Knowing the Flag

[SJFriedl (Steve Friedl)]

I have a concrete suggestion for transparency: remove the ability to anonymously flag a post, instead showing the user who raised the flag.

Sure, this might dissuade some from objecting to legitimately bad content, but wouldn’t it be more transparent to not allow manipulation of the forums by unaccountable users hiding in the shadows?

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

@SJFriedl

I have a concrete suggestion for transparency: remove the ability to anonymously flag a post, instead showing the user who raised the flag.

People trying to use flags as an attack are quickly detected by the system since most/all of their flags are being rejected by moderators. Since these forums still have low volume it’s easier for relatively new users to flag posts of other new users, but the internal “reputation score” helps avoid any content to be hidden for review on users who have been around with good past reputation score.

[SomeoneElse (Andy Townsend)]

@nukeador

People trying to use flags as an attack are quickly detected by the system since most/all of their flags are being rejected by moderators

Indeed, but I’d suggest that the “post flagged message” was changed from:

" Your post was flagged as inappropriate: the community feels it is offensive, abusive, or a violation of our community guidelines."

to:

“Your post was flagged as inappropriate: someone in the community feels it is offensive, abusive, or a violation of our community guidelines.”

Whether flagged posts should be hidden immediately and then restored later by moderators or not immediately hidden is a question for the moderators - I suspect that the workload could be quite high if it becomes a well-known “attack vector”. I believe that most other bits of OSM (diary, comments, etc) don’t hide immediately.

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

@SomeoneElse

Indeed, but I’d suggest that the “post flagged message” was changed from:

" Your post was flagged as inappropriate: the community feels it is offensive, abusive, or a violation of our community guidelines."

to:

“Your post was flagged as inappropriate: someone in the community feels it is offensive, abusive, or a violation of our community guidelines.”

See this past discussion about it:

Knowing the Flag

Reading again through discourse meta forums, it seems they choose “by the community” because post are only hidden when a certain threshold is reached, sometime can be a single “high karma” user flag, others are a group of “regular karma” users flags. So I suspect the system doesn’t know if the post was hidden because X number of flags. I’ll keep searching if it’s possible to show the type of flag to the reported, because right now it’s just plain text.

Note that wording changes might require changes in every language and that the system is not able to tell if the flagged post was because one person (someone) or a group of people (the community)

[SomeoneElse (Andy Townsend)]

@nukeador

, it seems they choose “by the community” because post are only hidden when a certain threshold is reached, sometime can be a single “high karma” user flag, others are a group of “regular karma” users flags

In the example I was referring to at https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/knowing-the-flag/1492/23? I suspect it was neither a single “high karma” user nor a group; could we perhaps check whether the flag threshold needs to be increased?

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

We can check the threshold, when I checked last time I read that the threshold adapts to the number of users and activity a forum has, and that’s why in low traffic and relatively new forums it’s easier for messages to be hidden, because the system estimates that it’s going to be quite easy for moderators to review because of volume.

I propose we keep observing if this becomes a problem and see if when the forum increases in volume, this auto-hide is that easily triggered (it should not).

[IanH]

I think rewording the two messages is a lot of work without much benefit. My opinion is that is more important to be able to understand why your post was flagged in the first place and what kind of redress the author has to challenge the resulting decision. Users who get a message marked as off-topic or offensive should receive a reason why was flagged and the resulting action taken by admins. It is often a simple issue that can be resolved with a short explanation or a longer discussion offline. Even when its not, most people will like to be more civil when they feel like they have been treated with respect.
For example, most users are a not going to get upset when their legitimate but offtopic question gets posted and answered on a different thread. Just make sure to include a link in case they don’t agree and want file a grievance.