Occasionally as a moderator I've noticed flags from the Community user. I've got a few questions:
- Why do they exist?
- What events trigger them?
- How might moderators act on them?
1 Answer
When you look at the Community user's flag history you are seeing all the flags from deleted users which are assigned to Community. But there are also 10 flag types that are generated by the system in order to bring to moderator attention situations that might be missed by a site's users. These flags don't always indicate a problem (otherwise the system would take action directly). Their purpose is to serve as a canary in the coal mine.
The complete list of automated flags and their descriptions is:
- low quality (auto)—"Failed low quality algorithms upon creation"
- This flag will also result in the post being placed in the Low quality posts queue, or, on certain sites, the Triage queue for questions or the Low quality answers queue for answers. Dismissing this flag will remove it from those queues.
- disputed low quality review (auto)—There are three reasons why this flag will be raised, all of which result from the Low quality posts or Low quality answers review queues:
- A post was dismissed with a Looks OK outcome, but "Looks OK" did not constitute a majority of the reviews. (Due to the way the review queue works, it's possible for tasks to be dismissed with fewer Looks OK reviews than close/delete reviews - this flag is to indicate that that happened.)
- An answer was deleted in review, but it was undeleted by the author.
- An answer with a positive score was reviewed as Recommend Deletion.
- consecutive closed questions (auto)—"User has had multiple questions closed back-to-back"
- post is excessively long (auto)—"Post body is much larger than usual"
- too many comments (auto)—"Post has more comments than usual"
- too many answers (auto)—"more than 10 answers posted in 7 days" (15 answers on Software Engineering)
- possible rollback war (auto)—"Post is being rolled back more than usual"
- question closed without explanatory comment (auto)—"A question on a private/public beta site has been closed without any explanation"
- duplicate answer (auto)—"Many of a user's latest answers are similar/identical"
- possible vandalism: deletions (auto)—"Possible vandalism of own posts; multiple deletions in a short time"
- possible vandalism: edits (auto)—"Possible vandalism of own posts; multiple edits in a short time"
- possible vandalism: comments (auto)—"Possible vandalism of own comments; multiple deletions in a short time"
- possible comment abuse: too many rude/NC (auto)—Too many comments with "harassment" or "unfriendly" flags
- too many owner edits (auto)—"More than 20 edits by the original author (auto)"
Each flag's description gives an idea about what caused the flag to be raised. Of note, the "question closed without explanatory comment" is not raised on sites that are not in beta.
I've linked a meta-question that asks for guidance on how to respond to each flag. In general, treat automated flags as you would any other. Feel free to decline Community flags if they aren't helpful.
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1Is there any point to dismissing these flags as helpful or not? Like does saying "found no evidence to support it" go back into the system to help tweak the algorithm? Commented Dec 1, 2013 at 14:59
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@DoubleAA: We don't make use of that information at this time. Presumably (though I haven't checked) most moderators pick helpful in most cases since it's the quickest way to dismiss the flag. So the feedback is not likely to be as clean as one might hope.– Jon Ericson StaffCommented Dec 2, 2013 at 4:49
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4I have seen the Community flag “More than 20 edits by the original author”, which is not in this list so does not have a helpful link to guidance. Can you add one? Commented Oct 16, 2017 at 20:59