Coming back to this one.
It looks there may be no “forum police” but at least some “crime scene cleaner” did it’s work?
E.g my (and other people’s post(s)) are gone for good now?
If you want to check see within this topic @SteveEverett 's post which links and quotes my one, which now seems to be deleted.
NOW I feel censored!
Yes, many posts in the original thread are gone, apparently all the messages which were in “hidden state” before.
And the links to the deleted posts have become rewritten to point to the base thread!
<sarcasm>This is censorship is properly done: Remove any evidence that the censored content ever existed.</sarcasm>
Now this has become really bad:
Contrary to the repeated statements by some sailors that no censorship occurs, it is clear now the this is untrue!
And modelling “it is just community people doing some flagging” was apparently untrue, too.
Now I do agree with @Steve_Everett that this shall be escalated to Jolla’s management, in order to stop these evil actions and save this forum from fully turning into “1984”.
I’m not sure. If you can be a bit more specific: Which posts exactly, and why do you think those should be restored? More specifically: what exactly has changed so that they no longer violate our rules (see FAQ - Sailfish OS Forum). The post which I could find by following the hints above (i.e the one written by @peterleinchen) was originally flagged as being off-topic. The way I see it, it still is off-topic - the post did contain one word about “total buggy os xperia 10 plus”.
Not entirely. My guess is that after some time it becomes impossible for regular users to view the hidden posts. At least I could see the post I mentioned above, so it wasn’t entirely removed from the database.
Can you please be specific what you are not sure about?
a. “Not sure” if you technically are able to restore these posts.
b. “Not sure” if you want to restore these posts.
If you can be a bit more specific: Which posts exactly,
All the ones which have bee flagged, were in “hidden” state and now are in “vanished” state (at least for regular forum users).
(It must be about 10 messages which are affected.)
and why do you think those should be restored?
a. Because this way the flagging process is indeed results in opinions being suppressed (i.e., censorship).
b. Much of that thread does not make any sense without these posts as context.
More specifically: what exactly has changed so that they no longer violate our rules (see FAQ - Sailfish OS Forum ).
Can you please describe in exactly which way you think they violated these rules?
And how this violation warrants a censoring them.
The post which I could find by following the hints above (i.e the one written by @peterleinchen) was originally flagged as being off-topic. The way I see it, it still is off-topic - the post did contain one word about “total buggy os xperia 10 plus”.
The FAQ names “bad behavior” as a reason for flagging, nothing else.
Well Jolla runs and configures this forum software, hence is responsible for what it is doing.
Jolla states “Foster freedom. We do not believe in walled gardens, we prefer the open sea. We want our products and services to free you to express yourself as you see fit, not lock you down to a view of the world imposed on you by us.”.
But this forum software configuration fosters suppression of opinions, hidden trolling and abuse (as discussed in that thread, specifically some of the now vanished messages)!
Both.
They were off-topic. The fact that the authors of those posts kept writing the off-topic posts clearly annoyed other forum members, otherwise they wouldn’t have flagged them. Removing posts which violate our rules hardly counts as censorship.
Please read the FAQ again, and try to understand the message there. The second chapter already states “Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.”
You are free to share your opinions here. You are doing it right now. However, when people are discussing things, it’s not good behaviour to go and shout your opinions about off-topic matters in the middle of the discussions. Each thread in this forum is about a single topic.
Let me repeat this: The topic which included those hidden posts was about bugs in Xperia 10 II. Those hidden posts were not about that topic. You are free to repeat those posts in threads which are relevant to them.
@vige @vige1 I know you have relation to Jolla, if I am not completely mistaken.
Another experiment: when a topic is in slow mode and your post is flagged and you get a notification to edit the post, you actually can not edit the post.
Now that’s surprising. I can understand why that is though - editing posts could be used for bypassing the slow mode.
One option of course would be to consider already when writing the post, whether it will be considered offensive, off-topic or spam by others.
Now why are you flagging my post, because I use a word that you don’t like.
Whoever did it, you lack completely a sense of humor!
J., now I know how it goes in China.
This sounds like a: “The only winning move is not to play (post a message).” situation…
And it is bad for everyone.
Even the ones who do not play / post a message.
Yes, indeed. Meanwhile I am just having fun … I am considering creating a spam account and making fun of this “brilliant” forum software … hopefully it/they will not censorship irony.
Or may be next year we start flagging at random and force the owner to configure the software properly.
So long as censorship takes the form you wish it to have makes it ok. 
Are replies automatically hidden if the post to which it replies is hidden?
@vige, this is a good example of a message someone did not like and wants to suppress it by flagging, resulting in hiding (called “ignoring”) it and erasing it later.
IIRC they were also erased in the original thread.
Note that “ignored” (i.e., suppressed) is the intermediate state before the automatic erasure (i.e., full censoring) later, while the “ignored” / suppressed state does not affect replies.
But I cannot prove / disprove any of this because that is the principal, intended effect of censorship: One is unable to discuss these (erased) things! Or argue with what happened.
It is all undone, as if it never happened.
What a brave new forum!
Yes, I agree, my impression was that also the replies get hidden and as we meanwhile know after a week or a month all that was hidden goes away.
I also agree that it is bad to delete without a discussion. As said before we could try posting and flagging and see how the system behaves. Jolla is not taking side here anyway.
They could explain or discuss - I do not know if someone heard anything from Jolla regarding this.
Just now I got 3 messages that posts of were being flagged, and looked whats the matter. It was all on the covid app thread. My messages were only unimportant content, so I see this more as a memory clearing. But I saw that a huge amount of other messages also were flagged, too.
This is only a report of something that happened.
A cowardly flagman was at work there.
Even the post by the original creator of the topic has been “censored”. …just a cheek.
Were they?
Please point to the ones you perceive as “off-topic”.
The fact that the authors of those posts kept writing the off-topic posts clearly annoyed other forum members, otherwise they wouldn’t have flagged them.
I had the impression that some people just wanted to try how this can be used to suppress posts they do not like, and understood that they can play “secret police”, because the flagging process is absolutely opaque to other forum users.
Removing posts which violate our rules hardly counts as censorship.
Which rules do you mean?
AFAICS, the FAQ only contains high-level statements, but not rules or terms and conditions, which a post can be checked against on a rational basis.
BTW, in contrast do Discourse, professional censors usually have a large rule-set (the PRC, the “Third Reich”, etc.).
But ultimately censorship is censorship, regardless if and which rules are applied.
Side note: This was neither a nice or informed try (for a justification) from my POV.
Please use honest and clear terms: These posts are not “hidden”, they are eradicated, i.e. censored.
They are undone, as if they never have been there.
This is exactly what censoring is about: To let statements and opinions vanish, as if they never existed.
Those hidden posts were not about that topic.
I do not concur: AFAIR remember they were still loosely related to the original topic, i.e. triggered by it.
But we cannot discuss this, because they are censored, hence the base of any argument (both yours and mine) has been erased.
You are free to repeat those posts in threads which are relevant to them.
Pun intended?
You suggest to “repeat eradicated posts”, most of which were not mine? Sorry, this is not funny at all IMO.
Or is that statement of yours just meant as a “power game”?
BTW, if ones rereads the thread that triggered this discussion (“Totally Buggy OS …”) in its current state, large parts of it have become senseless garble now, because most messages have been censored. IMO this does not provide a positive outlook on the future of this forum, if this result is what you perceive and define as “proper handling of flaggings”.
