Chat flags for room owners?

Question

Recently it happened that a familiar high-reputation user from another room came into one where I am RO and notified me that there were flagged messages. I thought that if you were in a room and supposed to keep it clean would be able to see flags as well to be notified about stuff that should not be there.
The high-rep user informed me that one needs to be above 10k reputation or moderator to see flags (or has to have it raised in the first place).

While checking for duplicates my first stop has been the post A guide to moderating chat where it reads as well:

When you flag a message as spam/offensive, the flag will draw the attention of other high-reputation community members, as well as moderators. In both cases, they’ll be asked to determine if the flag is valid or not

While I support the reputation threshhold I wondered why roomowners would be excluded from the flag notification. And if that would be too much it should at least be visible for the room owners that currently are paying attention.

I could not find any negative consequences while thinking about it

• Noone would be super annoyed (mods and high-rep users already get notified) because the flags would be visible or there would be a notification for flags in rooms someone is owner of.

• It provides RO with a little bit more information about what is happening. It is kinda strange to see "a lot" of people rushing into a room because there was something flagged and have no clue what happened.

The trigger message (by a user who joined the chat for the first time) was something along the lines of "service/framework XY is dumb as fuck" (cannot quote the exact message because it was removed and I moved the message to one of the bins) if that was relevant. I did not see it as an offending message so I did nothing furtheron. Only after said user joined, I moved it.

To make my question(s) clear: Why are the flags in a room not at least shown to the room owners? Is that something one could/should implement?

(Tagging this discussion for now, because I am unaware of potential other pros/cons from users that are more experienced with the network)

Answer 1

The problem, in my opinion, is not seeing the flags, but rather act upon the flags (i.e. casting valid/invalid vote). That's a power I don't want users with low reputation to have.

Room ownership can be given with 100 reputation only. That means, with the association bonus, that a user with zero experience on a site and little experience elsewhere can become RO.

Sometimes it's hard to decide if a message is really offensive, in the context of the site and its culture, not only in the context of the room. That is why it's better to trust only users with 10k reputation with handling the flags.

I won't mind letting room owners only see flags in their room, but that will require non-trivial development effort, and not sure it's worth the time. As you mentioned yourself, there are more than enough high rep users across the network (and moderators) who come to those flags.

Answer 2

One of the chatrooms I'm active in makes extensive use of room owners to help moderate the place.

Firstly, as an active RO, if you see something wrong you should be acting on it. You're kind of the one on the ground, seeing things happen. Flags are kind of meant for situations where you need back up. You don't need flags for that. You should be dealing with it

Secondly in some cases ROs may not always use their powers appropriately. In a practical sense, this gives 10kers some oversight (even if they arn't a RO), reflecting how someone's trust depends on what they've achieved. On the other hand, a RO could hide evidence of things that shouldn't happen on a room over the long run - and its happened.

So, if you're an RO, you don't need it, just eyeball MK1 and common sense. You're the community's eyes on the ground and don't need a third party telling you where trouble is.