Given the popular state of the forum with both its flagging and moderation, one thing I have recently been confronted with are users getting into contact with other users due posts they are flagging.
This is done through the flagging system and sending a message personally about the problem:
To me, this brings in more problems. While I understand this is meant to help learn others of the rules and guidelines of the forum, this mini-modding however can easily go the other way. Users may think they have authority and power through this, but this would only result in them seeking confrontations. Given that this forum is 13+, I’m confident the average user does not like being told their wrongdoings personally by others. Some could respond back to the mini-modding in annoyance, which could lead to troublesome situations in the private message.
It’s common sense that calling out someone else’s wrongdoing in public is not allowed, but encouraging to do so privately seems kinda wrong. There’s a reason there’s a moderation team to handle these situations.
I don’t know if this feature of Discourse can be controlled, but in my opinion I think it’s best if flagging is limited to sending to staff only rather than allowing users to seek these confrontations themselves.
As far as I know, overly mini-modding can get you a warning so if you think that someone is doing that, you should flag it. Don’t abuse this tho, as mass-flagging is subject to strikes.
I disagree, there are instances in which it is appropriate to politely inform a user by DM’ing them that they are doing something wrong, but not to the point that you should derail their post just to tell them, or flag a moderator.
Often times flagging is abused because users find it easier to flag a post rather than tell the OP what they did wrong.
I agree and disagree. Majority of me agrees with this statement, but half of me doesn’t agree. Some of me disagrees with this because if someone did something not knowing it was against the rules you could politely tell them in the Private Message feature for flagging post.
Put yourself in a situation where you see a new user mistakenly post a scripting question in Development Discussion. You want to help the user with the problem, but making a reply to the topic that asks the user to move it to the correct category is off-topic, so the best way to go is to privately message the user. This flagging option is designed for situations like this.
Doing this is not calling anyone out, it’s giving a polite suggestion to another user, which is widely accepted on this forum.
