That was my thought. It’s the popular kids (Regulars) vs the outsiders all over again.
And it feels really freaking weird to be in the former group.
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So what do you want to do here? Yell at her by proxy?
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That’s pretty much my reason for not flagging as well. For me in particular, it’s not unpredictability though as the few flags I did throw early on resulted in the mod(s) taking exactly the opposite action to what I felt was called for in the situations I brought to their attention.
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Q: Why don’t you flag?
A: Cuz, where I come from, snitches get stitches.
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The topic was the flagging system. I recounted an anecdote of it’s abuse, and enabling of the less rational by a mod who defaults to the complainer. There’s no reason why one member should be given veto power over civil discussion just because she’ll howl otherwise.
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Wait. Are you complaining about her posts being flagged and the mods too aggressively deleting the associated posts? Is that really the entirety of this story?
How is that showing favoritism against you?
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I think everyone needs to reread @codinghorror’s post 57.
There is zero evidence of people using flagging for viewpoint censorship. Zero. Let’s just stop with that right now.
I do not act on flags, but I see them (standard disclaimer: for technical/diagnostic purposes only), and I can tell you that for a fact.
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I don’t throw many flags,* and I admit when I do I usually throw several so either the whole situation has to be messed up or I’m low on patience. Usually I just figure arguing is how some people have to come to an understanding.**
I’ll flag for the obvious (outright abuse, slurs), if I know a situation already where users have told other users to leave them alone, or for going off-topic.
The last one I’m careful about given the wonderfully wandering nature of conversation here. I’ll use off topic if it’s an obvious thread derail 'Yeah, nice gadget, but Killary did…" or like we had a little while ago a user running the boards hitting every thread and shutting down conversations. Even in that case I don’t reflexively flag but consider the post and it was a small percentage (3-4?) out of over seventy in just a few hours.
There’s a lot of antagonistic interaction here that I just stay out of. When I don’t I’m (almost) always disappointed with myself later.
I see users getting ‘ganged up’ on in debates, but that’s a function of coming to an openly biased message board and posting statements the majority will disagree with. If you feel everyone is against you and your arguments maybe you need to explain them more thoughtfully or perhaps this isn’t the place for those posts.
*@codinghorror, I don’t want to make work for anyone, but is there an easy way to check a flagging history? I’m curious if the data correlates with my recollection of my flagging habits.
**That’s disappointingly fatalistic on my part.
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Is that supposed to be “check their understanding” or “come to an understanding,” or something else?
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Option B. Fixed.
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Bingotown!!!
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ok this is weird. I was just working on fixing something at work. What needs fixing? Literally – Option B.
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B is always the answer. When in doubt, bubble in ‘B’
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You want more flagging, just create badges for it so it can be gamified.
Like @critter, I’d quite like to be able to review my own flagging history. I think I’ve been fair and more often than not I’ve flagged conversations not users and asked mods to cool things down, but it’d be nice to be able to check.
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Flagged for off-topic.
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So, I can’t say why I don’t flag, but can speak to why I do. I’ve never flagged an entire thread/topic; that’d be way too much like attempting censorship or creating an echo chamber, in my opinion. This applies only to me - if others wish to do so, that’s their perogative. I guess I keep the fact that while we’re a pretty tight community, it’s not our site, in mind.
I do know I’ve flagged comments for being homophobic, transphobic, aggressive, rude, sexist - and always got a mod response. If the mods didn’t do anything, then I figure I was being over-sensitive in some way. And I don’t care what a person’s status is - newbie through to regular - if they’re being an arsehole or offensive, I flag them.
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@Skeptic - please show us a single instance of a single post that was deleted for viewpoint censorship.
…
What’s that, you can’t show us any deleted posts?
ERGO IT DID NOT HAPPEN!
Well, that solves that problem! Now we can go back to congratulating ourselves on how open-minded and welcoming we are to strangers who match our ideological purity!
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Scrabble rules? The post gets deleted you get the point, the post stands you get the time-out?
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