Forum censorship - The Issue

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#90

Flags do get reviewed by moderators and are not anonymous there. It is just a way for normal users to report content and it does hide stuff by default, but moderators can always reverse those decisions. Law or constitution of your country only applies in a limited way here, Jolla makes the rules for the forum and you either follow it or you go elsewhere. This is not a forum to voice political views, your preference in movies or whatever, so you don’t need to be allowed to voice any offtopic concern you have, because of “freedom of speech”. Instead you are allowed to report bugs, voice your opinions about design changes, add feedback to bug reports, show off your apps, request new features, etc. But all of that has to be respectful towards the developers and other users. Nobody got time to waste on people just complaining and flaming because they got nothing better to do.

Flagging is not a “one user can remove all your messages”. They can hide it, until mods notice they are abusing that power. But that’s it. Flagging just reports a post and hides it, so that spam gets hidden immediately until a mod can take action. You all are blowing that way out of proportion with your censorship and free speech arguments, that simply don’t apply to a forum. And a few people, that complained about censorship, have shown an excessively inappropriate and rude tone in their posts in other parts of the forum. I don’t really care that they feel like their posts are being reported excessively, because their posts would be removed by a moderator anyway.

Anyway, to answer your question: Jolla makes the rules. The community can help Jolla uphold the rules by reporting content. Reported content gets hidden by default to give moderators a bit more time to react to sensitive content. Mods still have the last say in what gets removed. If people are abusing those systems, they might get banned from the forum.

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#91

It is not totally anonymous. It is anonymous for people, that are not moderators. The moderators always have the last say if content is removed or not. I can’t say if all the flagged content gets reviewed, but at least some of it is and even if some things might slip though the cracks, if the flagging abuse gets excessive, that would be detected fairly quickly. If you have individual concerns about a message, you can always contact the mods regarding that, afaik.

It is not pure community flagging. It is a cooperation. Jolla doesn’t want to spend that much money on maintaining a public forum. I am glad we finally got one. So they rely on the community to read most of the posts instead of manually reviewing everything posted here. I think that is totally fine. But they still have moderators that can reverse decisions or ban people from the forum, if they notice an issue.

#92

I suggest everyone reads the FAQ about flags: https://meta.discourse.org/t/so-what-exactly-happens-when-you-flag/275

It describes how the process works, when a moderator needs to be involved and when not and how many flags do what.

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Forum Censorship - Some Proposals
#93

Sorry, but I cannot!

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(being on 4.3.0 and not looking forward to the next forum upgrade then :frowning: )

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#94

Well, 4.4.0 should work then, since it seems like that will ship gecko 78.0. But that is veering offtopic. :wink:

#95

Well, I admire your confidence. I have seen no evidence of Jolla actively, consistently and independently moderating content on this forum according to a fixed set of criteria or rules. What I do see is:

  • Posts randomly flagged as ‘off topic’ whilst others, equally deserving of such a label, are never flagged
  • My own flagged posts staying ‘un-reviewed’ for months or until they are eventually deleted, with no explanation for the flagging and no advice given as per the forum guidelines
  • No reversing of flagged/hidden posts for those that clearly do not warrant such an action according to the guidelines

In fact I do not even know who the moderators actually are (i.e. names) on this forum (do you?), and even if I did I would have no idea which of them is moderating my posts after they have been flagged and so who to complain to - its neither obvious nor transparent who (names) is actually ‘running’ this forum, if anyone.

However, as I said above this is a dead horse, nothing is going to change, so no more point in flogging it in relation to this particular forum. The one point that I agree with you on is that people who don’t like it can vote with their feet - and they will. Isn’t it sad.

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#96

Then why hasn’t this post been flagged as such? :wink:

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#97

Thank you so very much. This forum seems to develop a serious troll problem.

