Well I don’t understand what happened in that thread at all but there was something going on with the first post being ’ I can flag it but I didn’t.
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1 Like
that’s the 4th post.
there were 2 posts prior to that which were removed.
this can be established by mousing over the time-stamp on what appears to be the 2nd post.
it will bring up a url in the bottom of your browser, which will have the url of the thread, and a number after it.
the number after the url on that post, is /4 …which shows there are 2 posts which were deleted.
oh i never knew that
in any case, those odd people who do false flag as trolling, there is already something in the coc for them.
- Abusing the Reported Post feature by sending false alarms or nonsensical messages
the point of linking that thread, was to illustrate that people will flag things which aren’t against the CoC, and regardless of what Raven seems to think, mods have already viewed that thread and left it intact… which means they’ve decided that the thread is fine.
…because of course they did.
there’s nothing in there which is wrong, or mean, or offensive, or spammy or anything else… it was just a dude asking a simple question about heirlooms… but people flagged it, simply because they could.
someone even asks:
people need to be able to ask questions.
there is absolutely no reason why someone seeking information about the game, should get flagged.
meanwhile, the troll threads flow freely.
when this iteration of the forum began, it was moderated hardcore.
…then people discovered that if they just flag everything, it gets to the point where there aren’t enough hours in the day for mods to review all the flags.
something needs to change.
at the very least, blizz should consider switching to posting with battlenet accounts instead of characters, to preventing people from spamming flags (and hearts) on their army of alts.
yeah, it’s there.
there was also a blue post stating that it wouldn’t be tolerated.
…but it’s still rife.
2 Likes
So wouldn’t this thread be a good idea on why you shouldn’t use it as a downvote?
I would say the same exact thing to you.
You keep on saying that like it’s actually true.
That’s what flagging does, it siliences people and it tells people that your thread isn’t good if it’s hidden. You don’t seem to understand the subtlety behind the post being hidden, especially since NoCanisCanemEdit has pointed out as thread where they are just asking about heirlooms. Nothing about the OP said warrants a Flag, he wasn’t intentionally upsetting anybody or trolling or anything.
And this has absolutely nothing about “effort”, that strawman you like keep bringing up to deflect and dismiss.
It doesn’t. You are more then welcome to keep on saying it and touting it as a “fact” but it doesn’t really change the reality that the system is being used as a downvote more likely and/or not being used for something that breaks the CoC. If it’s actually fine then we wouldn’t have this thread, or people won’t complain about it, now would we?
And don’t give me the nonconstructive “Oh it’s just a whiny bunch of kids crying over nothing” subjective unsubstantiated non-excuse poop we hear a zillion times, because it’s only serve to make that person saying that look worse.
And since you want to be non-subjective, you should be against the idea of “Upsetting” being part of the CoC because that can literally mean anything.
Simple, bring back downvoting
Citation? 
I don’t think it is rife.
I don’t think there is any value to changing a system because the odd person does ‘x’. This is the same sort of thing that happens with people getting kicked out of dungeons. People run to the forum and want to have the vote to kick feature changed.
People that I tend to disagree with that are frequent posters (either too much trolling or just outright bat guano crazy) will get the ignore on the forums.
Bring back downvoting, BUT make it simply a number counter; no actual effect on the thread like before.
That way folks can disagree but no forum action is taken for that alone.
This became a problem after they took the dislike function away.
Fix #1 - bring back the dislike button
Fix #2 - Make reporting take a bit more effort by requiring you to explain why you’re reporting the post as trolling, spam, harassment, etc.
people would still report people almost just as much - is my memory correct that the forum used to actually show the number of times a post was reported on the left hand side or was that the number of dislikes - can’t remember now.
that isn’t much of an ‘effort’ - I would end up reporting more if I could do this actually because sometimes I don’t report because I don’t feel it is obvious to the moderator why a post is a violation of the CoC. That said I would love to see this back.
It was dislikes I believe
I believe it was just the number of downvotes. Blizz has never disclosed any details of actual reports.
I have it stuck in my head that was the number of reports because I remember a thread I disagreed with almost everyone in it and every single post of mine was buried and I had all these doubled digit numbers to the left.
That isn’t details of actual reports, and is actually little different to how the current forum handles it - 3 reports and you are buried. So 3 now you know and before I believed you got the actual number.
But two people say it was downvotes/dislikes so it is likely I am remembering wrong anyway.
I am the same. It I also feel that some if they were forced to articulate why they find the post offensive wouldn’t report as often because they are only reporting because they don’t like what is being said not that it is particularly offensive or whatever.
maybe but how many people are doing that just because they don’t like what someone says? I actually don’t think many people, I think most people who report, like well over 95% do so because they believe a violation has happened.
Make no mistake this is about woke topics getting flagged. Whats a woke topic? I don’t know. 
But yea.
But just because that’s their reason doesn’t mean something didn’t happen they could just be petty and the rules are broad enough that a lot of posts fall under them.