# Warn users without affecting their flag count
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/warn-users-without-affecting-their-flag-count/16967
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [June 28, 2014, 7:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/warn-users-without-affecting-their-flag-count/16967 "2014-06-28T19:30:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@hunterboerner](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hunterboerner)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2014, 7:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/warn-users-without-affecting-their-flag-count/16967/1 "2014-06-28T19:30:19Z")
Say a user posts something like
> I love this idea. I think it would be great to see.
I don’t want that user to be punished by affecting his/her flag count but I want to be able to easily give the user an infraction saying please use the heart instead of responding. I’ve gotten stuff like this a few times on other forums from mods with similar things like “post in a different section for that”.
Maybe just have a “minor” flag level for things like this?
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2014, 7:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/warn-users-without-affecting-their-flag-count/16967/2 "2014-06-28T19:43:00Z")
I don’t recall from my testing, but does using Notify member\_name permit this? I’m thinking that doesn’t actually give them a flag associated to their profile. Only Off-Topic, Inappropriate and Spam actually result in flags accumulating.
The more I think about it and play with it, I believe neither Notify options result in a flag on the user’s account.
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### Author:  [@hunterboerner](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hunterboerner)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2014, 7:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/warn-users-without-affecting-their-flag-count/16967/3 "2014-06-28T19:56:35Z")
Yes, but I would like to be able to send an automated message like the one you get from a flag. Something like this:
> Hello,
> This is an automated message from Discourse to inform you that your post …
> > I love this idea. It would be awesome.
> … was hidden due to community flagging.
> Your post was flagged as against the [community guidelines](https://meta.discourse.org/guidelines): please use the heart button instead of replying to +1
> For additional guidance, please refer to our [Community Guidelines](https://meta.discourse.org/guidelines).
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2014, 12:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/warn-users-without-affecting-their-flag-count/16967/4 "2014-06-29T00:24:07Z")
You’d have to write a plugin to do that. Personally, we just use an extension called Clipper that we save a lot of “default” messages to and copy and paste it into the PM box.
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2014, 2:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/warn-users-without-affecting-their-flag-count/16967/5 "2014-06-29T02:02:10Z")
I use Firefox with [Clippings](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clippings/) though some prefer to use the vB “canned replies”
Not “automated” but it saves a whole lot of time not having to type the same message repeatedly.
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### Author:  [@chapoi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/chapoi)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2025, 11:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/warn-users-without-affecting-their-flag-count/16967/6 "2025-12-04T11:31:03Z")