Why have mods "agree" to flag but still "keep post"?

(Wolftune) #1
  1. User flags a post
  2. Mod hit’s “agree” that the flag is valid
  3. Mod chooses “keep post”

Results (unless there’s some bug, this is what we see):

  • post stays around, visible
  • nobody can flag the post again
  • user has a flag on their record

When would this ever make sense? Some forum where violations that deserve flagging are kept around because it’s dogmatically free-speech or something but still want to keep a record of how much someone is inappropriate? It seems weird to me. I’d think either a flag is not valid or you do want to hide the post and prompt the user to edit it.

(Daniela) #2

Correct, because the moderator has chosen to keep the post, not to hide it

Correct, the moderator has accepted the flag (“agree”)

Wrong, at least the admins can still flag and delete the post.
If a moderator has accepted the flag but has decided not to hide the post it is useless for users with lower TL to continue to report the same post and send notifications to the staff.

Not all flags are negative in nature, we often use them to report a topic that needs to be reopened or split.

Not all flags are valid. You can report a post, the moderator can decide to accept it but to keep the post because he believes that “it could become” a possible problem but at the moment there is no need to intervene.
There are dozens of ways to use flags, not your way is the only way :wink:

(Wolftune) #3

In our case, from the testing we did, the admin user who originally flagged also cannot flag again (surprising since you’d think the admin can do anything). Other than that clarification, all you say makes sense.

In fact, I very much support flexible uses of tags. Hence, this topic a ux question to understand how and why people do other things than what I’d thought of.

Not all flags are negative in nature

Sure, but in that view (which I like), making flags a bad-mark against a user isn’t desirable, is it?

I still have the question: after “agree” + “keep post”, what benefit to anyone has occurred? For instance, is this helpful somehow in marking a topic to split?

EDIT: I forgot that marking “disagree” on a flag can be a bad mark against the flagger! We wouldn’t want that… so maybe this exists to basically clear the post without that?

(Daniela) #4

First of all, those who have reported the post receive an automatic message that tells him that we have accepted the flag and that we are checking (not intervening), so it will be led to make further reports in the future if he finds other problems.

This depends on the type of forum. Here on Meta our topics can become very long, if they go off topic is always better to split the topic to not lose the logic of the discussion.

Remember that you can customize any text on Discourse. However we are never led to use sentences with negative connotations :wink:

(Wolftune) #5

I just meant: how is this flag + keep process helpful in identifying topics to split? Clearly splitting topics is super useful and the ability to do that and move things around well is one of the things I love most about Discourse!

(Daniela) #6

Flag + keep is not helpful for split a topic, flag + something else is appropriate

(Wolftune) #7

I guess I should clarify: it seems specifically that flagging as inappropriate or spam is when “agree” with the option to “keep” is baffling to me. I wasn’t thinking of the “off-topic” or “something else” types of flags.

Maybe it’s just an incidental UX glitch that agree + keep is possible for inappropriate or spam posts? My wondering is whether anyone ever intentionally would use that…

(Daniela) #9

Personally on my site it happens to me often to mark a flag with Agree (accept the flag) and keep the post because it does not go against the rules of the forum but I have to keep an eye on the discussion to see if it stays on the right tracks or risks derailing.

(Wolftune) #10

Gotcha! Thanks, that makes sense. So although it clears the notification, keeping a flag makes it easier for mods to track separately from bookmarks…

And the reason to do agree+keep instead of ignore is for this:

those who have reported the post receive an automatic message that tells him that we have accepted the flag and that we are checking (not intervening)

right? Ignoring the flag will clear the mod notification but won’t send that message to the flagger…