآخرين هنا في أنه يجب إخفاء المشاركات المخفية تمامًا عن المشاهدين العاديين. ينغمس المستخدمون في جدال حيوي، أو إذا كان للمشاركة محتوى غير لائق، فسوف يستغلون أي واجهة مستخدم معروضة لعرضها. جرب وضع زر أحمر كبير مادي مع لافتة “لا تضغط!” في مكان عام، ومن المحتمل أن تحصل على ضغطات أكثر مما لو قمت بتغيير اللافتة إلى “يرجى الضغط علي”.

شكرًا لك على هذه المعلومة المفيدة جدًا. لقد قمت بتوسيعها لإخفاء المشاركة المخفية بالكامل عن المشاهدين العاديين مع جعلها مرئية بلون باهت للموظفين. لكنني لست جيدًا جدًا في CSS، هل سيكون لهذا أي عواقب غير مقصودة لم تخطر ببالي؟

body:not(.staff) {
    .post-hidden  {
        display: none !important;
    }
}
إعجابَين (2)

لا أرى أن هذه القاعدة تسبب أي مشاكل. :slight_smile:

ملاحظة صغيرة: الموظفون (staff) هي مجموعة محمية ولا يمكن حتى إعادة تسميتها (حاولت معرفة ما إذا كان ذلك سيغير فئة CSS).

يبدو أن جزء !important غير ضروري هنا. لا يوجد محدد سابق آخر من شأنه أن يتجاوز هذا.

إعجابَين (2)

شكرًا دائمًا على ردك المفيد @Canapin. لذا قمت بتعديله قليلاً مرة أخرى بدون !important، وقمت أيضًا بإزالة القدرة على عرض مراجعات المنشورات للمشاهدين العاديين:

body:not(.staff) {
    .post-hidden  {
        display: none;
    }
    .post-info.edits  {
        display: none;
    }
}

يمكنك القيام بذلك عن طريق إيقاف تشغيل إعداد سجل التعديلات مرئي للعامة :slight_smile:

image

3 إعجابات

:face_palm: أوه ، شكرًا! كنت أبحث عن revision في الإعدادات.

إعجاب واحد (1)

اتضح أن هذا يسبب بعض الآثار الجانبية:

  • عندما يتم إخفاء أحدث مشاركة في موضوع وينقر المستخدم على مؤشر أحدث مشاركة في قائمة الموضوعات، فسيحاول الانتقال إلى المشاركة المخفية ولكنه “سيرتد” بشكل عشوائي أعلى في السلسلة.
  • لن تتاح لمالك المشاركة المخفية فرصة تعديلها لأن عناصر التحكم الخاصة بالمشاركة مخفية أيضًا.

لذلك يبدو أن هذا حل أفضل:

body:not(.staff) {
    .post-hidden a.expand-hidden  {
        display: none;
    }
}
إعجابَين (2)