Make comment flagging work more like chat flagging, available to users with 10k reputation

Question

Chat flags are handled fast. So fast they're often gone before I click the little flag notification. Comment flags are handled slow. Only mods can see them and they're quite low priority. Like chat flags they can be auto-handled if enough flags pile up...but that's not a common situation.

Solution? Show comment flags to 10k users and allow them to be acted on more like chat flags; users can add a flag to valid flags to help bring bad comments to their doom, and users can mark flags invalid just like Chat flags. "Other" flags would still show up for moderator-only intervention, but Spam/Offensive/Chatty/Obsolete comments could easily be handled by the community...if only they could see them.

Show context to allow users to see the Post that was commented on and all the other comments. This helps for when it's hard to tell if a post is irrelevant/ect or not. It could ideally be inline, just like Review.

Marking a flag down seems more risky, I don't think it's essential to this proposal but I think it could help. My idea is to require flags + 1 "disputed" flags on a comment flag to cancel flags. This would allow invalid flags to be cleared from the queue by non-mods, but would always require more people to agree against a flag, basically so just one user can never invalidate a flag. The chat system works well for clearing posts like this, and unlike chat flags there's less of an out-of-context problem with on-site comment flags.

Now, not everyone loves chat flags, but keep in mind all the negatives don't apply to on-site flags.

Unlike chat flags these flags:

• Don't bug uninterested users; these are only for 10k users on the site who are looking at the mod queue. Chat flags are annoying because you can't escape them.
• Don't accidentally suspend people. No grief about "why was I suspended" because the worst that happens is a comment is deleted. Comments are lightweight anyway.
• Don't cause a "blue rush" or surge of moderators/users trying to find out the context of the flag. Viewing a chat room to see a flagged message can be disruptive. Viewing a comment flag is silent and invisible

This post indicates that comment flags for 10k users used to exist but the functionality was removed; I think the reason is bunk. Comment flags are easy to handle, and that's why the community should be able to handle them. Especially with Stack Overflow's ever-growing flag queue, offloading easy, non-sensitive work onto 10k users seems perfect. Mods have bigger things to worry about than 100 "Too Chatty" flags, frankly.

Answer 1

There has been a recent MSO question from Undo that would have been helped by this question.

Could we have some consensus on how to flag bunches of obsolete comments?

I think having a 10k review queue for regular comment flags would be a great improvement. Having the ability to review comment flags would help share moderation responsibility with the rest of the site's community.

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Some suggestions in order to make this workable:

• Context needs to be provided around the comment, so the reviewer can understand the ramification (if any) of removing the comment. Context would be the original post, seeing the "last edited" notice on the post, and surrounding comments.

• Tally the existing flags against the comment, and potentially indicate the number of additional flags required in order to remove the comment.

• Allow reviewers to use all of their daily allowance with comment flags. If 10k+ userA can flag 100 comments in a day, then allow 10k+ reviewerB to have up to 100 concurring flags to support what userA flagged.

• I don't know if a "disagree" response is really required at this point for comment flagging. It seems like extra, unnecessary overhead when the point is to help clear out the ephemeral aspects of the sites. Just let the reviewer skip that particular comment and move on to the next in the queue.

• Likewise, I don't think we need the gamification aspects like we have with the main review queues. We don't need badges (gasp!); we don't need public rankings; we don't need public history of comment flag reviews. We just need to get rid of the garbage, ephemeral comments.

• There would be bonus points for this review mechanism if it could push the "rude / offensive" comment flags to the front of the review queue so they are handled more urgently than the other flags.

Answer 2

Quick critique in response to Undo's plaintive bounty...

First, this isn't a bad idea... For some types of flags. The "chat" method works really well when it comes to handling bad stuff that's easily recognizable - in fact, we already use a broadly similar technique to handle VLQ flags!

But when it comes to "noise", "obsolete" or "too chatty" it would be a huge waste of time at best, and likely result in more frustration than benefit for the worst-case scenarios. Remember, these flags often require the flag-handler to:

• Evaluate the context in which the flagged comments were posted: other comments, the age of the post on which they were posted, the age of the comments themselves, and even the content of the post in some cases.

• Remove multiple comments - sometimes even all comments - in order to avoid leaving a broken conversation thread laying around, or appearing to show favoritism toward one author over another.

This would require a lot more flags and a lot more people handling them. And for what? A few noisy comments? To get rid of something that might waste a few readers' time, we're now guaranteeing that a large number of highly-active, highly-privileged users must spend time dealing with them. I don't think this is a very good trade-off.

Of course, it's not a great use of moderator time either.

I'm not declining this suggestion, because I think it would work really well for certain types of comment flags, in particular "rude or offensive" but possibly also "not constructive" if we can do a better job of defining what that actually means. But for the rest, I think we need a more automated system:

I propose we increase our information density by hiding comments that are not bad, but just trivial and likely obsolete.

(emphasis mine)

The goal of that proposal is to enlist readers in the process of determining which comments are shown; they're the ones that benefit / suffer as a consequence of them, after all. The proposed strategy builds on the system we already have in place for determining which comments are shown in very long threads (or on questions with many answers). It requires that a good amount of signal is generated by the readers as to which comments are important, however - right now, comment voting is fairly rare... possibly because it seems fairly useless. To that end, we'll be running a series of experiments over the next few months to see if we can increase reader engagement in "moderating" noisy comments.

Stay tuned...

Answer 3

There exists a system already for auto-deletion of comments with sufficient flags ( How does comment voting and flagging work? ).

These flags are currently only visible to mods. By (simply) making the flags visible to 10k users, it may be possible to gain enough flags on the comments that no additional mod intervention would be necessary with the existing system.

Just "yep, thats too chatty, here's my flag on it too..." and its auto-deleted.

No, this does not mean give 10k the ability to delete comments as a special power but rather have the ability to appropriately pile on comment flags and let the system take care of it. This will also aide in the identification and handling of comment spam and otherwise inappropriate comments.