Is there a way to view the content of flagged posts? I’m often curious as to what’s been flagged so I can avoid being flagged myself.
That said I noticed a post that came just after one of mine, ( Viewing the Inbox at the same time as Projects? [Available in v2.10] ), #85, by @Cliftonplymouth that IMO didn’t seem abusive, yet it’s been flagged & hidden since sometime shorty after it was posted. I was just lucky enough to see it before it was flagged. The post was strongly critical of Omni, but, to me, looked like brutally honest, emotional, feedback - exactly the kind of feedback that should not be swept under the rug.
While there should be a way to flag posts for moderation, the moderation should happen quickly, and perhaps if a post is removed some sort of trail should be left stating why it was removed, and perhaps even providing an example of what was said, (although that could be delicate).
When a post is flagged, all that’s required to make it visible again is for the author to edit it - it’s automatically re-shown at that point. Just make a good-faith effort to address whatever issues were cited.
It’s important to know that (barring problems that haven’t happened yet here, like overt racism or something similar) we don’t moderate for content or to “sweep things under the rug". There are plenty of strongly critical posts on these forums that have never been flagged to attest to that.
If a post stops being about software and starts being about people, though, or if it resorts to hyperbolic language or a clickbaity title then it’s going to be far more likely to fail the “please disagree agreeably” standard set forth in the community guidelines.
Most online communities are pretty terrible. It’s a recognized phenomenon that the loudest and (sometimes unintentionally) most abrasive voices tend to cause the more moderate ones to stop showing up or participating. Thus, the average level of discourse gets coarser and coarser unless steps are taken to correct that. We really don’t want that to take root here.
Our intent is to be sympathetic, helpful, and open to feedback in making things less confusing while we work towards that goal, but we take this stuff seriously and are also going to be relatively unapologetic about taking steps to move things in the direction we want. The only way to get high-quality results is to have high standards of behavior for all participants.
This article - warning: regrettably NSFW title and language within - does a good job of laying out the issues and proposing a course of action. It shaped a lot of our thinking.
The request you’re referring to arrived after midnight local time, and monitoring the forums is one of the things we do, but it isn’t the only thing. Support tickets and other duties sometimes have to come first…
I wasn’t being rude about anyone, I was merely questioning whether a certain group of people used OF.
You may not moderate the content but its ultimately up to yourselves whether it continues to be posted.
I don’t think its a phenomenon that loud and you say abrasive, I say passionate, people are the ones to get to get heard the most, its just a fact of life, i.e Hitler, Mao, Churchill, Gandhi.
I can see removing abusive or inciting messages but if you would rather your forums reflected a nicey, nicey view of how things really aren’t thats up to you.
Thanks for letting us know how this works Brian. It seemed weird, and very un-Omni-like to me that flagging seemed to be shutting up some strong opinions - your Omni-style seems more to respond, or ignore, and move on, but to not work to silence criticism.
I now how crazy, and terrible, online communities can get, and it seems that some elements of this community may be more sensitive than others, (hence @Cliftonplymouth’s post being flagged).
