If you think it is something that should be flagged, yes! That way we can look at it and make the decision. Sometimes we will agree, sometimes we won’t. Sometimes it may be a a message to the poster or an edit to the post.
As long as flags are being done to make it a better place for all and not to just make problems for another user as Martha Stewart says “It’s a good thing”.
There was at least once where I flagged something, it was removed, and then the original poster came back with basically “Wait! I wasn’t trying to spam!” It was sort of awkward.
I had a case in the last 48 hours which I really considered flagging but the person was very skilled in veiling their personal insults so I decided not to report. That plus I really should have known better than to enter a thread which was even vaguely political in nature because of course it will be filled with nasty.
Awkward for the admins, not for you… That’s an occupational hazard of running a BBS. Point it out, let them make the decision; if they judge wrong let them take the flack and thank 'em for trying.
In cases like that and it is deleted it may be something that we did feel felt spammy. If they came back that meant they weren’t thought of as a real spammer, just someone who came across that way.
When I come across that I will delete but also send a PM explaining why. That way the person posting can also learn and be able to not do it again.
Well, you’re the people I want to talk to! So don’t go away! I hate the nasties! I like the conversationalists.
I’m talking about what I see and have seen, not about extreme metaphors or what “makes sense” within a pre-existing paradigm. I prefer to fit my theories to observed data and not the other way around. 
Edit, only slightly offtopic: when some people proposed that new members of a group I belong to not be allowed to vote until they’d been members for a year, I counterproposed that anyone who hadn’t been a member of the group longer than my pants should not be allowed to vote. I happened to be wearing very old pants that day, so that rule passing would have invalidated the votes of the people making the proposal. It made the people in question re-examine what they were doing when my amendment almost passed…
Right, so specifics matter. A rule that no new users can post until they have faxed in an application and said application has been personally approved by each Boing Boing editor … might be excessive? I feel like we are spending a lot of time attacking a theoretical strawman. Let’s talk about concrete examples otherwise we aren’t actually talking about anything.
Speaking of getting concrete, I am curious if you can show me any actual real world examples, anywhere, of an expert showing up as a new user and replying to a topic 25 times. Or even 10 times.
See, here’s the thing about experts: they tend to be rather busy people in my experience, not the type inclined to shoot the breeze with a whole lot of random individual people in discussion when they can, instead, state their position cleanly and clearly to everyone in the audience in a single post. That is … kinda what makes them experts in the first place.
A year seems like a crazily long amount of time offhand. On Discourse we are almost ready to trust you as a no-longer-new-user if you hang around for 15 minutes, though you do have to enter a few different topics, too. Also, I have absolutely no idea what voting means within the context of your community. Voting for coolest topic of the day? Voting for the next forum moderator? Voting someone off the forum?
When something is flagged, does the author of the post see who flagged it? I assume the moderators would see it.
The author doesn’t know it’s been flagged at all, unless you use the flagging option that explicitly contacts the author rather than the admins.
The author does not see it. But admin and mods do.
Hmm, maybe we should mention that flags are private in the flagging dialog? Also, I still like the idea that you proposed of offering a per topic flag button to disconnect it from individuals.
Yeah, in many cases the problem isn’t a single post but that it’s part of – or is almost certainly going to spawn – a major argument or digression. As CH mentions, I’ve been known to flag my own post in order to say “I don’t want to point fingers at individuals – yet? – but you should be aware of what’s going on here and consider whether it needs to be nudged in the right direction.”
Meatspace community, run under democratic principles and existing as a legal non-profit corporation. But the issues are the same as any other cooperative or communal human enterprise; people want things, and quite often humans won’t see the needs and priorities of other people as being equal to their own. The less someone knows another person (i.a. n00bs) the less such people’s representation seems to matter, and the less defense they have against being denied participative equality.
Replying to answer your questions, not because I have policy objectives here. I am still just telling you what I see, and perhaps you see different things.
I don’t think this is true – post edits for typos are made with considerable frequency!
Comments were never that good a venue for corrections, though. We should probably put an email link in the post itself to make sure it gets to the author/me
I usually catch my own typos…
I added some copy cues here, you’re right, we need to make it abundantly clear that flagging is a private thing that does not appear for anyone else except moderators/staff.
Does this help?
That version isn’t quite deployed here yet, but you will eventually see similar copy here on BBS.
This now exists, excellent suggestion, note that you can flag the topic (in addition to flagging posts) via the flag button at the bottom of the topic.
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