Drop "not constructive", combine "noisy", reword "rude" and "other" comment flags

Question

The problem

Comments are terrible; no one agrees on what they're for, or how long they should be kept. Comment flags are equally terrible, because if no one's on the same page as far as what should be posted in the first place then no one can agree on what should be removed either. On top of that, we have this confusing set of flags where two mean "noise", one means "vile", one means "moderator, help!" and one means nothing at all - the end result is that it's all but impossible to even analyze comment flagging.

The solution (or, part of it)

Two years ago, in a fit of rage, I wrote up some ideas for revamping comment flags.

Nothing got done. As always, everyone has a different idea of how things are supposed to work, and I'd bitten off more than I could chew. So, here we are, two years later, and comment flags still suck.

So let's start by just cutting the fat: if we can trim down the list of flags to a set of clearly distinct problems, we might have something we can build on. Here's what I'm proposing, based on the past two years of discussion:

1. Re-word the "rude or offensive" flag to read,

   rude or abusive: this comment violates our "Be Nice" policy.

2. Remove the "not constructive", "obsolete" and "too chatty" flags.

3. Add a new comment flag:

   no longer needed: this comment is obsolete, chatty or otherwise unnecessary

4. Re-word the "other..." flag:

   in need of moderator attention: these comments require action by a moderator. Be specific and detailed!

That's it; that's all I'm proposing to start out - simplify things so that we have something to build on.

See also: Drop "noisy" comment flags from the moderator queue unless an answer has 5 or more comments

Answer 1

Adam makes it happen!

This is the new UI for flagging comments:

(for reference this was the old UI)

The first flag replaces the former "rude or offensive" flag; the last replaces "other". The middle flag - "no longer needed" - is new, and is intended to cover all of "too chatty", "obsolete", and the non-abusive uses of "not constructive".

I'll be tracking how these are used, and how their use contrasts with the old reasons.

Please report any bugs here on meta, and blame Adam for pushing on a Friday afternoon.

Answer 2

Repeating my answer on the old suggestion:

no longer needed: this comment is obsolete, chatty or otherwise unnecessary

Before this wording is cast in stone:

The title No longer needed suggests that this flag is only to be used on content that was needed at some point in time. Going by the detailed explanation and experience, this is not the intention of the flag. To avoid this unnecessary confusion, I suggest to change the title to something like “not needed (anymore)”.

Answer 3

My experience as both a user and a moderator is that the distinction between "too chatty" and "not constructive" is not at all clear to people. Getting rid of those is great, as is clarifying "other" as "in need of moderator attention".

Obsolete flags are currently pretty broken, so I don't mind getting rid of them here, but I hope that in a future pass we can redeem them. As a moderator I would like to keep obsolete flags IFF we can improve them to tell mods why the comment is obsolete and/or let users validate obsolete flags against their own comments. Obsolete flags are a big time suck for me. Sometimes it's easy -- you can see that it's a reply to a comment that's no longer there, or the other person acknowledged it. Most of the time it's harder -- did one of the three edits between the comment and the flag really address the issue, do I even understand what the issue is (because moderators are not presumed to be experts on all topics covered by a site), is there something subtle going on?

Changing obsolete to "no longer needed" and lumping other stuff in there doesn't make things worse for me because it's already pretty bad. So given the state of obsolete flags today, sure -- go ahead. But I hope that, sometime in the future, you'll bring back obsolete flags in a functional form so that that subclass of comment flags can be handled more easily.

Answer 4

Speaking as a user: meh.

Speaking as a moderator: oh please no!

comment flags still suck

Agreed.

if we can trim down the list of flags to a set of clearly distinct problems, we might have something we can build on.

I'm not convinced that this is really on the critical path, but ok.

Re-word the "rude or offensive" flag to read, “rude or abusive: this comment violates our "Be Nice" policy.”

By all means, do add guidance to the dialog.

Remove the "not constructive", "obsolete" and "too chatty" flags.
Add a new comment flag:
”no longer needed: this comment is obsolete, chatty or otherwise unnecessary”

No! This goes in the wrong direction altogether.

An obsolete comment is a completely different problem from a comment that is too chatty. As a moderator who feels that I'm spending too much time on comment flags, I really, really dislike that you're proposing that I spend even more time by puzzling out reason for the flag instead of having it in the flag text. Please do not make moderator's life harder. Moderators reviewing comment flags need to determine what action to take. This involves two steps:

1. Determine whether the flag is warranted.

   • A comment is obsolete if there is a reply indicating that it is no longer useful or if there has been an edit incorporating the meat of the comment.
   • A comment is too chatty if it isn't on the path to improving the post that it's on, e.g. it's a digression, an unrelated question, etc.
   • I have no idea what makes a comment “otherwise unnecessary.”

