You can’t just Delete a load of posts of people asking for more details about this persons question. Reported for improper use of the hide feature.
They’re only hidden.
And I could literally just fix punctuation to make the posts visible again…
(mod hat on again)
The original topic was someone asking a question about something that allegedly used OSM data, or services. The person asking the question was sent here by their software supplier and (it appears) has next to no idea what OSM even is.
@0235 Re requesting that they “Please confirm all the locations in question”: the software that they’re asking about is tracking mobile devices, which are typically used by people. Asking them to expose the current physical locations of their employees (likely including home as well as work) is spectacularly inappropriate. The post was flagged, I agreed with the flag that the post be hidden.
Similarly, the diversion into the mapping habits of other groups of contributors (by a couple of people was very offtopic), flagged as such, and also hidden.
Following that @0235 decided to flag both of my posts in the thread, saying “You can’t just Delete a load of posts of people asking for more details about this persons question. Reported for improper use of the hide feature.”. I’m not sure what that was supposed to achieve.
Similarly @Sharko_J writes above “And I could literally just fix punctuation to make the posts visible again”. Indeed you could - and you have - but do you think that your edit in any way actually helps answer the OP’s question? I’m not even convinced we even know what that is yet. Please actually spend a little time reading beyond “We request this be treated as high priority” - an entirely appropriate thing to say if, as the OP thought they were, they were talking to a software company’s helpdesk, as opposed to whatever the bunch of people on this forum is.
Edit: And immediately I post this @Sharko_J flags it for being “off topic”. Clearly you’re upset, but can you find a way of discussing that without just flagging the post admonishing you?
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And with @0235’s reply now hidden, what’s the point of making it a separate thread?
People reading this one won’t even get the context 
To avoid confusing the person who asked the help question even more.
There’s a link back to it from below the first post here. Discourse gets a lot wrong, but linked threads it gets broadly right.
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I would like to read @0235 ‘s initial post in this thread, could it be unhidden or is there a valid reason why it should be flagged and hidden?
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Not via the Discourse UI that I can see (otherwise I would have done it).
The mailed-at-13:49 post was “Please confirm all the locations in question.”, as I quoted in full above, hence my reply about potentially posting employees’ PII in a public forum (something we shouldn’t be encouraging).
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Thank-you for this information, I was unaware of what the service they were talking about was, though it would have been nice to have seen this information from either you, or the original poster of the question, instead of my question being removed from the discussion.
My question was - ”Please confirm all the locations in question.”
- This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion
- Was my question not civil? - Improve the Discussion
- Was I not the first person to ask this?
- Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree
- I fully disagree with the original question, but still asked for more information. No insulting, no name calling.
- Your Participation Counts
- In an effort to steer the conversation into a useful dialogue about the problem they are facing, not diverging away from their original question about specific user reports.
- If You See a Problem, Flag It
- I saw no problem with this post… until my comment was removed from the conversation.
- Always Be Civil
- Up until my comment being removed I was civil. We wouldn’t be in this less-than-civil situation had they not been wrongfully removed.
- Keep It Tidy
- Short and sweet question, straight to the point.
- Post Only Your Own Stuff
- I am a natural human, not an AI or a chatbot.
- Powered by You
- seemingly not powered by me.
Clearly publicly saying this or that person reported a specific post is against some sort of privacy regulation?
Is it common or appropriate that moderators reveal who has flagged which posts? Is it not supposed to be an anonymous system to encourage people to report things they are concerned about, without the possibility of being publicly targeted for doing so?
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For the record I hadn’t heard of that vendor either, until I did a quick web search to find out what it was.
As I tried (but failed) to make clear, the OP was sent here by a third-party helpdesk. They know they have a problem, but don’t actually know what with.
Sometimes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. If you feel particularly hard-done by and want to demonstrate that your actions here weren’t just “revenge flagging”, you’re welcome to take it to a higher authority. Before doing so however I suggest that you read the room a bit.
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It would be helpful if answers could explain a bit about what OSM is and politely ask a bit about what the third party is doing.
And we got a few people explaining what OSM was, and the limitations of the original question. however as the wonderful Hector said:
please report in this thread with more information
But what is “More information”? So i clarified based on the existing comments “Please confirm all the locations in question.” because for us, knowing the location of these user report errors is important.
Web searches are sometimes a hindrance when trying to diagnose someones issue. It introduces conformation bias into a responses, as a misunderstanding could develop of what the question is, and ignore key information. Sometimes being part of a conversation with someone can help both parties come to conclusions which may not have been as clear, were both dictating their own interpretation of an issue.
Your comments were flagged, as on-topic discussion was removed, and no breech of community guidelines. I am surprised that the moderation structure allows moderators who have been flagged for inappropriate behaviour to be able to see this, and see who has taken action against them? Is there no privacy and confidentiality rules in place?
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that “please confirm all the locations in question” was a request that was suitable to move the original thread forward in any meaningful way. Many posts on discourse don’t (move the thread forward), but seeing that the “help and support” category is supposed to be a replacement for the old “help.openstreetmap.org” Q&A site, and seeing that we don’t have a way to vote down (literally - move them down the page) unhelpful posts, the occasional hiding of such by moderators doesn’t strike me as a misuse of their powers.
Having to explain themselves before a court of about 1.5 outraged community members who demand a multi-tier privacy shielding moderation system so that they can happily revenge-flag posts… well that’s a waste of everyone’s time. And frankly, if I had every single one of my posts stamped with a Sharko_J thumbs-down then it wouldn’t take much to infer just who flagged my post. So maybe we could just leave this grand injustice rest before everybody needs to resort to 
.
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OK. If that is the reasoning, so be it.
I guess the Forum is not a safe place for discussion.
When clicking the flag post button, the text displayed on my screen reads “Notify staff privately” and “privately flag this post for attention”. We understand that mods would be able to see flags, even about their own posts, but I’d like a moderator to clarify if moderators publicly announcing which users had flagged their posts is in keeping with the “Notify staff privately” functionality.
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As I said above, “sunlight is the best disinfectant”. These weren’t good-faith “trying to make the community better”; they were simply “revenge flaggings” because people didn’t like that someone (not me) had read what they’d said in the original thread and felt that there was a problem with it.
Let’s take a step back and remember what this forum is for - help and support. People sometimes post questions not knowing much about OSM, and for them to get pounced on because of some misunderstanding about OSM - related to the reason they were asking the question in the first place - shows the whole of the OSM community in a bad light.
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I’ve read this entire thread twice, and I have no idea what the heck is going on here.
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Good to know that if you subjectively deem someone’s report to be “revenge flaggings” that overrules the “Notify staff privately” functionality.
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Overzealous mod getting salty over stuff he personally disagrees with. Nothing fancy.
We used to have a plugin activated on this category to do this.
I think it got turned off because the threading was sub par?
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