#98

Thank you for your reply. At least we know now that the Jolla team makes the rules. Jolla is a company (you compared it to an industry) and so it is fully entitled to do so. I too see the necessity of moderation. But I have objections to anonymous flagging by community members and I am sorry that I failed to clarify why this way of flagging is unwise.
In the welcome text of this forum the words ‘community’ and ‘family’ are used while we know that Sailfish is a product of a company and of volunteers together. This ambiguity can cause confusion in values, rules and in relations.
As a non-dev I am not a member of the ‘community’ because I just am a ‘seasoned user’ who happens to like the OS, uses it as daily driver for years and who struggles a lot with it. I cannot contribute with nice apps or patches, I can only report bugs or ask questions or give my opinion. In the meantime I have spend more money and time on this product (rebooting, re-installing everything, buying a new device plus license) than everyone I know.

Last but not least: I wish everyone a good holiday, nice festivities (if you haven’t them had already) and a better new year. (off topic)

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#99

No WT.Sane, this is a discussion forum and this is how a discussion looks like.

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#100

I would love to test this next year - be prepared (not you personally), but everyone.
I wonder how many posts I can flag in 30 min every day. I intend to do this for one-two weeks. It will be fun.

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#101

I think your words are analytic and to the point. I don’t flag, nor do I give hearts or likes anymore, so I say it with words and name. My name is Klaske Wijkstra, ‘Kea’ comes from my three first names K.E.A.

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#102

Funny, because I do remember a moderator asking to point out any posts that were fixed and not against the rules but still flagged. I did not see an adequate reply. I did see someone pointing at other post that were “offtopic”, which to me seems not a valid argument.
Now it seems the topic gets changed that there is no moderation (which is untrue). Most often such a topic change happens because people have run out of arguments.

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#103

I didn’t say there was no moderation. What I said was:

which is quite different. On occasions I have seen Jolla folk intervene, but it is not consistent, they don’t always follow their own rules, and there is quite a lot of posts and/or flagging that might well fall into the need for moderation, but escape untouched. Please see my previous posts.

Finally, nobody was trying to change the subject of the thread. Again, if you read my post above you will see that I was simply making the argument that if, on any forum, such moderation as described above does not take place, or only takes place infrequently, or randomly, or inconsistently then ‘community flaggers’ are left to their own devices and can flag posts according to their own personal wishes in a completely unchallenged and totally anonymous way. Those posts can then subsequently be hidden and finally removed permanently from view - which of course then brings us back to the censorship aspect.

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#104

So, still talking about big abstract issues, while failing to point out real issues. Apparently there are no forum posts that fall within the rules but are still flagged, so I see no problem anymore. Everybody can be happy :wink:

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#105

Well, at least I am talking about the issues rather than trying to score personal points against another forum member (contrary to Jolla’s guidelines) - but, hey, if it floats your boat you go ahead :laughing:

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#106

Well, freedom of expression or something :wink:

You do know that this is all turning into a lot of nonsense, right?
Some points might be valid and I trust they will be picked up by the people at Jolla. But come on, all this hatred and vitriol? That is the level at Facebook and Twitter.

In the meantime I am enjoying a Chimay Blue here :slight_smile:

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#107

I do not intend to annoy you but I am used to a more civil atmosphere in discussions. Maybe this forum is becoming a place for the more robust ones.

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#108

Cultural differences in habits and perception can play a role. In The Netherlands e.g. people are very direct and often rude, at least it is perceived as such by others. While in the UK people hold back on their true opinions, what can be perceived as hypocrisy by others. Rude behaviour seems to be made ‘easier’ online, but research found that people who are rude online, often are also rude in reality.
I think most of us agree with the rule that rudeness and ad hominems, also the cynical ad hominems, are not tolerated.
A very different question is the anonymous flagging, but I have made my point about that already.
Another question: are contributors to this forum allowed to be critical on Sailfish? When are the lines crossed?
Thirdly: off topics. Please don’t make it too formal. We are not robots.

#109

Hearts are visible, so flags should also be.

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