An explanation of the forum flagging system

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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The flagging system is probably the most misunderstood feature of Funcom forums. Since there seems to be no information about it in the Welcome to the Funcom Community Forums post, I thought I would make this post to help people understand it.

What is it?

The flagging system is a community moderation feature of Discourse, the open source forum software that Funcom community forums were built on top of.

It’s a tool that empowers users to participate in moderation of the forums. By using it, the community at large can try to help the moderators keep the forum discussions civil, reasonable, and on-topic.

How do you use it?

When you see a post that you think doesn’t belong in the discussion, you can decide to flag it by first clicking on the “…” button below the post:
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and then clicking on the flag button:
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When you do that, you’ll be presented with the following pop-up:
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As you can see above, there are several valid reasons to flag someone’s post. Contrary to the popular belief, it’s not only something you do if someone is being rude or saying something hateful or offensive, it could also be off-topic, spam, or simply break the community guidelines.

You also have the option of sending a direct message to the author of the post instead of flagging it:
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Or you can flag a post for a reason that doesn’t fit any of the previously described, in which case you’ll have to leave a message for the moderators, explaining why you flagged the post:
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What happens when you’re flagged?

Usually nothing, at first. The reason why it’s called “flag” is because it’s not much more than a signal. If only one user flags your post for one of the predefined reasons (i.e. off-topic, inappropriate, or spam), nothing will happen. The system takes action only if several users flag you. And the first thing that it will do is quarantine your post.

If you’ve on these forums long enough to start complaining about the flagging system, you’ll have noticed that flagging a post does not get it deleted. Instead, it gets temporarily “hidden”, for a very loose definition of that word, since you can still view it with just one click:
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When that happens, you also receive a message from the forum system notifying you that your post was flagged for moderation by enough people, that it’s temporarily hidden, and what it was flagged for (i.e. inappropriate, off-topic, or spam). The same message also explains that you can edit your flagged post to fix whatever it was the community found objectionable in it.

When a post is temporarily hidden due to flags, the moderators also get notified about it. A moderator looks at the flagged post, and they can do one of the following things:

  • nothing, leave it flagged
  • delete it
  • edit it
  • unflag it

If a moderator unflags the post, it’s reinstated as fully visible. Furthermore, it means they vouch that there was no problem with it, which means that subsequent flags will result in a pop-up saying “Thanks, but we already examined it and it was okay.”

If the moderator leaves it flagged, it will get automatically deleted after a certain period of time, unless you edit it to attempt to improve it.

Also, if you edit the post, the flag is automatically removed, even if the edit didn’t really fix anything. For that reason, the post can be flagged again, and if that happens, subsequent edits won’t remove the flag and the only one who can reinstate it is a moderator.

What flagging is NOT

If you’ve read all of the above, it should be clear that several of the popular tropes you might have seen are completely false.

“Flagging is Funcom’s censorship tool!”

No, it’s not. Users are the ones who flag the posts. An actual moderator can simply edit or delete your post, or lock and de-list a whole topic if they want to.

“Flagging is cowardly and bad! You could just ask me to delete my post.”

No, it’s not, and yes, we could, but that would only add more noise to the discussion. Flagging is the way to ask you to edit or delete your post. If you disagree with the flag, you can get your post unflagged the way I explained above.

“Flagging is only for rude and offensive posts! My post isn’t like that.”

No, flagging is also for off-topic posts, spam, vandalism, or violations of the community guidelines. If your post was flagged and you think it didn’t do any of these things, you can get it unflagged the way I explained above.

“Flagging is being systematically abused!”

No, it isn’t. The most likely explanation is that you didn’t understand the flagging system, which is why I wrote this post in the first place.

It’s true that some people might flag your post just because they disagree with it, but the moderators will act appropriately and restore it. Furthermore, if the moderators see that a user is consistently misusing or abusing the flagging system, they will act on that. Flagging is a privilege that can be – and occasionally is – taken away.

More information

If you’re interested, you can read more about the Discourse flagging system here.

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In short, multiple account gank one person or majority flag it. Basically happen to me while other question why it was flagged lol I dont think I ever seen a moderator unflag a post.

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If you have sock puppet accounts, the mods are perfectly capable of detecting it. And if you start abusing those, they’ll act on it quickly enough.

I have. That’s how I know what happens when they do, because sometimes when I try to flag a post, the pop-up will tell me the moderators have already looked at it and decided it was okay.

Just because there are people who think it shouldn’t have been flagged, it doesn’t mean it was wrongly flagged. I mean, there are people out there who are utterly convinced the Earth is flat, so it’s pretty clear you can find people to agree with pretty much anything in the world.

The point of the flagging system is that you have the community (i.e. the users) and you have the moderators, and they work together. Sometimes the outcome of that work is that what you wrote didn’t belong and you can do better the next time around. No big deal.

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Discourse kindly notifies the Forum Staff of the accounts when they post to the same thread.

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Enough” users flag a post. This could be 3 trust level 1 users, 2 trust level 2 users, or a mix.

