So, I have a weird question, out of curiosity. I’ve noticed that when a post is already flagged and hidden by the time I get to it, there’s no option to add another flag to it. How will you know which users would have flagged it, in order to know which users’ flags would have been in agreement with the moderators? It seems like you’re only gathering statistics on those few users who happen to be first-on-the-scene and are thus able/allowed to flag? How will you know which users to invite to be Leaders in the future, if you don’t know which users’ flags would have agreed with the moderators?
It’s never going to be me who’s invited, so I’m not personally concerned—I’m just always interested in how things work. What am I missing?
Do you think it would be better if folks could ”game” the system by flagging posts already hidden in bulk to artificially up their flag agreement score?
Leaders are regular, active users who volunteer significant time to the community (enough to reach TL3 - Regular) status already, who happen to also participate in moderating discussion by flagging often, and, those flags are mostly agreed with by moderators.
It isn’t a competition to win. They see an inappropriate post and flag it. Like everyone else, they cannot flag posts already hidden, either. And yet they still manage to flag often.
The primary purpose of flagging isn’t to score users. It is to notify moderators of troublesome posts, and remove them from the discussion. Once the post has been hidden, both purposes have been met, and further flags are no longer necessary.
Took me a while to stop back here with a more substantial reply in addition to my thanks.
Just wanted to say that that’s not what I meant at all. It had seemed to me that if you’ll be looking for people to help you in the future, you’d be limiting your choices if you didn’t gather info on a greater number of users. But you’re right, there would always be people who would try to game something, and I hadn’t even thought about that aspect—that’s the part I was missing.
