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I'm not entirely sure whether this is a bug, but it has important implications either way.

Moderator only tags (like , , and ) can only be added by, well, moderators.

However, in the case of , the tag is not permanent. A featured tag on a per-site meta or Meta.SE broadcasts the post in the site's community bulletin (or site-wide if coming from Meta.SE), and is removed automatically once the tag is removed by another moderator/employee.

However, as seen here, any user with full editing privileges on the main site or here on Meta.SE can use a rollback to make a post again.

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22
  • @nicael I didn't mean to put you under the spotlight, but it's just the post that happened to bring my attention to this.
    – AstroCB
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:10
  • And I know why. Because this post is one and only.
    – nicael
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:12
  • @nicael Interesting, but that's less of a problem, because the only meta with suggested edits is Meta.SE.
    – AstroCB
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:16
  • What am I doing wrong? I get "You are not allowed to rollback moderator only tags" when I try roll back to David's edit of removing the featured tag? I then tried to edit David's version of the edit but I get this "Someone else added a moderator-only tag to this question while you were editing. Please reload the page, but note that your changes will be lost."
    – CRABOLO
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:16
  • @lostsock Interesting. I tried it on a Meta.SO post and got the same thing. Maybe you can only add them?
    – AstroCB
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:19
  • Yes, only me. Really. I'm employee. :)))))))
    – nicael
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:21
  • Seriously, no user scrpits. You want to know how?
    – nicael
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:23
  • @nicael I have a feeling that that kind of information should be directly reported to SE.
    – AstroCB
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:24
  • @lostsock the exploit let us add featured tag back but not remove it again.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:24
  • @ShadowWizard exactly.
    – nicael
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:25
  • 1
    @lostsock it's not trivial, but surely possible. Out of time to try it myself, however exact steps to reproduce better be sent directly to the team and not posted here. (nicael don't want to do that for some reason)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:32
  • 5
    The fact that nicael does not have full editing privileges suggests that there is some old code from when the retag privilege used to exist that is still present in the rollback code. He didn't suggest an edit here, which should have been mandatory even for a tag-only edit. The edit was immediately applied. That alone shouldn't even be possible.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Sep 23, 2014 at 23:40
  • 1
    @nicael I hope you realize a bounty does not guarantee an instant fix and that Stack Exchange developers don't have magical code unicorns that can automatically fix any problem, no matter how complex the bug may be. (Also, meta rep is just mostly useless imaginary internet points ;) )
    – Doorknob
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 3:28
  • 3
    @AstroCB Sure, we'll look into it, but this is hardly dire so it's not at the top of the priority list right now.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 18:00
  • 1
    @ShadowWizard Last time we looked (when nicael reported it), all signs pointed to weirdness with post rollbacks, but we didn't fully chase it down at the time. Other stuff got in the way.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 21:48

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Non-moderators are not allowed to execute a rollback to a version that would re-add a featured meta-tag anymore. They get a notice instead like here:

browser alert when trying to rollback before the removal of a feature tag

This is the question I tested it on.

This is probably related to the fact that expiring is now handled by the community user performing an edit.

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