What is the trust level of a “regular” member ?

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I know for a fact that the users required to hide a post was increased not a long ago. As a regular, I was able to flag a post and hide it (which is something I use very carefully and only when deserved). However, this is no longer the case, now my flag is no longer enough which is fine for me since I don’t use the flag feature often. In the cases when I feel the user crossed a line, I flag it for moderation explaining why I believe this is something that moderators should personally review.

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Andy increased the threshold in March of last year.

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A regular is a trust 3 member, but the information you quote is from Discourse defaults. As @Narelle and @Taemien explained, this was adjusted.

I agree wholeheartedly with @Narelle: I’m glad they increased the threshold, because I really didn’t like having the ability to hide a post all by myself. Now I feel much better about having the trust level of a regular, because I don’t feel like I’m single-handedly making a decision about whether the post should be hidden. It goes against what I believe “community moderation” should mean.

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Sure, there have been abuses. Every system can be occasionally abused. What you quoted me saying up there is about systematic abuses. The claim of systematic abuses is as false as the claim of Funcom using flags for censorship.

Funny how underlining this human propensity for mistakes is of supreme importance when we’re talking about moderators and admins, but the people who were frequently flagged by their fellow forum users and whose posts and even accounts were subject of forum moderation will never acknowledge they were in the wrong.

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As far as I’m concerned it’s some one with attitude slapping a gag on your post because they didn’t like what you had to to say, or was thin skinned enough to take offence when none was meant or intended.

Being some one that gets flagged around here quite a lot, and for no other reason then some one not liking the way I said something, the system is abused. When “your post was flagged as spam: the community feels it is an advertisement, something that is overly promotional in nature” there had better be a commercial for a different game or item in it.

I have never, never to my knowledge ever had a flagged post unhidden. And as far as I’m concerned all it takes is one person; the right person, to flag a post to have it hidden.

I would almost bet if the forum mods check my flags they will see an over whelming majority are from the same 3 people.

Now my question is why are you so vehemently trying to defend a broken abused system?

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The system is not broken or abused. It does get adjusted periodically and the guidelines for the Forums are also updated periodically.

The Forum Staff can flag and remove posts immediately for flagrant violations of the community standards. We can also edit posts. When I see a flagged post, I will take the time to read the posts above and below it. I will also look at the post that was replied to and replies to the flagged posts. Yes, we can close and unlist threads. Depending on the action taken on a flagged post depends on what happens to it.

All of our actions do fall under the Community Guidelines and our own judgment.

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As you can see if you click on the flag button and open up the pop-up, the “spam” category is not limited to advertisements. It includes vandalism. The definition of “it is not useful or relevant to the current topic” does have a certain degree of overlap with the “off-topic” category.

Because I don’t consider the system itself to be broken.

I’ve had plenty of prior experience with other community-moderated public forums (e.g. Hacker News) and they usually work quite fine. The way they work is by filtering out people who can’t or won’t participate in discussions in the way that the community agrees with.

Of course, if you could ask people who got filtered out that way, they would probably also tell you that the system is broken and no good.

If there’s something broken here, it’s the attempt to use community moderation in a community that has been allowed to devolve and stop being a community.

The reason why Hacker News is still a well-respected forum is because they are very rigorous about maintaining their standards when it comes to the tone and nature of the discussion, and they have been careful to try to keep their community up to those standards. Even though HN today isn’t what it used to be years ago, it hasn’t devolved into a never-ending stream of ad-hominems and trolling you’ll see on Funcom forums.

Another big difference is that other community-moderated forums make sure that their members understand the meaning and importance of community moderation. Here, the flagging system isn’t even explained to newcomers.

So the system itself is fine. But it might not work if your community is not on board and your moderators aren’t tasked with maintaining that community.

And there’s another problem, too. Community moderation requires trust, and that trust is eroded when you see community members engage in vicious trolling with impunity. To be blunt, when certain members are allowed to write a post filled with vitriol attacking a whole portion of the playerbase, and that post is allowed to stand merely because no one flagged it, and its author is allowed to remain in good standing, people will believe that those with the authority to stop this behavior are playing favorites.

I’m not saying I agree with that perception, but I’ve heard the sentiment expressed a few times, and I can’t blame those who expressed it for feeling that way in the heat of the moment.

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If your post is hidden, you can edit it and fix the issue. If you edit it and fail to fix the issue, it will be flagged again. At that point, it is up to the Forum Staff to hide it a second time or take additional action.

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We had a discussion on this last year. The results are that we are stricter with the enforcement actions taken.

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In my personal belief, one of the key differences between a community and a group of people with a shared interest is that a community is comprised of people who don’t spend more half of the time being shіtty to each other.

For starters, just look at all the PVP vs PVE bickering. And that’s not all, not by a long shot.

EDIT: I just want to clarify that when I say “PVP vs PVE bickering”, I’m not talking about discussing which mode is “better”, I’m talking about PVP players and PVE players blaming each other for changes to the game and being rude to each other because of that. I initially thought that what I meant would be clear thanks to the context from the paragraph above it, but it might be better to be explicit.

