This guide explains how Discourse manages user reputation and flag priorities in the Review Queue, including flagging accuracy, flag type priorities, and how the system decides on actions to take.
Required user level: Administrator
Discourse uses a sophisticated system to manage user reputation and flag priorities in the Review Queue. This system helps moderators efficiently handle content moderation by prioritizing flags based on various factors.
Summary
- Discourse tracks user flagging accuracy
- Flags can be prioritized by type
- The system uses multiple factors to decide on actions
- Settings can be adjusted for high-traffic forums
Flagging accuracy
When reviewing flags in the queue, moderators see an icon indicating the flagger’s previous accuracy. For example:
Hovering over the thumb icon reveals detailed stats. In this example, the user’s flags were agreed with 88% of the time, disagreed 0%, and ignored 13%.
Discourse only considers a user’s last 100 flags, allowing for improvement over time.
More weight is given to flags from users with higher accuracy and trust levels.
Flag type priority and sensitivity
Staff members can prioritize flag types in the Review area:
- Click the
Settings button in the review area - Adjust the priority of different flag types according to your needs
You can also adjust flag sensitivity settings in Admin > Site Settings. For example, you can set the hide post sensitivity to “High” if you highly trust your users, or “Low” if you want to allow potentially questionable content to remain visible longer.
How Discourse decides on actions
When a flag is submitted, Discourse prioritizes it based on several factors:
- Flag type and any extra priorities set
- Number of flags on the content
- Flagging accuracy of the user(s) who flagged the post
- Trust levels of the user(s) who flagged the post
- Whether staff members flagged the post
Discourse then makes decisions based on sensitivity settings:
-
hide post sensitivity: Determines when to hide a flagged post -
silence new user sensitivity: Decides if a new user who made the flagged post should be silenced -
auto close topic sensitivity: Determines if the entire topic should be temporarily closed
Tuning the Review Queue for high-traffic forums
For forums with many users and a high volume of flags, consider adjusting the reviewable default visibility setting:
- Low (default): Notifies you of every flag in the queue
- Medium or High: Requires a stronger signal for flags to appear in the queue
Increasing this setting typically means more users need to flag a post, or fewer users with better reputations need to flag it, for it to appear in the queue.
Last edited by @fzngagan 2024-10-15T06:10:38Z
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