I disagree with Shog9's answer.

I believe that moderators should not contact users outside of the mechanisms provided by the site.

However, on any of the sites, we have very passionate users who contribute to the flagging, exhausting all their flags in a day.

I've come across the situation a number of times where the person wasn't necessarily flagging incorrectly, but they were flagging inefficiently.

While we were processing the flags correctly, giving them a nudge in a certain direction to flag in a different way would make everyone's life easier.

For those users, a custom decline message on one of the flags sometimes worked, but the thing I found most effective was to leave a comment on one of their posts/answers about how they were approaching flagging and how they could improve upon it to help the moderators process the flags.

I've found that ability to be very useful. If I didn't have the ability to see who flagged the post, then I'd not be able to leave a comment for them (which I'd delete when I know the message had been received.

In the case of spam, generally you don't need to contact users via comment (nor do we want to), but we do see cases where people will issue many spam flags against another user for nefarious means. Considering the weight that processing a spam flag carries on the user it is cast against, these are not to be taken likely.

When a person abuses the spam flag, this is a case when the moderator absolutely should reach out to a user through a mod message and possibly a suspension. However, when we see this abuse, we can't follow up on it as moderators because we can't see who is casting the flag (directly).

However, if we have an idea of who is casting it, and we are right, we can see it through their profile.

So basically, not giving us this info makes us play guessing games, and we will, considering we can get a payout (find the information we want) if we're diligent enough.

TL;DR

Moderators should absolutely be able to see who cast the spam flag and while it has the potential for abuse, all the other information that we already have access to carries the same potential, and we don't have a rampant issue with moderators abusing that (which is why we still have that access).

I disagree with Shog9's answer.

I believe that moderators should not contact users outside of the mechanisms provided by the site.

However, on any of the sites, we have very passionate users who contribute to the flagging, exhausting all their flags in a day.

I've come across the situation a number of times where the person wasn't necessarily flagging incorrectly, but they were flagging inefficiently.

While we were processing the flags correctly, giving them a nudge in a certain direction to flag in a different way would make everyone's life easier.

For those users, a custom decline message on one of the flags sometimes worked, but the thing I found most effective was to leave a comment on one of their posts/answers about how they were approaching flagging and how they could improve upon it to help the moderators process the flags.

I've found that ability to be very useful. If I didn't have the ability to see who flagged the post, then I'd not be able to leave a comment for them (which I'd delete when I know the message had been received.

In the case of spam, generally you don't need to contact users via comment (nor do we want to), but we do see cases where people will issue many spam flags against another user for nefarious means. Considering the weight that processing a spam flag carries on the user it is cast against, these are not to be taken likely.

When a person abuses the spam flag, this is a case when the moderator absolutely should reach out to a user through a mod message and possibly a suspension. However, when we see this abuse, we can't follow up on it as moderators because we can't see who is casting the flag (directly).

However, if we have an idea of who is casting it, and we are right, we can see it through their profile.

So basically, not giving us this info makes us play guessing games, and we will, considering we can get a payout (find the information we want) if we're diligent enough.

TL;DR

Moderators should absolutely be able to see who cast the spam flag and while it has the potential for abuse, all the other information that we already have access to carries the same potential, and we don't have a rampant issue with moderators abusing that (which is why we still have that access).

I disagree with Shog9's answer.

I believe that moderators should not contact users outside of the mechanisms provided by the site.

However, on any of the sites, we have very passionate users who contribute to the flagging, exhausting all their flags in a day.

I've come across the situation a number of times where the person wasn't necessarily flagging incorrectly, but they were flagging inefficiently.

While we were processing the flags correctly, giving them a nudge in a certain direction to flag in a different way would make everyone's life easier.

For those users, a custom decline message on one of the flags sometimes worked, but the thing I found most effective was to leave a comment on one of their posts/answers about how they were approaching flagging and how they could improve upon it to help the moderators process the flags.

I've found that ability to be very useful. If I didn't have the ability to see who flagged the post, then I'd not be able to leave a comment for them (which I'd delete when I know the message had been received.

In the case of spam, generally you don't need to contact users via comment (nor do we want to), but we do see cases where people will issue many spam flags against another user for nefarious means. Considering the weight that processing a spam flag carries on the user it is cast against, these are not to be taken likely.

When a person abuses the spam flag, this is a case when the moderator absolutely should reach out to a user through a mod message and possibly a suspension. However, when we see this abuse, we can't follow up on it as moderators because we can't see who is casting the flag (directly).

However, if we have an idea of who is casting it, and we are right, we can see it through their profile.

So basically, not giving us this info makes us play guessing games, and we will, considering we can get a payout (find the information we want) if we're diligent enough.

TL;DR

Moderators should absolutely be able to see who cast the spam flag and while it has the potential for abuse, all the other information that we already have access to carries the same potential, and we don't have a rampant issue with moderators abusing that (which is why we still have that access).

I disagree with Shog9's answer.

I believe that moderators should not contact users outside of the mechanisms provided by the site.

However, on any of the sites, we have very passionate users who contribute to the flagging, exhausting all their flags in a day.

I've come across the situation a number of times where the person wasn't necessarily flagging incorrectly, but they were flagging inefficiently.

While we were processing the flags correctly, giving them a nudge in a certain direction to flag in a different way would make everyone's life easier.

For those users, a custom decline message on one of the flags sometimes worked, but the thing I found most effective was to leave a comment on one of their posts/answers about how they were approaching flagging and how they could improve upon it to help the moderators process the flags.

I've found that ability to be very useful. If I didn't have the ability to see who flagged the post, then I'd not be able to leave a comment for them (which I'd delete when I know the message had been received.

In the case of spam, generally you don't need to contact users via comment (nor do we want to), but we do see cases where people will issue many spam flags against another user for nefarious means. Considering the weight that processing a spam flag carries on the user it is cast against, these are not to be taken likely.

When a person abuses the spam flag, this is a case when the moderator absolutely should reach out to a user through a mod message and possibly a suspension. However, when we see this abuse, we can't follow up on it as moderators because we can't see who is casting the flag (directly).

However, if we have an idea of who is casting it, and we are right, we can see it through their profile.

So basically, not giving us this info makes us play guessing games, and we will, considering we can get a payout (find the information we want) if we're diligent enough.

TL;DR

Moderators should absolutely be able to see who cast the spam flag and while it has the potential for abuse, all the other information that we already have access to carries the same potential, and we don't have a rampant issue with moderators abusing that (which is why we still have that access).