If this cannot be configured with discourse then let me know so i can ask discourse meta about it instead.
Lots of times a topic gets flagged quickly before even getting any replies (so it was probably really bad). However some people still reply to it, whether it be them mini-modding or dragging on, so if it was to the point where it couldn’t even have gotten replies then it is safe to say it should be closed to save DET time so they just have to deal with 1 post and not several. Avenues for abuse wouldn’t exist since DET would look at the context and depending on the scenario reprimand users who are being abusive.
This is somewhat a nice feature to have onto discourse and the developer forum for other forums that run on discourse, however, I do have a concern about this:
My concern with this is that since users on the forum see this, some might flag the topic just for fun and lock the topic without valuable answers and replied in categories such as #platform-feedback, #help-and-feedback:scripting-support, and #development-discussion. Yet, there are people who do this that aren’t active but do so if I recall. Minimodding and dragging the conversation is a big issue as they will get flagged and punished for continuing the conversation.
People don’t follow the rules with topic guidelines or listen to the guidelines when making a new topic or reply for something, this would be helpful to stop flame-wars and minimodders.
Would be nice to have this, but some might do what I mentioned; might not happen or not.
If this isn’t added and the OP is flagged people are going to reply anyway, therefore leading to wasting the time of DET. If it gets abused it will waste even less since it’s less feedback to give and iirc the threshold for hiding a post via flags is 3 flags. Unless it was raised here DET would have to reject just 3 flags which is a quick task and only takes a few seconds.
I’m going to bump this as there is still a problem.
Users are still replying to topics hidden by flags, which results in a huge waste of time for the involved parties, severe derailing of topics and overall complete lack of professionalism. In derailed topics you will find people just posting memes, mini-modding, all because they think it’s ok since the topic was already hidden by flags. Take #development-discussion as a good example of this right now.
Please, can topics hidden by flags just be instantly closed. This will also make it easier for developer engagement to address the flags, since it’s just 1 post and not like 100.
In fact I think this is why many users might resort to mini-modding; since there is still room to reply, and because developer engagement doesn’t instantly get to the flags which is understandable.
I’m pretty sure this is a Discourse thing, but even though I’ve contributed to this (by replying to closed topics), I agree.
Upon closing it should close the replies as well, as it was closed for a reason, not to continue the topic.
I would ask Discourse meta, but when feature requests like these come around they just say “this is for moderation to handle, not tools” so i’ve been discouraged ever since, and when you take into account the general community here, maybe the Discourse team has a point. The general community here is too immature.
This feature would also only be useful here really, since i don’t believe other fora have this issue as big as the devforum.
Some people flag because of their own(Flawed) understanding of rules. This isn’t a bad idea assuming the mods could re-open them. I’ve had several posts I’ve flagged bypassing flagging.
Now that a flagged thread was made about drugs lasted around an hour with 73 replies without being deleted or closed, I think it’s important that this suggestion is brought back up. This continues to be an issue, and this time there was a huge delay before DET took action. Auto-unlisting flagged threads clearly isn’t enough, since unlisted threads can easily spread in many ways, like someone you follow replying to one (which is how I found the thread).
The automatic unlisting of topics when hidden by enough flags is janky in general, sometimes you can still see the topic name listed from the home page, assuming you don’t have the category muted. The behavior seemed inconsistent to me at first, however I noticed a pattern – topics with no replies get unlisted. So yeah that is probably how it got so much attention still, as well as spreading through discord servers and such.
There was this post in development discussion that got flagged down quickly , but stayed open and listed for about ~5h before it was finally closed and unlisted. As a result of this, you had 40 or so replies bumping the topic, many mini modding the situation. This shouldn’t be the case, it should’ve been closed (like many other topics that are flagged) until DET determines if it is a good or bad topic
