No, those with moderation permissions cannot view the reports you may have made after the fact in order to locate deleted threads.
I asked for possible URL’s since you made a claim that the threads you reported, by abusing the reporting system, had nothing wrong with them. I hoped to confirm that because in many situations threads that some feel are perfectly fine tend not to be. While they aren’t considered to be egregious enough to warrant a penalty, they will often be deleted since they don’t really belong.
Yes, that does happen. People report a post because they feel it violates policy. They also do it because they believe not coming around to their way of thinking is somehow trolling. In either case, the motivation behind the report isn’t really a factor, this is not an automated system. It means that the Moderators reviewing the thread felt that it should be removed.
I would say your limited perspective does not give you any true insight to actually validate that claim, Nelfas. You simply don’t know what actions that our Moderation team has taken against those who abuse the reporting system. Using an example that you got away with it as your evidence is like saying that highway patrol ignores speeders simply because you were able to speed without getting a ticket. You got lucky, the moderator missed it. That may not happen again.
Let me clarify some on reporting. There is a significant difference between someone reporting a post that turns out to not violate policy and using multiple characters/accounts to report a post. As I mentioned before, we do not wish to discourage players from reporting a post that they feel may violate policy for fear that they will be penalized if they are wrong.
So simply someone reporting a post because they disagree with you may not be what the system is intended for, but it isn’t generally something that we would action someone for either. Our Moderators do keep an eye out for those actively abusing the reporting system, and the penalties involved can be pretty hefty to those who may have been caught doing so, but we’re going to miss things on occasion. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t actively working to curb the behavior.
I work with the Moderation team a lot and I’m very much aware of their processes and challenges. I am very much aware that there is some merit to those accusations that some folks are trying to use the reporting system as a weapon.
Understand though, such use of the system can only get a post temporarily hidden, pending Moderator review. If a post is deleted or restored is entirely based on if the Moderator agrees, within the bounds of our policies and guidelines, that the post should be allowed.
Moderation is more than just penalizing those who may violate the Code of Conduct though, there are hundreds of posts made every day that may not specifically violate policy by using vulgarities, but are not necessarily constructive either. When reviewing a reported post the Moderator often looks to see if the post itself should simply remain hidden or be deleted. If they further feel that the post does otherwise violate policy, they will action accordingly based on the severity of the post as well as the history on the account.
Yes, that does happen and it is something that our staff keeps an eye out for. In situations where it can be verified that is happening the account is penalized. Again, these posts are still reviewed by our Moderation team so regardless of who or why it was reported, what happens to the post/thread from there is based on review.
There is a difference between “No reason” and simply not understanding or not agreeing with the reason, Nelfas.
The thread you created was a High Elf thread, yes, specifically about the Quel’dorei as being made part of the Alliance, but it is basically the same discussion.
Part of what the Moderation team does is to help limit the amount of spam on a specific topic. So in situations in which a popular discussion may be responsible for creating multiple threads on the subject they will work to consolidate that discussion to one or two active threads. They will often merge many discussions into a single thread and remove the extraneous discussions to encourage posting in the main thread.
If you posted a new thread, which was deleted because there was already an active discussion going and then reposted it, that would be considered spam.
The bottom line is, what you believe to be acceptable and what we do are likely two entirely different things.
Let me also reiterate. Yes, we’re very much aware that the reporting system isn’t always used as it is intended to. Our Moderation team keeps an eye out for that. Additionally, without being able to go much into it, the reporting system itself does keep track of the history of a user and how valid their reporting history has been. That is a factor.
We also have the forum team, who works on developing and implementing updates, who are aware of the current limitations and continue to work on improving the overall system.
When mod delete a topic or a post it is also removed with all likes/flags/activity reports. So, i can not link you anything because it is removed from activity list. I am not sure if it is even possible to see which topics i flagged at all, also they are deleted now.
It already happened twice in this topic for my posts. Since this is allowed, this fake flagging will continue.
The amount of topics and posts exposing this problem about false flagging is absurd.