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You just can’t admit to how abused the system is here, can you?

The game is Conan the barbarian, not Conan the debate club.

Ever stop to think no one is seeing it the way you are? That the issue may not be the post but what you read in to it? Speaking from experience.

But that wouldn’t stop you from flagging the post would it?

You do get that isn’t part of your job here, right?

Oh, so now it’s our fault. Not some one being over sensitive, or over bearing, or somehow thinking it’s their job to whip the forum in to shape.

Really? You know how many of my flagged posts have ever been reviewed by a forum mod? Only one I know of, because I asked for it.

How am I supposed to edit a post to fix it when I have no idea why it was flagged? Oh there is a reason given, but most of the time I fail to see how it applies to the post.

I’d argue with god if I thought she was wrong :wink:

I read that and had to pick my jaw up off my chest. I have not seen any game where this wasn’t the norm.

See let me explain this like AD&D I am chaotic good, You CodeMage are lawful good. Conan is a chaotic neutral game. See the issue?

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No system will ever be perfect.

However, knowing how a system functions makes it easier to use it correctly.
Unfortunately, it also opens the door wider for exploitation.

This one does find the idea of sock puppet accounts amusing.
How can appearing to be winning an anonymous popularity contest be so important?
This is very silly. Like complimenting your partner on a lovely roll in the hay, when your date for the night was your left hand…

This one generally doesn’t flag because this one wants to see how things play out, and because the etiquette of this one’s homeland and era is very… different from the immediate here and now. But if someone else wishes to flag, that is their choice and above reproach from this one.
Also, if a post is hidden it becomes a tantalizing mystery… Possibly inadvertently boosting it.

Regardless, this one is not of this land and will try to follow the rules and ways of their host.

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This is not a game. This is a forum. If you want to play a game, you know where to find it.

On the contrary, I’ve seen plenty of people agree with that, sometimes in public, sometimes in private. In fact, those who have been long enough on these forums will know exactly who I was talking about.

That depends a lot on the circumstances. If it was expressed in a very rude manner, or if it was clearly off-topic, I might flag it, yes.

How hard is it to understand what the flagging system is for, really?

It’s part of everyone’s job here. That’s why there’s the word “community” in “community moderation”.

No, it’s not. I said the community has been allowed to devolve and stop being a community. So if you’re looking for blame, of all things, in what I said, I was placing it on Funcom.

And exactly how do you know which of your posts have been reviewed? That’s something the system doesn’t show, so exactly where did you pull this information from?

That seems like your problem, not everyone else’s.

Ah, yes, the good old “everyone I know does it”.

Yes. The issue seems to be that you don’t seem to understand the difference between a game and a forum.

Yes. It got flagged because it’s off-topic, just like a whole bunch of the posts surrounding it. And the reason I know why it was flagged is because I was one of the people who flagged it. I don’t know who else did it, but apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that the topic of “common complaints about monetization” has anything to do with whether community managers are engaging with the community (which is the tangent you went off on) or with a specific community manager.

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I still didn’t catch up on this thread entirely, however I will make a comment here.

“Wrongdoings” are very relative…

While I personally don’t agree with everything that goes on with this forum, I also realize that “Nobody cares… unless they choose to.”

This is not a government website where certain laws dictate the flow of conversation and should any injustice happen according to those laws then you would have some place to appeal this.

This is one of many websites belonging to a videogame company and there is no such thing as some “absolute justice” around here… “Fair”… is what they decide it is… If tomorrow they came up with a completely weird rule to ban every account beginning with the letter P… then there isn’t a damn thing you could do about it :slight_smile:

And the only reason you get to complain is because they feel like allowing that, because they’re trying to be “nice” to potential customers and keep a nice image… that is just some theoretical incentive thou and is not mandatory for them…
They would probably sell a similar amount even if they gathered up in a circle and laughed at you every time you complain about something, since not enough people even frequent these forums to make a significant impact… but why stress about it when they can just ignore things just as easily and let us bicker about what’s “just” or “unjust” or “balanced” or “OP” etc. :slight_smile:

Obviously I’m presenting the heavily exaggerated version here to emphasize things as most companies try to keep away from controversial stuff, I’m just saying that if they choose to suddenly make some rules that 99% of people would say is “unfair”, they would still have every right to do so on their own private website and with the content they own.

Don’t take this as me “defending” them though as like I said, I’m not a fan of everything that goes on here either, but it’s nice to put things into perspective.

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You simply compare it to the community guidelines. Make adjustments if you think you may have crossed a line either in the heat of the moment or inadvertently. If you’re in the clear, make a negligible edit and let it stand. If you’re in the right, and it gets hidden a second time, then you have nothing to fear. The moderator that takes a look will see if you’re in the clear or not and take action against the false flagger if they feel you were unfairly targeted.

Cattibria has outlined the process and handles the forums very well along with their colleagues.

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