140
votes
Accepted
Cancel misclicked flags
This is now completed and as of August 2016, live network-wide.
Note that if you're a moderator (and thus your flags are authoritative), there's no retracting. Also, close flags get converted into ...
- 12.4k
125
votes
A machine can flag spam automatically. Can it do better?
I see a very big difference between moving to 4 or to 5 automatic flags. I wouldn't have any issue with 4 flags, but 5 flags means that only a single user is required to nuke the post. This would ...
- 187k
113
votes
Can a machine be taught to flag spam automatically?
Stack Exchange has its own spam detection and prevention system. If I understand its design goal correctly it prevents spam from even being posted. What SmokeDetector finds are basically the posts ...
reneMod
- 91.4k
102
votes
Accepted
Allow moderators to flag comments normally
This has been fixed, thanks for posting!
Moderators can now flag comments with the "Something else" reason so that they can draw comments to the attention of other moderators on their team. ...
- 7,723
76
votes
A machine can flag spam automatically. Can it do better?
The biggest advantage I see in how the Smoke Detector project has operated thus far is its transparency: one of the most frustrating aspects of using these sites is how difficult it can be to ...
- 454k
72
votes
Can a machine be taught to flag spam automatically?
We determined we can beat those numbers and eliminate spam from Stack Overflow and the rest of the network even faster.
(Emphasis mine)
What, if any, work have you done to ensure the robustness of ...
- 15.3k
69
votes
Accepted
Question flags, queues, edits, roomba, community♦, how does this actually work?
Phew, this was a really long request. It took a long time to work through all of this, but I'm going to try. As you've mentioned a lot of this has been documented in multiple places - MSE, MSO, help ...
- 51.5k
69
votes
A machine can flag spam automatically. Can it do better?
The thing that concerns me about 5 auto-flags is that sometimes users are wrong and now it only takes one user to spam-delete a post. A statistic that would help me better evaluate this is: on each ...
- 183k
68
votes
Accepted
A call for emergency moderation/tools on the sites that most need it
When I think of this whole debacle, I'm reminded of a King of the Hill episode from decades back. I can't point you to an exact episode number, but I recall this exchange.
A manager at Strickland ...
- 58.3k
59
votes
Accepted
We need a dedicated plagiarism flag
UPDATE
We've built and will be releasing a plagiarism flag on 22 March 2023 (on SO only). For more info, see this MSO post - Plagiarism flag and moderator tooling launching to Stack Overflow
We can ...
- 109k
52
votes
A call for emergency moderation/tools on the sites that most need it
Can you please instantiate some emergency procedure of asking willing members of the community if they'd volunteer and step up to handle flags, until a more permanent solution can be made?
I do not ...
- 7,841
48
votes
Accepted
Set a benchmark on acceptable behaviour
Set a benchmark on acceptable behaviour
Okay! Sounds like a good idea to me, let's do it -- oh, wait.
Be Nice is the benchmark.
If what you say doesn't fall within acceptable bounds as defined by ...
- 36.3k
45
votes
How do we stop users from using the "spam" flag when there is no "promotion of a product or service"?
The moderator flag queue is biased towards bad spam flags.
Posts that are deleted by 6 spam flags from the community have their flags marked helpful. This removes the flags from the moderator queue. (...
- 36.3k
45
votes
A call for emergency moderation/tools on the sites that most need it
There was another answer on here that said:
Essentially what you are asking for are strikebreakers:
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker
While useful to the entity in power (read: Stack Exchange ...
- 7,841
45
votes
Stack Exchange needs its own anti-spam system
I'd argue that it would be very difficult to replicate Charcoal without a fair amount of effort.
You can automate flagging and removal. However the 'rules' used to detect spam are manual, community-...
- 186k
44
votes
Is posting doxxing information ever acceptable?
Likely covered by existing policy in the form of the Acceptable Use Policy? (Some emphasis mine.)
Identity Theft and Privacy. Users that misleadingly appropriate the identity of another person are ...
- 58.3k
42
votes
Add a warning for low reputation users (15-49) upon flagging for moderator
The real solution to this is to simply expand the ability to cast standard close flags down to the reputation level where you can start flagging.
It's my understanding that the reason for the 50-rep ...
- 60.7k
42
votes
A machine can flag spam automatically. Can it do better?
Art mentioned this in a comment:
However, while some people are more zealous than others in flagging
I dunno whether bad luck, or good that it occurred, this happened yesterday:
The red color ...
- 10.8k
39
votes
How do I properly use the "Not an Answer" flag?
What is the not an answer flag?
The not an answer flag (NAA) is a flag to indicate that someone used the "answer the question" box to post something that doesn't attempt to answer the ...
37
votes
Accepted
Where did the "Spam" and "Rude" flags go?
Adding this as an answer for visibility: thanks for bringing this to my attention- just pushed out a fix. I had added flagging to election nominations and accidentally included a bad check. This ...
- 1,511
36
votes
Accepted
Show us who submitted offensive and comment flags
George's concern - and my concern, raised in a couple of places, elsewhere over the years - are still valid... Seeing who raises a flag stands a good chance of prejudicing the moderator handling that ...
- 454k
36
votes
Can we remove the 5 second rate limiting on comment flags?
As a moderator I would rather see atomic flag groups -- a way to indicate that several comments are part of the same "incident", with mods able to handle them together. (This is what you suggest in ...
- 183k
35
votes
A machine can flag spam automatically. Can it do better?
Smoke detector is a fantastic project, it has inspired many of us to do other type of moderation bots.
However once Brad Larson stated in this comment on a question that I made
I'm not terribly ...
- 867
35
votes
Accepted
Is an off-topic political message inherently rude or abusive?
The spam and R/A flags have the same mechanical effects on a post, so, in the end, it probably doesn't matter too much which of these two you use from that perspective (and an argument could certainly ...
- 6,616
34
votes
Moderator flag dashboard design refresh (alpha)
For comment flags, it can be hard to tell the difference between the comment text and the flag text.
For example:
Usually one can tell from context which is which, e.g. if the flag is a standard one ...
- 33.5k
33
votes
Accepted
Can moderators handle flags cast on their own content?
All flags are viewable by all Moderators and there are no built-in blocks to prevent a Moderator from handling a flag on their own content.
But Moderators are bound by broad prohibitions against ...
- 111k
31
votes
How can we handle users derailing debates in comments?
To answer your questions:
You could flag it as "No longer needed": "This comment is outdated, conversational or not relevant to this post."
See 1.
Iirc, 3(+) red flags on a comment result in the ...
- 7,841
29
votes
Flagging a moderator's comments
When you flag a moderator's comment, the system treats it like any other flag and it will appear in the queue of all the moderators of that site.
That being said, moderation best practice is to avoid ...
- 6,616
28
votes
Don't age away spam/rude/abusive flags
Before making any changes, I did a bit of looking in the database to see how often these flags age away. While it doesn't happen very often, it is enough on some of the smaller sites that we don't ...
- 51.5k
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