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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 Propane had made some executive decisions which riled a lot of the drivers, and this was before Christmas Eve - a prime time for users who had propane-powered ...
51
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 think that is a good idea.
Moderators are elected on SE. They are meant to represent the community. Even if you were to start elections here and now, it'd take ...
46
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 not permitted. Users may not post other people's personally identifying or confidential information, including but not limited to credit card numbers, Social ...
45
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 Inc.), one could see how allowing this would undermine the very thing the strikers are trying to accomplish: awareness and change.
Please dont.
...
35
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 be made for either). That being said...
Spam is probably the better flag here
From What are the “spam” and “rude or abusive” (offensive) flags, and how do ...
33
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 like "no longer needed". But the formatting of the two lines of text is identical, and especially with custom flags, it can be easy to get confused for a ...
31
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You could flag it as "No longer needed": "This comment is outdated, conversational or not relevant to this post."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 automated deletion of said comment. Multiple automated deletions automatically trigger a mod flag.
SE meta is pretty understaffed at the moment, which ...
27
My answer too was deleted by a staff member. I flagged it for attention explaining that it did answer the OP's questions, but the flag was declined without further explanation.
It received 11+ and -8 votes but it is not the voting that is bothering me, I have had posts heavily downvoted before on Meta, it's part of the game. It is the deletion and silence ...
24
Firstly, a deleted answer is only visible to logged in users with more than 10k reputation (on graduated sites), so most visitors to the page won't even know it was there.
Secondly, if a post has even one spam flag on it then when it's deleted it's hidden behind a "this post was flagged as spam or rude" message so even 10k users won't immediately see the ...
22
I'm just a regular user so this is basically just my opinion. Note that I didn't read this question you link to, its' answers nor the comments under them (so I basically just read your post here).
When I read the comment you left, here is what I noticed (in bold part):
@user So, essentially, 'My way or highway' - Glad to see how you're willing to ...
21
bug status-completed
Don’t show what the flagger of a comment did to the parent post (question or answer). For example:
Here the comment flagger upvoted the post under which the comment was posted. I know that the vote wasn’t on the comment, because that one received no upvotes. Not only is this confusing, but also should I not see this information in the ...
21
On any other site, featuring a question on meta features it on that site (only). Moderators can and do use the "featured" tag locally to highlight things that are important to their communities.
Here on Meta, featuring a question features that question on every site on the network. We don't have the option to just feature something on this site like other ...
21
I think that BelovedFool's answer covers the specifics, but I suspect some insight into the processes of this would be useful.
This does feel weird to have basically essay length posts covering what should be a disposable oneliner... but here we are.
Our flag queue is pretty full, but currently being worked on. Apparently this specific post was flagged, ...
20
feature-request status-review
My main issue with the interface is that it is very cluttered:
There are lots boxes and horizontal lines. In particular the following seem unnecessary:
the boxes around edited and owner,
the box within a box when expanding a post view.
Note that just removing these will probably not suffice to address the issue.
There is ...
20
Its as much about what you say it as how you say it.
I don't want to particularly dissect it bit by bit - and give the ideas in the answer a direct airing but the answer was pretty much an attack on the person posting the question and the community she was a part of.
The nice thing about SE is we have a bit of an immune system. Looking at it - the tone (...
19
The answer to this typically depends on who would ask the question, and the overall quality of their posts.
So I had a look at your profile (actually the active account - BTW you can ask to merge them). I am not able to see the potentially deleted posts, but from what I saw - and from what I could guess about your intentions from your description above -, ...
17
status-completed
In the "how do I dismiss" box, there's this text:
Note that deleting a post or comment automatically marks the flag as valid.
Everywhere else on the page - and, really, just everywhere else - flags are "helpful", not "valid". To be consistent, shouldn't it be "helpful" here too?
17
Ok, this is fixed - all comment flags will be henceforth ignored for the purpose of this check, along with any "in need of moderator intervention" flags raised on the post itself (that exception already existed).
Thanks for pointing this out; by my estimation this was probably responsible for around 700 invalidated reopen reviews on Stack Overflow alone, ...
17
Even before our beloved Miss Cellio was unjustifiably fired and Journeyman Geek stepped down, I occasionally have flags hanging around for more than a day before being handled, most notably during weekends.
Given the recent wave of protests, I'd assume CMs and the remaining 2 Meta mods are pretty busy at the moment, so it's perfectly normal for your flag to ...
answered Oct 4 '19 at 13:36
iBug is disappointed in SE
23.9k5 gold badges44 silver badges92 bronze badges
17
I am a moderator (on a different site). You are a user who fully understands that comments are ephemeral. I presume, probably correctly, that you also are aware of the old "be nice" policy. In essence it says, "Don't be unkind. Just be nice. Be able to walk away before you start being unkind."
Your comment does not need to be taken in context.
When someone ...
16
I believe it's still possible to answer you without seeing the actual content of the answer, but based on the content you describe:
anything that criticizes the LGBT+ community (or some of its members) seems to be now a suicide because the answer will not be a conversation but a flag-attack.
Constructive criticism should focus on opinions and facts, ...
16
The community isn't your enemy
A lot of people anecdotally think Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange is just like this (source):
That's more a meme (the first panel's question is Too Broad/ Needs more Focus on all sites), so let's talk about what this meme is aimed at: Curation. Let me use the same example I mentioned over there
Now, I'm not talking ...
15
status-review
The too many comments autoflag now has a special button to move comments to chat (yay!):
Can this button please be made to dismiss the flag?
This has been a minor annoyance for years since we need to first move and then go back and dismiss the flag. The action of moving should automatically dismiss the flag as helpful.
I assume that the ...
14
This is a privilege escalation attack, plain and simple. Using this, a non-moderator user can instruct the Community ♦ user to take disciplinary action against other users. In fact, they can answer ban other users under the right conditions – I've confirmed this (details not disclosed for obvious reasons). It's also difficult for moderators to detect when ...
14
If you see spam or other posts that you think that should be nuked with red flags, the fastest way to get it actually nuked is to talk with people in Charcoal HQ. (You need 20 reputation points to participate in chat.)
Just drop a message containing a link to the post. There are Charcoal members hanging around all the time and they will report the spam or ...
answered Feb 28 '19 at 12:27
iBug is disappointed in SE
23.9k5 gold badges44 silver badges92 bronze badges
14
Just like Should spam posts be edited?, abusive posts shouldn't be edited; that makes it harder to get rid of them.
There's one exception: if only part of the post is abusive, and the rest of the content is worth keeping, edit out the abusive part. But in that case you shouldn't flag it as abusive (though a custom moderator flag is in order when the user is ...
14
TLDR: no. When in doubt, don't press "enter comment".
Couple of things...
After considering the tone of comments I've made after the fact, I wonder if the community considers what I've written as unkind, and if I need to rethink my wording (I'm often quite blunt).
Self-criticism isn't a bad thing, far from it. But I'm not sure being able to see flags ...
14
feature-request
I don't know if this falls within the sphere of the improvements you're currently making, but would it be possible to make the comment flag options helpful and decline rather than delete and decline? Sometimes I want to mark a comment flag helpful without deleting the comment, or vice versa.
A few days ago someone on my mod site flagged a ...
14
It seems obvious that the company places not much value in moderating work, be it by moderators or the community. Instead much of it is seen as unwelcoming and scaring away new users, hurting the growth the company is trying to accomplish.
Most actions in the last year indicate that they are happy to get rid of those users, in the hopes that everything will ...
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