I am aware that a similar suggestion was made and rejected. The major criticism of that one was essentially this
The only problem with this is it's unexpected - there's no visible trace on that post to indicate to the user why their grace period didn't apply. Seems like it'd be more sane to drop the grace period on something like a vote, which is publicly visible, and is automatically triggered by a spam/offensive flag anyways.
The flipside is that you get things like this formerly rude answer. It's not obvious to anyone why it was rude-flagged out, but Metasmoke remembers (it's filled with an inappropriate word over and over). The poster edited the post just seconds before the final flag came in. This is a poor experience for flaggers and moderators alike, as the history of why the action was taken is gone.
I'm hoping we can maybe tweak the original proposal to cover both concerns.
- Raise the bar to two flags instead of one
- Limit this to just spam/rude
It covers the concern that a user might not understand why their grace period expired (your spam/rude answer is collecting multiple downvotes), and ensures that a single user can't end it by themselves. If more than one person thinks it needs immediate removal, that should lock in the post as it exists at that moment.
