PSA: Flagging is NOT the replacement for downvotes!

Community General Discussion
390

I’m surprised they’ve even implemented such a system in the first place. It’s far too easy to abuse. Just look what happened to Lydon’s High elf thread a couple of weeks ago. It was constantly getting flag bombed to a point were it was getting locked almost instantly the moment the thread re opened. A playerbase, especially one that can be as toxic as the wow community, should never have this much power on the forums.

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391

The moderators do read the threads that are flagged and will actively take action against anyone purposely using the flagging system as a downvote/censuring tool. They know it isn’t designed for that and do make sure that those that abuse it also end up understanding. They aren’t able to convey to us when they make those decisions though for the same reason we can’t name and shame on our end.

And this system is in its infancy with the WoW players. It’ll require some adjustments over time I’m sure to make it less abusable on our end and easier to review on their end. Introduction to Discourse as forum software is a start. Bornakk acknowledged the issue in a post as well.

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396

They have been active on that today, numerous amount of threads that went buried resurfaced again so at-least they’re doing that. I would like to see a change in the system so it doesn’t get automatically buried, instead it just brings about the attention of moderation to act on it.

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399

Don’t forgetto mention they should bring back the text box with the option to explain why you flagged it in case it isn’t immediately clear.

Like if the user’s name or guild name is massively inappropriate, it’s still something that should be flagged as it’s being posted with on the forums, and before they had that option but it was removed, and now it’s gone, and without the ability to explain “Oh hey, this person’s name is severely inappropriate” if you get a GM that had a long day and is just down to looking at post content, they might skip it and assume it was a false report.

Then there’s other reasons, like explaining WHY something is harassing, like if someone has been stalking you through multiple threads to harass you. They won’t often check that, but if you have the ability to tell them that, they can indeed verify that and take action.

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400

Agreed. All we can hope for is that they take our concerns under consideration and maybe tweak some of the wording in their coding to try to help this issue.

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401

That is a good point! I’m not sure if this system allows for that ability, but no harm in asking!

402

I think in this case people were flagging as spam as a High Elf topic already exists. I’m not saying I agree with spam flagging it to the point it locks as soon as a MOD unlocks it just pointing out why it may have been flagged in the first place

403

Oh it’s always a personal attack, trust me.

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406

thank god

there is some hope on the forums at least

and i had to eat a day over this thread but you’re worth it

407

i liked this post but i forgot to reply to it :frowning:

i didn’t know but it figures. appreciate you as always :kiwi_fruit:

408

Anything they put in place can/will be abused and misused. It’s part of human DNA to find ways around things.

409

Same thing happened to me early last year. On appeal, I stated “If I could figure it out myself, I probably would have phrased it differently. If you don’t tell me what specifically was wrong, then you can’t be surprised if it happens again.”

I finally got a straight answer. I wasn’t protesting the action, I just wanted to know what I did that triggered it.

410

Calling people insufferable is now considered as trolling to some people.

Some really need to go outside.

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411

I feel like this is relevant to bring up again, simply because after the bug of locking threads yesterday, people have begun talking about the flagging issues some more.

Just want to keep this in mind for everyone! :blue_heart:

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414

Once again, let’s keep this in mind, my lovelies.

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415

Shouldn’t have removed the down vote feature, they could have left it in place just so we could downvote some of the doo that gets posted here. But hey, this is a place where only positivism, happiness, and rainbow farting unicorns are allowed, no negativity! :man_shrugging:

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416

Rhielle, I’ll be honest and say you’re one of my most favorite posters on the forums and I agree 100%.

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417

There is plenty of negativity. If the goal was to reduce negativity by the way of downvote removal… it failed horrendously.

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418

Do you know bumping up like this is spam.

Do not “bump” posts.

The act of posting simply to bump a thread is considered spamming. This also includes bumping very old threads for no reason (called “necro bumping” or “necroing”).

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419

I feel like there needs to be some category for like…inappropriate/inflammatory topic? Like there are posts that are clearly made to be offensive, but aren’t specifically using slurs or swear words. I have this problem occasionally when reporting people in game for saying extremely racist, pedophillic, etc. stuff but without any actual bad language, like what category is that?