Two of my posts have been flagged using reasons that are IMO pulled out of thin air and just crazy accusations. I can only deduce that the person responsible for this is biased and simply selected a strong enough reason to hide the post regardless of whether the post content fits the reason. I feel like I am the victim arbitrariness and to be honest, it severely reduces my motivation to participate in this community.
Specifically this and this post was flagged with the reason:
Your post was flagged as inappropriate: the community feels it is offensive, abusive, to be hateful conduct or a violation of our community guidelines.
You could maybe argue that my first post was off-topic but this?
How can I proceed to appeal this moderator action?
Not all opinions are worth hearing. I for one am tired of people posting stuff like “why should we care about diversity?”, get flagged for bad posting, and then posting “why am I being silenced?!?!”. Read the room. Go post on Reddit if the standards for moderation here are too onerous.
Less like ‘censor’ and more like ‘censure’, when it comes to this feature, since while hiding a comment signals disapproval, it doesn’t actually prevent anyone from reading it.
But based on the content of those comments, perhaps some actual censorship is in order, tbf. (Think less ‘stop a deadly idea’ and more ‘remove a heckler from a show’.)
Not sure why asking that question is considered affensive. There can be a need for something, but the current proposal may not be the best way for achieving it. And if one propose a change which others consider unneccessary, shouldn’t people for that proposal argue why such a change is good for the long term?
Want gender minority representation is the governance structure is not a bad idea, but I think people should think about what is the purpose for this. Maybe in the moderation team to help communication? I think there should be a reason for a change, and should not treat everyone asking for a reason as sealioning or offensive.
The evidence is that my post was neither “offensive, abusive or hateful”. “Not worth hearing” is not “abusive”. And if people flag something that they don’t like as abusive or hateful, then that is dishonest and abusing the flagging system.
I guess, then “offensive” should be removed as a flagging reason. Because there is not limit to what some people find offensive. Its not a useful predicate for moderation decisions.
No moderating decisions have been taken. Everyone can still read your comments and they are only hidden by default because some amount of people have found it better to report them.
Only the reader or receiver of your messages are able to decide if they’re offensive or not. You, as the purveyor of those messages, are not in a position to decide such things.
This is not reality, and your attempt to lasso people into the “other” group is part of the problem.
it isn’t, and you’ve completely failed to understand how the discourse software works. People can still read your flagged posts, and no moderator action has been taken on those posts.
Are you one of the “whiny” people? You sure are whining a lot about this.
You don’t have harder skin, look at how whiny you are about several people flagging your post. Perhaps you should take it as a hint to compose your messages more thoughtfully.
The problem is that “abusing the flag system” is a thing that can cause you to be banned. If it is fine to flag whatever thing you disagree with by calling that offensive, maybe there is no way to define “abusing the flag system”?
Is it? It seems like being flagged excessively is a sign that you’re a disruption to the community, and being a disruption to the community can get you banned, yes.