As people from moderator team should have already solved this problem 4 years ago, but they tend not to do it.
There was no active discussion about playable silver covenant faction as an allied race for alliance.
No, it was a different request from ongoing topic, that’s why i made that one. That “High elf” topic became nothing but troll/joke spam. Original poster already noted he achieved that topic goal and yet it is still not locked. Double standards.
Now, i created new one, again. Was flagged, surprisingly it was restored by staff.
I hope i am not dreaming.
I voiced this problem because it is out of control and my topics were falsely flagged and removed.
People falsely flag topics because they do not agree with it. Mods delete it, because they do not agree with it. Difference?
I tried myself false flagging because i read someone was doing this to check if it is even possible. Unfortunately is very easy to abuse.
Nonetheless, thank you for constructive reply. I voiced my opinion because i want this system to be fixed and willing to see changes in this/it.
That is part of the issue, a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what reports do. Your posts weren’t deleted, they were temporarily hidden for review. A temporary hide isn’t the same thing as causing the post to be deleted since it is otherwise visible for anyone who chooses to click on it and see it.
The title was “Quel’dorei high elves as an alliance allied race”. It was considered a High Elf thread.
A central thread isn’t really about the original poster, it is about keeping the body of the discussion in one place and not hundreds of other threads scattered throughout the forums. When the OP may decide the discussion is over is not really a factor, it isn’t up to them.
Yes, likely because it isn’t such a major topic now to where it is needed as much to consolidate multiple threads. I can’t say for certain as I don’t know what volume the Moderators see.
Your original post that was hit for spam was made in December of 2020, which was still considered within the scope of time that Moderators were trying to consolidate those.
Yes, there is a difference. The difference being that the Moderation team is given policies and parameters to moderate and decide what posts may violate policy or may not follow our forum guidelines. So decide which ones need to be removed, locked or any other action that is covered under moderation.
It has happened because your posts can very much be considered trolling. That isn’t what “false flagging” is. Just because you don’t agree that a post should be flagged doesn’t mean that it can’t be or that if it is it was flagged falsely.
I can’t say if a Moderator fully reviewed the entire post. I did, and probably would have categorized it the same. You even linked one of the main High Elf megathread as well as a thread in EU that you created there.
If you feel a post within the thread is inappropriate you can report it. That thread is more for our Devs and Community Managers to review for feedback/suggestions on the subject. Our Moderation team isn’t going to review every single post made in it. That really isn’t feasible or the best use of their time.
Just making sure, since you stated that it happened twice in this thread but the “it” was simply that your post was hidden because of reports, not that the post was deleted.
If your complaint is that posts are hidden by reports until they are reviewed, there isn’t anything I can really say there. The goal of the reporting system is to keep potential Code of Conduct violations from being immediately visible to all readers until they can be reviewed and either unhidden or removed. Those hidden posts can still be viewed if you click on them.
Yes, they are. They don’t have a horse in this race. They don’t know who you are or really, and I say this with the caveat that we all care about you as a customer/player, care. They don’t really notice who is posting, outside of tracking spam/trolling posts. They look at the post/thread and judge what to do based on our Code of Conduct, Forum Guidelines, and the policies and procedures around their jobs.
You may not be privy to or agree with the actions they take, but that doesn’t make them wrong or biased.
Happy to try to provide some clarification when I can.
What you perceive to be a big problem isn’t. A limited number of posters act like this.
You are mistaken. Falsely reporting threads started back in Vanilla, way more than four years ago. There is very little the Mods can do about it as they don’t build the web site or the player interface. Blizzard has no control over how players act, they can only react. The “problem” to be solved is societal. It can’t be programmed out of the forums.
The Silver Covenant are High Elves. The Blood Elves are High Elves.
What you might be looking for is more reputation-based like Kirin Tor, rather than an actual race.
The proper thing to do is to appeal the removal rather than reposting a deleted thread.
You didn’t give any suggestion on how you would like it fixed. You just said things about false-flags.
You would need to post in the forum that handles website suggestions.