2. Take the requisite action.

   • An obsolete comment needs to be deleted.
   • A comment that is too chatty — or rather a series of such comments — may either be deleted or moved to chat.

Conflating obsolete and too-chatty also makes future evolution harder. The best person to determine whether a comment is obsolete is its author; I hope that one day comment authors will get a chance to review obsolete flags on their comments. This does not hold for too-chatty flags, because many commenters believe that their comments are oh so important and totally not off-topic and they won't stand for the censorship of moving comments to chat.

Do not merge “obsolete” with “too chatty”.

Re-word the "other..." flag: “in need of moderator attention”

Ok. From a moderator's perspective there isn't that much difference between “rude and offensive” and that — in both cases, a moderator needs to evaluate the context, delete the comment if the flag is warranted and possibly take further action (e.g. mod message). But from flaggers' perspective it's nice to have the “be nice” remember in there.

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I would prefer to keep the 4 existing comment flags:

• obsolete — was a good comment, no longer is
• too chatty — is a good chat message but not a good comment
• not constructive — weak form of not desirable anywhere
• rude or offensive — strong form of not desirable anywhere

Arguably “rude or offensive” should be merged with “not constructive”, but there are comments that don't reach the threshold of violating the “be nice” rule, but are nonetheless “not constructive” because they're provocative or otherwise driving towards conflict, typically a sign of escalation in a comment thread. Moderators do need to be aware of such cases, ideally before they reach the “rude or offensive” threshold, so the flagging dialog should make it clear that flagging such situations is encouraged. (Note: this paragraph is written with my understanding of “not constructive” in mind. The phrase “not constructive” is so vague and non-consensual that it loses a lot of efficacy, which is one reason why it might be a good idea to remove this middle ground. It's useful, but only if people agree what it means, which is not always the case.)

Answer 5

Gilles and Monica already argued along that lines, but here are some more arguments to keep obsolete a separate reason:

The distinction between obsolete and too chatty (or whatever it shall be called in the future) is quite helpful for me as a moderator handling this flag:

• If a comment was flagged as obsolete, I first consider:

  • Did an edit address this comment?

  • Did another comment by the flagged comment’s author acknowledge that it’s obsolete?

  • Does the comment reply to another comment that has been deleted?

• If a comment was flagged as too chatty or not constructive I first consider:

  • Is this something that is not a valid comment on any post?

  • Does this look like criticism? If yes, is it really about the post in question?

  • Does this look like the author provide some information to be added or considered? If yes, is this actually relevant to the post?

This is already pretty different. So for fast comment handling, it is helpful to know whether the flagger thought the comment to be obsolete or too chatty.

Now, if the case is not as clear as above, I have to take a closer look at the post and all the existing and deleted comments. In that case, it is again helping what I am looking for from the beginning. With an obsolete flag, my focus is on the completeness of the post. With a too chatty flag, my focus is on the scope of the post (and possibly the question).

The worst case if the flag is invalid. With a separate obsolete and too chatty flags, I only have to convince myself that one of these cases doesn’t apply – with the proposed merged flag, I have to convince myself that neither applies.

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Now, one might ask why I do not argue against combining flags in general with the above arguments, or even for introducing more flags:

Using a type of flag for communication only works if everybody agrees what those flags are supposed to mean and there is no big grey zone between them. Otherwise choosing the right flag is too difficult or people get fed up with distinguishing and make the “wrong” choice. That’s why it’s good that the not constructive flag gets abolished (and that’s why there is so much quarrel about the NAA and VLQ flag).

But obsolete is different. I have never met anybody who did not understand what it’s good for. The vast majority of obsolete flags on my site are valid. And even on Stack Overflow the accuracy of obsolete flags is very high ([1], [2]). I have also failed to find Meta posts and similar by people who are confused by this flag’s meaning, while I found dozens by an analogous search for not constructive and too chatty. So, this flag is well understood and it works by communicating why a comment should be deleted. And all of this clarity is achieved by a single word – in the proposed interface, you can even spell it out.

I totally concur that removing not constructive solves a problem; I see that renaming too chatty may avoid some confusion; but I fail to see any problem that is solved by removing obsolete.

Answer 6

I like this from the triage point of view.

At the end of the day, any flag comes down to "I need someone semi-responsible looking at this". We're going to have to decide what to do anyway and this classification cuts it down to the basics. Things that NEED to be looked at and defused, things that are mostly harmless but clutter up the place and "everything else".

I've never really liked the "not constructive" flag either - typically when things sink to that level, its a broader issue, so I have a definite bias towards dropping that.

Answer 7

I see obsolete and too chatty as different. What about handing the decision to delete these off to high rep users through a comment no longer needed review queue? That way the extra work from differentiating the reason for the combined flag, is offor set by more eyes.