Is it a punishable offense to abuse this system? If not, it honestly should be.
I’ve noticed on a lot of threads, that can be rather controversial, that it’s being used as a Downvote instead of being an indicator for mods to see that something might be against the rules.
Due to an automated system, highly flagged posts either get hidden with a warning to view it or the entire thread gets locked.
I’ve seen this on two threads that aren’t trolls, aren’t offensive, aren’t anything bad and are completely within topic of this forum yet get hit by this system because other people don’t like the OP’s opinions.
People shouldn’t be aloud to abuse the flagging system, a system used to call moderator attention to actual content against the rules, just because they don’t like someone’s opinions.
My honest solution to this problem is that is a post is being mass flagged and a Moderator has already checked and seen that it’s ok then the Mod should be allowed to disable the flag on the post entirely unless it’s edited afterwards.
It’s a very strange system, and seems like threads with a bunch of lifetime reports logged up just constantly get locked the moment even a single new flag is added. I wonder if it’s produced more or less moderating work for the forums team.
It was changed because Blizzard are cutting costs and that includes indirect labor, such as moderators. Instead, this system allowes masses to determine by a “vote” if something is inappropriate.
It saves the company salaries but as seen, causes abuse. It also does not help to deter the “licenced trolls” (the ones who frequently post insults yet never get infracted). Cliques can and do get people infracted for things that are not an actual violation, just an opposite view.
It’s not Bliz. It’s the company that made the forum software, probably.
Said company’s lead dev also does not believe in a block/ignore posts function, hence despite ignore being the standard policy for harassment on WOW we can’t do so on the forums.
There’s a big gray zone where some people think they’re being cool and creative and inviting meaningful discussion, while others see that this is the 100th virtually identical thread this week and view it as nothing but spam.
I was asking legitimately because I wasn’t sure how that worked. I didn’t know if it was automated after so many flags or how this system identified that.