Why don't moderators see who flagged a post as spam? [closed]

Question

Considering the information moderators see when other flags are used, why aren't they able to see who flagged a post as spam?

It would be helpful when there are many flags that need to be handled, and moderators want to first handle the most critical ones. If I see a post flagged by a user who keeps spam-flagging posts simply because they contain a link, or who keeps flagging posts without a good reason, I would handle the flags from that user as last step.

Probably, this is relevant on sites smaller than Stack Overflow. I saw what I considered spam posts only in few cases, on Stack Overflow, and I guess that most of the spam is not handled by moderators.

I recently saw a spam flag raised for a question that is not spam (the link is for 10k users on Drupal Answers).

If the flag was raised from a high reputation user, I could think the post was initially spam, but it has been edited not to contain spam links (or links that could be considered spam) during the grace period; in this case, I would keep an eye on the user who posted the answer/question. If the flag was raised from a low reputation user, I could think the flag was used by mistake (which could happen to a high reputation user, though), and I would not keep an eye on the user who wrote the post. Knowing who flagged the post doesn't change how I handle it, but help understanding if there is a possible problem.

If a user keeps flagging as spam something that is not spam, and the system doesn't stop her/him from flagging as spam any further post (in the same way a user who suggests consecutive edits that are rejected is not allowed to suggest edits for seven days), moderators should know who is that user, to take any necessary action.

Answer 1

After repeated instances of abuse, this visibility was added during a major reworking of the flag system that discarded a lot of the historical differences between spam/offensive and other moderator flags. For the original rationale behind hiding these flags, see the revision history on this anwer.

Answer 2

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).

Answer 3

I'd like to see a middle ground implemented. Presumably, moderators would want to see who casts a series of inaccurate SPAM or offensive flags for the purposes of slowing them down and stopping the noise.

Take this scenario:

• User has a bad day
• Moderator takes action that adversely affects user
• User goes on a rampage flagging all of moderators 100+ vote rated posts as SPAM

Sorry, but simply declining here is not good enough. I want two things to happen:

1. I want the noise to stop
2. I don't want the user to dig themselves an even deeper hole

That actually happened.

I don't need to know who cast those flags provided that I have a button to prevent them from using that particular flag for the next 24 hours. This has two benefits:

• The noise stops
• The user gets the desired signal that a mod message would deliver. Upon clicking on the SPAM flag again they see:

  Due to a high volume of inaccuracy, we are not accepting this type of flag from your account for the next 24 hours. Please read (link)how the flag works(/link).

At no point does the mod know who cast those flags, because they really don't need to know. Additionally, the user has no idea what mod slowed them down, because they really don't need to know.

Have this action detract from the user's weight accordingly, where multiple uses of this feature would basically bury the flags in the future.

This saves us the pain and irritation of having to deal with temper tantrums on a flag by flag basis.

Of course, the button would only be visible if the user had more than two unresolved SPAM/Offensive flags in the queue. It would also be helpful if we could see SPAM flags grouped by user, even if the user isn't shown.