In another topic I posted the question, if it was possible, to request an explanation for flagging a post. I learned, that this software here does not support that, and custom programming would be required.
Is this true for this too: I would like to see who flagged something, and what kind of flag? Currently, it only says âThe community âŠâ, which is kind of meager.
I do not thing DSGVO/GDPR prohibits that, a flagging should not be considered less public than a posting?
My understanding is that the reporter of a flag is only disclosed to moderators and admins, which in my personal opinion makes a lot of sense to provide some protections to people who report content.
If reports are to be public, you can imagine the kind of dynamics this could unlock, including people not reporting to avoid any attacks from the reported and so on.
You donât need to know who reported your message, since a moderator will always review the report and take a decision based on the forum guidelines and you will get notified about the resulting action, which you can discuss with the moderators if you think itâs necessary.
Well my post here is still hidden, and it seems it took only one person clicking report for that to happen. Perhaps 2 or more reports should be required before auto-hiding. Sure I guess I donât need to know who flagged it (and in such a minor case like this I donât particularly care), but the impersonal message from the system didnât exactly feel welcoming or make want to further participate in the conversation on this forum.
IIRC, the /reported/ person also gets to know, who made the report by looking at the changes to their post. I have also seen moderator actions that way.
I do not think, that reporting needs confidentiality. This is not whistle-blowing. To the opposite, I think it needs the means to give explanation, not just some blanket message. This is a community site, after all.
I witnessed several times, where flagging causes confusion.
That one has to be a bug. Someone reported as off-topic and a moderator ignored the flag, I donât know why itâs still hidden.
@cquest can you think on why this is the case? The reporter was trust level 2, same as the poster, it shouldnât auto-hide this way 
Edit: Iâve manually removed the hiding, maybe moderators should not âignoreâ flags but ârejectâ them to allow posts to be displayed again. I also know that a relatively low activity forum (as this one is still) has lower thresholds for post auto-hiding.
/cc all @moderators and @admins to have in mind for future flags review
Edit 2: I found this:
The âflag sensitivityâ settings which incorporate a userâs past flag agree score means that a single user with a good flag history can trigger the âthis post was hidden by the communityâ display with an off-topic/inappropriate flag, if your score is high enough.
Maybe, a possible solution is to show the flagging reason to all users and only moderators and admins can see who reported it. This would make it easier for other users to understand whatâs happening.
AFAIK thatâs not something that discourse allows. We can only change the default message (manually in each language) sent to the person whose post was hidden (but not depending on the type of flag)
I would like to take a step back from going back and forward with personal preferences on solutions and better understand:
Whatâs the current problem we are trying to solve here? Why is that a problem?
How about: The message the software sends is kind of rude. It leaves the recipients puzzling, what is going on.
Would that still be an issue when the moderator resolves the flag adding a comment if applied?
Personally, I consider the heavy weight that is laid on moderation in this forum here a bit too much. In fact, it bothered me right from the start. It differs a lot from the runnings of openstreetmap itself:
Imagine, I could hide a POI, a building, a path from the data and only the DWG can see my nick.
That is not, how openstreetmap works. No intimidating messages get sent to the original mapper. Here, a message is sent that starts with âThe community considers your behaviour offensive or against the rules of the community &c.â - e.g. while there was just some single user who felt offended, because the accepted solution of a help topic was not to his or her liking.
This is lacking due process in every respect. Of course, everybody may feel offended by whatever they want. But they must not be taken for âThe Communityâ. Other community members should be trusted, to deal with flaggings on their own, no need for moderators to get involved. Therefore, the community needs to know the flag. not just the moderators, unless this is to become a managed community, an egg-counting-hen-house so to say.
Moderation may still be of use, where members get hot, too hot. Moderators have the difficult task, to decide on what is reasonable according to the guidelines.
To sum this up: Please let me mark the post on the other thread as âNOT off-topicâ.
I agree that the default wording from discourse might be confusing for some people, and as I commented, we have room to change it to one that people feel more comfortable. Is there any wording proposal you would like?
On the other topic, how are the rest OSM discussion channels (old forums, help osm, mailing lists) handling for this same issue? Iâm trying to figure out if there is a discussion platform where the flags and reports are public and how it works.
Maybe of help: There is a field of philosophy, it is called âEthicsâ. There should be lots of literature on subjects like this. I think, it is fine, when acts of moderators are hidden behind a âSystemâ proxy. I strongly disagree, that acts of ordinary users should be given the same treatment. When I flag a post as âoff-topicâ, I do not want the poster to get message by some ominous âCommunityâ. Ethically, this is completely out of bounds. I am not the community.
From recent happenings, it might also be wise to spend a sentence, on what consequences the act of flagging will bring with it, there seems to be some confusion.
I think the original intention of the wording was also to cover when more than one person has flagged a post, even maybe for different reasons. How would you reword the current message to feel accurate and fair?
Hello Rubén,
Thank you for supporting this issue. There must be more message templates in the system. The ones you quoted, I did not see. Below from two PMs that I received so far:
Hallo, dies ist eine automatische Benachrichtigung von OpenStreetMap Community, um dich zu informieren, dass dein Beitrag verborgen wurde.
