Interesting. I like that feature. Thanks for the clarification.
Just from a personal perspective, as a user who wants to engage productively with others, I would want to know if and, if a reason was given, why a comment of mine was flagged (though not by whom), and I’d feel completely comfortable with everyone else seeing that information as well. Even if it doesn’t move me, all I have to do is not edit it, clarify or apologize. But if I do see the logic of the flag, I’d want to know so I could improve on it.
On a separate note, another thing that would be really cool is if it were possible to view older versions of edited comments on request. The reason being that, as a pedant, I frequently edit my own posts to fix typos or add to the comments, but it would be nice if people could see that I hadn’t deleted anything or, if I did and they wanted to know what, they could see what it is. For example, in my first comment on this thread, there’s a word-order typo that I left in because its irksomeness didn’t outweigh my desire not to have people wonder if I removed something from it. Just an idea and maybe not even practical.
One issue might be “choose one” list of reasons for flagging.
I was once a moderator at a high-traffic site, and at BBS I just flag anything that makes me wish I could hide it. It sounds like that’s what you want.
But probably a lot of people see something they might otherwise flag, look at the list of flagging criteria, and say to themselves “No, it’s not one of those, never mind.”
Off the top of my head two more possible items for the list might be
Derailing
Hostile and Unwelcoming
Or the descriptions of “Off-Topic” and “Inappropriate” could be rewritten to explicitly include these sorts of posts. (Or you could just get rid of the list.)
