I am reacting now, because last weekend I too got a few mails with the message that my posts were flagged. Out of the blue it was, for the discussion (about a covid app) happend some time ago and the reason why was not clear at all. Same with ‘off topic’, that has been flagged arbitrarily too.
“Join the discussion” says the announcement of the Sailfish forum on the net. So it is a discussion forum, although many post their questions and worries about bugs and malfunctions and wishes about features too. This makes it a bit confusing. Then the flagging starts. Some anonymous members of the ‘community’ don’t like some posts and flag them. Firstly: what ‘community’ is this? What are the rights of members? What are the rules about posting and who is in the position of flagging and who is not?
Secondly: why this flagging and why anonymously? Psychologically speaking flagging by anonymi can result in an atmosphere of fear and suspicion between the community members. They can feel being denounced and betrayed. A fair defense will not be possible if the rules are not clear and if the action comes from one side only. The anonymous person places himself in a more powerful position than the others. It is a primitive policy. This is not good and should be avoided. Moderation can be necessary, e.g. in case of rude behaviour, but leave this to a special team. And please stop flagging anonymously by community members.
So in order to avoid spamming as a reaction flagging should be anonymous? Are you serious? This seems to me a pretty cowardly argument and it certainly is not fair play. Flaggers can spam too with their flags and they can totally dominate the forum if they want to. I am not saying that this happened, but it is possible if they have this privileged position.
The best you can do is stop flagging by community members a.s.a.p.
After some time anonymously flagging will be perceived as spying. That will not have a positive effect on Sailfish.
Flagging should be anonymous like any other kind of abuse report. There is a good reason why that is that way industry wide.
If you mean totally anonymous, then absolutely not, No. And I can think of nowhere in any industry where it is intended that action can be taken against someone for alleged abuse without anybody knowing who is taking that action, or indeed whether the alleged abuse was in fact even real or deserving of such action.
For any kind of abuse report there always needs to be someone independent in authority (a judge, an arbitrator, a moderator, etc) who can confirm (or not) whether there has even been a transgression of the rules (or laws or employment practices or whatever), and whether the ‘punishment’ implemented by the ‘anonymous person’ is reasonable for the transgression committed.
Anonymous community flagging only works if there is an independent moderator who checks every flagged post within a reasonable timeframe and either upholds the flagging (because the rules were transgressed in a serious enough manner to warrant flagging) or reverses the flagging because they weren’t and the flagger was just being vindictive, or didn’t like the post he/she flagged, or didn’t like the person posting, or the poster’s opinion disagreed with the flagger’s own opinion or whatever.
If that independent moderator doesn’t exist, or doesn’t do his/her job in a timely manner (or even at all) then you simply end up with a forum where some completely anonymous community members can assume the role of both judge and jury and decide what posts people can see according to their own personal wishes, and nobody can complain or stop them or challenge them because nobody knows who they are. That is abuse in of itself.
The only people totally anonymous and pure community flagging ‘works’ for is the organisation who owns the forum - because they don’t have to do anything its a cheap solution, but that doesn’t make it right.
Steve is right. Please read it over. If I notice child abuse, I can go to the police or another authority and mention it without giving my name, out of confidentionality. The police or another authority checks it with te law in their hands. Idealy these authorities are under the same laws and/or under a constitution. Therefore we have a trias politica.
Where is here the law, where the authority? Who makes the rules?
This is an example of confusion caused by digitalisation and by the misunderstanding that we don’t need laws or authorities, editors, moderators, etc. Actually an interesting case. And I insist: in a community flagging anonymously is not wise out of social-psychologically reasons too, because it can create a nasty atmosphere of suspicion, as if there are spies in the group.
Nobody is complaining about giving hearts, yet this is also part of the same digital habit that default social media are trying to teach us: public judgements like hearts, stars, thumbs, likes. Then these judgements are counted, put into statistic graphics. A big arena. Not sure if this is a nice development.
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.
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.
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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Well, 4.4.0 should work then, since it seems like that will ship gecko 78.0. But that is veering offtopic. 
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.
Then why hasn’t this post been flagged as such?
Thank you so very much. This forum seems to develop a serious troll problem.
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)
No WT.Sane, this is a discussion forum and this is how a discussion looks like.
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.
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.