Can we flag questions with content/trigger warnings?

Question

Part of my daily routine is to go to stackexchange.com and see the hot questions. Today this hot question was up:

https://pets.stackexchange.com/questions/21575/how-can-i-fix-my-relationship-with-my-7-month-old-cat-after-ive-constantly-abus

The question itself seemed like it might be a problem but my curiosity got the better of me, and I was not expecting to see quite so much graphic detail about the nature of the abuse -- to the extent that it ended up giving me a panic attack.

I feel like this question (especially in detail) is likely to cause a lot of emotional grief for a lot of people, and it would be beneficial if it could be flagged with a content warning and, ideally, if questions like those would not show up on the "hot questions" list.

The question itself is legitimate and I am glad the user asked the question -- and the answers they received are, also, quite beneficial. But it certainly isn't the sort of thing I was hoping to be confronted with, especially as a "hot question."

Thus, what I am proposing:

1. Have the ability for the community to flag such comments with a content warning
2. Prevent such posts from appearing on the "hot network questions" display and sidebars.

Edit: It appears that the question has since been deleted. I have mixed feelings about this (the answers which were given would have been very educational for the person asking). Regardless, I still feel like a content-warning mechanism would be helpful; sometimes there are questions that are important and valid but which are also troublesome for some people to see.

The use of CW-based partial-hiding is well-established in communities such as Mastodon, where people can put things behind a structured spoiler/CW tag that indicates what lies behind it.

Answer 1

I'm not surprised at all to see this post. I deleted the question on Pets this morning. I was waiting a reply from a community manager, as it was an unprecedented type of question on Pets. (I'm a mod on Pets).

Someone had created a suggested edit using a spoiler or content warning (someone will remind me of the correct term) to hide the abusive behaviour with a warning above it. That was something I didn't think to do last night when I first saw the post.

I don't believe editing the title would help, in fact the title served as a warning in itself, but definitely the content could be screened.

From this, not so well managed, experience I would recommend a protocol.

If there is any offensive written content, that is not clearly off topic for a site, but may constitute a bona fide question. I'd recommend users edit the content to use a spoiler plus create a custom mod flag. Mods can also make these same edits. (the ability to flag of this type of content is already there in the form of custom mod flags)

This is to be compared with gratuitous abusive content for that warrants abusive flags.

I'm sorry everyone was subjected to this, it was indeed a disturbing question. We will handle it better in the future and hopefully this will help other sites also.

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Updated action

The question was deleted while there was advice from the community team and discussion with other moderators. This deletion took the question from the Hot Network Posts.

After some moderator discussion about the pros and cons of this post we have undeleted it. Included is a comment clean up, as there were some pile on of comments, naturally, as this type of content upsets and frightens people.

Using the principle of assume good faith, we're treating this post as genuine and attempting to provide good answers. At the very least it may help people who are too ashamed to verbalise their actions and need for help. We cannot solve deep emotional problems, but we can provide sound advice on the care of pets.

In terms of Hot network questions, it's definitely vital that NSFW content is hidden by spoiler tags, whether the content is graphic or written.

Nothing is set in stone, we're dealing with this on the fly, and trying to determine a protocol, as this is a precedent for our site. We are open to feedback. Please comment under this post, write an answer or visit us in chat.

I thank you again for bringing this to our attention on here.