We all know exactly what I’m talking about, the flangers who flag multiple posts that don’t actually break any rules but the post gets hidden…how about those folks just lose their flagging privileges for awhile, because there’s a ton of posts getting hidden without breaking the rules, so start looking at who keeps flagging these same non rule breaking posts all the time
Man I am tempted to flag this. 
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But then that would make you one of them 
and we know you don’t want that lol
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Won’t lie tho, a good example would be the ones who DO flag this post are what I’m talking about lol, not in a joking way like you ment either
Oh there are so many post that get flagged that have absolutely no reason to be. I have had discussions with people when the person arguing the opposite view was flagged and I went on to yell in the thread that whoever flagged them was an idiot because they said nothing wrong! Sure, we had different views but they didn’t break any rules and they weren’t rude so why flag them?
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Oh yea thats pretty much exactly what I’m talking about, a random discussion no rule breaks and just because one person has issue it gets hidden when the person who flagged it would just maybe…leave that post lol,
Im drawn to flagged post like a moth to a flame, i allways click to see whats what. And yes, there are several ones i cant really see why its gone flagged.
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Oh i always click them to read what was “hidden”.
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Me too, I want to see what someone is getting in trouble for.
The behavior of people on the forum is the same as in the game, if someone doesn’t like you, they shout that you are a cheater and try to find a reason to report you.
Ohhh man I got more flags ready than a Philly referee. :ducks and runs like Heisman:
Let me state for the record that I flag sock puppets, and “try my product” spam. When it comes to convo I don’t think forcing someone to delete or change their statement is healthy.
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Had plenty of my comments flag myself…
Most of time, its my opinion getting flag… or just bad spelling…grammar… typing skills… use of dots…
few times, I was sure someone thought filter wasn’t catching my fake swear words, like *****in a hand basket while riding ********of a *******.
Its just *'s… I don’t actually type anything there. LOL.
I think all but 1 got deflag’d. Still hurts my feeling thou that someone was that bored.
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The flaggingsystem just allows people to legally silence unwanted opinions which leads to false perceptions in regards of giving wide spread overall feedback of game relevant data. With other words: people intentionally manipulate the outcome of a discussion by flagging the hell out of the people they don´t like or agree with.
It’s not always about breaking the rules in the guidelines, or being rude. There are more options when flagging:
No, it doesn’t. The vast majority of flagged posts don’t get “silenced” in any way, as evidenced by the following sentiments:
Yes, there’s a very small minority of posts that get flagged that don’t deserve it. But people who like to play victims a lot, shout about censorship, and draw clever parallels with the whole “PVP via Zendesk” trope would like us to think this is a bigger problem than it actually is.
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Yes, there are other reasons as you pointed out but in the specific scenario I was referencing none of those really apply. It was definitely on-topic. There was nothing inappropriate about it. It wasn’t spam as we were debating the issue at hand. So no there really was no reason for anyone to have flagged the other person’s post.
That is totally true. It doesn’t silence anything, it actually draws attention to the post. 
I doubt it’s a small minority. I see nothing wrong with a lot of post that are hidden. Other post that are hidden however I completely understand why.
There is plenty of that on this forum, and anywhere else people are able to post.
General Forum practice is to keep that between Mods and Person in trouble. Inless forum has rule that Mod has to type in the post what happen.
Which works, most of time. It also can put target on someones back. I see plenty of people over years join forums. Get in trouble in there first few post, and become valued members of community over the years.
Calling out people works… But sometimes you just need give people chance calm down, learn rules and understand where they are.
Flag System works, But it be nice if the “over flaggers” got slap on hand form time to time to not be clicky clicky.
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Point taken. I should have said it’s a small minority in my experience and according to my views. However, those views seem to be shared a lot, because otherwise posts wouldn’t get hidden.
See, the thing a lot of people either don’t know or don’t care about is that if you flag a post, it doesn’t get hidden right away. There needs to be a certain number of flags – not sure how many, but definitely more than one – before the forum software does that.
Or at least, that’s how it normally works. On a couple of occasions, I found my flags having an immediate effect. I wish I knew why that happened and how to prevent that, because I don’t think anyone who isn’t a mod should have that “power”.
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Well I think that there is a large part of the problem. I am not sure IF there is a rhyme or reason to why post get hidden. I almost never flag a post but I did today for the first time in months because it was just a very mean spirited attack at another user for no reason. The person wasn’t even in the conversation, they just popped in to blast another user for no reason what so ever. As soon as I clicked the flag button POOF the post was hidden. Does anyone have any solid information as to how the whole system even works? And there in lies a lot of the misconceptions about flagging system. Though there are those who just believe in the conspiricy that it’s FUNCOM trying to silence them, those people just don’t care.
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Funcom forums use a software called Discourse. I’ve found two posts that explain the flagging system:
- Flag a post for moderator attention - users - Discourse Meta
- What happens when you flag a post - users - Discourse Meta
And now that I’ve read them carefully for the first time, I can also understand why my flags can sometimes insta-hide a post. It seems that this happens when I reach the “trust level 3” and don’t have more than 4 of my posts flagged within the last 100 days 
EDIT: The details in my last sentence were insufficient, so I had to edit the post.
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Excellent information as usual CodeMage. I wonder how you can even see what your trust level is?
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