Moderation actions need to be transparent on discourse

[AngryAnt]

Honestly I do the same most days - even the ones which were hidden because I blocked someone. Then on other days I am very happy I can skip them and manage my energy levels a bit better.

[rhendric]

@AngryAnt

Then on other days I am very happy I can skip them and manage my energy levels a bit better.

I’m glad to hear it helps. Sometimes watching ‘likes’ pile on to hidden posts, I’ve wondered if there’s any value in bothering with making these calls at all.

[paperdigits]

@rhendric

’ve wondered if there’s any value in bothering with making these calls at all.

Yes, there absolutely is! There is zero possible ways that discourse or any other community platform would survive without moderation. I think what the average, non-moderator person can not see is how nice things are with moderation vs not having it all all.

[piegames]

I think that even if everybody reads them, marking them as hidden still communicates that this post is “not okay” in some way. To me, it also indicates that replying to it is not necessary/desired.

[wombat]

Someone initiated an RFC on this, leading to a discussion on Reddit. While I personally disagree with the RFC, I appreciate the intent behind it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1cfv8vo/moderation_nogo_zones/

[nat-418]

I think users can decide for themselves after having read the comment.

That’s the point of the flag system. We users read posts, we see they are bad, and we flag them as bad.
You might not agree they are bad. That’s too bad. That doesn’t make the flagging system bad.

[samrose]

@nat-418

That’s the point of the flag system. We users read posts, we see they are bad, and we flag them as bad.
You might not agree they are bad. That’s too bad. That doesn’t make the flagging system bad.

I support the flagging, and what @nat-418 says here.

Personally, I have been trying an alternative to peer flagging, where I instead respond and try to offer alternatives to what the person is doing that could be more constructive, and explain why the comment they left might end up being a problem.

However, not everyone has the time to do this. And within the last 2 months sometimes the pace of contentious comments blew up to the point that no one could moderate them.

See also

Why are posts being unlisted?

Discourse has this feature for “self-moderating” communities, where flags combine together, with some weird scoring maths. When the score gets above a certain threshold, Discourse assumes the flags are correct, and hides the post, while also sending it to a moderation queue. Later the moderators can decide if the flag is upheld, or removed. Now, I said hides the post. Posts can be the initial post of a topic, or replies to a topic. When flags are made on the initial post, the post itself gets u…

And the responses to my inquiry on it here Moderation actions need to be transparent on discourse - #18 by samrose