The new election system has solved several problems with regards to flagging nominations and comments (both were badly needed), but the UX has fallen down in a weird way. I visited the SO election today and there was a notice at the bottom of the page. This is literally all I got (anonymized for public viewing)
This... doesn't really tell me anything. In fact, it's so low profile that on a desktop I nearly missed it. The "Nominated" link simply takes you to the nomination on the nomination page (flag handling options in any form are not available in the election tab). Since it was in the mod notices area I figured it was a nomination flag, and you can only click into the the flags page from there. It was an educated guess, but still a guess.
The reason for the short interfacing is likely due to the fact that community managers, not moderators, handle flags on the nomination itself (since nominations are now a type of post, moderators can still see the flag itself in the flag list page). Normally the attention message we just saw would be followed by interfacing with the flag and tools to handle the flag, but since we're not allowed to handle the flag it apparently doesn't draw the dialog at all, just the header. This requires a minimum of two clicks (plus knowing what you're looking for) to figure it out.
The mod console isn't much more help (although it does at least tell you the flag is related to the election). In this particular case, the flag was a spam flag.
There's a couple of ways to play this
- Hide the notice if you can't handle the flag. Not keen on this (I'd rather know there's a flag, even if I can't handle it, since CMs are likely to discuss it with us anyways), but it would resolve the confusing notice
- Add something underneath for moderators that explains it's a nomination flag to be handled by CMs. It would also be useful to have a link directly to the flags page here, so you don't have to navigate through the nomination to view the flag
I think the button to view flags gets hidden on the Election tab because it normally lives next to the View Deleted Comments button. It really should be visible on the Election tab as well, regardless of which path is selected above.