[ link to topic ]
[ message regarding flag type ]
Dieser Beitrag wurde wegen Meldungen der Community verborgen, deshalb prĂŒfe bitte, wie du ihn ĂŒberarbeiten kannst, um ihrem Feedback zu entsprechen. Du kannst deinen Beitrag nach 10 Minuten bearbeiten und er wird automatisch wieder sichtbar.
Falls er jedoch noch einmal von der Community verborgen wird, bleibt er dies, bis ein Team-Mitglied ihn prĂŒft.
Weitere Informationen findest du in unseren Community-Richtlinien.
Here the different central phrases, they got sent in English, untranslated:
Your post was flagged as off-topic: the community feels it is not a good fit for the topic, as currently defined by the title and the first post.
Your post was flagged as inappropriate: the community feels it is offensive, abusive, or a violation of our community guidelines.
Not knowing the inner workings of discourse, I think, the messages get sent, as soon as somebody puts up a flag. If Iâd send such mails myself, Iâd feel as an imposter.
At first sight, hiding flagged posts even before a third party can look at it, might be warranted, just in case, so if there is really something grave happening, it is less likely to spread. I do not think, this will be the case often. The discourse creators obviously do not think so either. Still, if I flag a post off-topic, I really want it to be hidden, immediately. So with this I am fine.
Now, to the PM: Iâd say, it should rather state:
A post of yours was considered off-topic by [nick name]. Perhaps it is not a good fitâŠ
A post of yours was considered a violation of our community guidelines by [nick name]. Perhaps it is inappropriate, offensive, âŠ
Iâd say, naming the person to put up the flag in the PM is appropriate. After all, this is a community consisting of individuals, each with their own idiosyncrasies, and getting to know each other is always welcome, even if it is not all milk and honey all the time.
Following this thought, Iâd say, on the public side, in a similar manner, as one can see, who hearts a post, one should be able to see, who flagged it, and which flag was set. So the community of ordinary users can help themselves self-moderate. Assigned moderators have more weight, but in most cases, they will only have to get active, when there starts e.g. an edit war.
Do I put too much trust into the community?
I think more people should be required to make the flag have effect, e.g. 3, particularly if the flag reason is âofftopicâ it seems harmless and not urgent. It could be hidden right away for the one setting the flag, but not for everybody else.
Abusive, insulting or threatening posts are more delicate (maybe also copyright infringement), and a lower threshold for initial hiding (until an admin or moderator confirms or rejects it) may make sense, but for offtopic flags we do not need to hurry
Thanks @Hungerburg
I havenât found a way to display who is flagging on the messages, Iâll keep investigating.
Iâm still curious about this desire for knowing the person flagging or sending a report, in every other OSM tools reports are sent directly to admins or moderators and the reporter is never disclosed to the reported.
Maybe this is a wider than these forums request? I assume you would also like to see this everywhere at OSM tools?
What do other people think about this?
On all other platforms I know, the reporter is not disclosed, and/or you would need special privileges to see this information. Iâm sure in case members start abusing the âflag postâ feature to harass other users, moderation can still take appropriate action.
Hello Rubén, if the system does not support naming the flagger, so be it. The topic is, knowing the flag, not the flagger, this should be good enough. That allows to word the message differently. A simple sentence in active voice, passive voice being notoriously difficult:
A member of the community flagged a post of yours as âŠ
I still think, the public should see, what flag(s) got set.
+1
Insbesondere sollte aber das erstmalige Markieren als âofftopicâ nicht sofort dazu fĂŒhren den Beitrag zu verstecken. Das stört meiner Meinung nach den Diskussionsfluss mehr und verursacht Irritationen bei den anderen Usern.
Eine Diskussion entwickelt sich und kann auch mal vom Ursprungsthema abweichen, ohne dass das falsch ist. Und das können auch Leser unterschiedlich empfinden. Aber offtopic-BeitrĂ€ge sind meistens nur Ablenkung vom Thema, fĂŒhren aber meist nicht zur Ăberhitzung einer Diskussion.
Es ist ausreichend, den Beitrag als offtopic sichtbar fĂŒr andere User zu markieren und dem Moderator die Entscheidung zu ĂŒberlassen, ob:
Das sind Entscheidungen, die kann keine Maschine treffen.
Andere BeitrÀge, die ein hohes Konflikt- und Eskalationspotential haben (Beleidigungen, Rassismus, strafrechtlich relevante Inhalte usw.) können und sollten sofort ausgeblendet werden, bis ein Moderator eine Entscheidung trifft.
Reading again through discourse meta forums, it seems they choose âby the communityâ because post are only hidden when a certain threshold is reached, sometime can be a single âhigh karmaâ user flag, others are a group of âregular karmaâ users flags. So I suspect the system doesnât know if the post was hidden because X number of flags.
Iâll keep searching if itâs possible to show the type of flag to the reported, because right now itâs just plain text.
