I tried to find a place where one can run things by moderators but didn’t, so I’ll ask in here since this category is specifically mentioned as being (in part) about help.nextcloud.com.
Someone flagged a post that I wrote, namely the one at Let’s Talk about Projects - #41 which only had a single sentence in it, being “Let’s hope noone does, it was way too confusing and there’s so many other collaboration features already ”.
I got a message from the system saying that my post was flagged as being inappropriate and that “the community feels it is offensive, abusive, to be hateful conduct or a violation of our community guidelines”.
Questions:
In what way was what I wrote inappropriate, offensive, abusive or hateful conduct?
In what way was what I wrote a violation of the community guidelines?
I would rather say that flagging that post is more of the above than what was written in the post. I’m quite perplexed by why someone did so. I would appreciate if whoever did it explains their reasoning and how it relates to the points above.
hi @rawtaz it was flagged as “inappropriate”. one could presume you don’t respect the work spend on the specific app. and doesn’t “improve the discussion” but there more posts which don’t do either. maybe responsible mod will explain it further
I appreciate your participation in the community keep going
Can the flagger be asked to possibly maybe step forward and explain to the commenter why they felt a flag would be appropriate on that particular comment? This is apparently (and somewhat understandably) causing some major concern.
I’ll mark this as answer. It doesn’t lead to anything to go further down. Don’t try to interprete too much into it, if it was systematically done, and someone was abusing the flagging feature, this would be different.
@mortee Someone flagged what I wrote, for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom. That needs to be cleared up before I can even think about formulating a reply to your simple and straight forward question. Whoever did that, please explain.
@rawtaz , I can assure you it was not me. I would never flag/report a comment just because I don’t understand it (or, for that matter, for any reason short of violence or stuff).
There’s arguably quite a difference between a post being removed because it is not actively helping (and it would be very interesting to see a forum where every single post has to be one that actively helps other people, and any other posts are not welcome is removed), and a post that has absolutely none of the following traits being flagged and called “inappropriate, offensive, abusive, hateful conduct or a violation of our community guidelines”.
The latter is a perfect way to make people inclined to not participate any more at all in the forum, despite having written several helpful posts solving actual problems for people. In particular when whoever did it doesn’t explain the why and reasoning when asked. And I’m pretty sure that the person who did it is aware that it came across very badly.
Oh common, do you really want to have this discussion for such a low effort silly phrase you slapped in her, because you somehow thought it was funny…?
One-liners like, “I don’t like it, therefore nobody needs it, and anyway, we already have enough of it.” are generally not well received in the OSS community. I mean honestly, who cares whether you like it or not.
Then think for a moment about how your post could be received by someone who actually enjoyed using “Projects”. Or in general with people who don’t just throw one-liners into a forum, but actively participate in the development of open source software. OSS is also about choice. And if someone from the community wants to further develop and maintain an abandoned project, that’s generally a good thing. Nobody forces you to use it if you don’t like it.
Well this took an interesting turn. I find it interesting how strongly you seem to feel about what I’ve written here. I’m not looking for a fight at all, but I will address what you wrote:
I did not say that either. You’re missing my point - I was just trying to illustrate that:
Had the post been removed with or without a neutral (as in non-accusing) message, and in particular if I had actually written something bad, then fine. I am fine with getting justified critique when doing wrong.
In this case however, there was nothing “inappropriate, offensive, abusive, hateful conduct or a violation of our community guidelines” in what I wrote. I asked in Meta in what way there was, and no-one has to any extent explained how my post is any of that.
All I wrote was a simple and harmless comment stating what I think, and that makes the flagging and in particular the message I got from that flagging to be highly unreasonable. That’s the concern I raised, nothing more.
I’m not sure why you suggest I thought it was just a funny slapped on comment. I replied in a causal manner to something that someone else wrote. I said that I think Projects was more confusing than useful and that I hope it doesn’t come back. I would have elaborated on this if asked to, had this circus not ensued. It’s one thing if you disagree with my opinion, or think that the post adds absolutely no value (which it didn’t), but neither of these things justify it getting flagged as the things mentioned.
Really, are you suggesting that it is okay in a forum that posts which are neither of X gets flagged and accused of being X, and when the author asks about this they get no clarification? Surely you don’t think so.
Again, I stated what I think, and there is no reason for anyone to take offense by that. Anyone can use Projects and pick up its development if they wish. The fact that I personally think it’s a feature which is better off as it is now (replaced by “Related resources”) has nothing to do with that. If someone decides to pick it up and improve it and the result of those efforts “come back”, then that’s obviously a different matter and I may have a differing opinion about that (I might embrace it completely, who knows - then again no-one cares so this is irrelevant).
I get that neither you nor anyone else in your head cares what I think. Then again, clearly you do care a lot and don’t want any of my opinions in this forum. Regardless, what you are effectively saying here is that people should not voice their opinion on things, at least when that opinion does not actively help anyone. You ought to consider how stiff of a forum this would be if that was the case.
This is quite interesting. Yes, assume someone is loving Projects. Why on earth would they take offense by me saying that I think it is not useful, that it is just confusing, and that I don’t think that feature should come back (again, it has been replaced with “Related resources”)? If anything is overreacting, that would be it. Why would they not just either ignore it or simply reply with their view on why I am wrong and Projects should come back, or ask for my reasoning like @mortee did? There is literally nothing in what I wrote to take offense over. Flagging a post for what I wrote arguably says more about the person doing so, than it says about what I wrote.
I am one of those people, and you clearly have no idea how little or much I have contributed to OSS. How kind of you to imply that I am the one-liner type that don’t contribute.
I think it is and always has been obvious to everyone that Projects is free to use and develop further, regardless of what I think.
In any case, what I reacted to was the fact that totally harmless posts gets flagged by someone, without explanation, without being any of what it’s accused of being. That is simply not right and it’s below this otherwise superb forum’s standard.
Well, I didn’t want to start such a big discussion. But you asked why your comment was flagged, and I provided a possible reason…
Personally, I don’t feel strong about your comment, but I do think your comment is unproductive and a little presumptuous. However I would never have flagged it, and don’t feel it needs to be deleted. On the other hand it doesn’t really contribute anything to the actual topic, so I would not consider a deletion as a loss either.
If you feel that your comment has been flagged wrongfully, and if it’s important to you that it stays, you could ping a moderator via private message…
Guys, it’s nice that you’re arguing about forum and free speech principles in a cultured way here, but I think it’s hindering the discussion of what this thread’s original topic is.
Can we just return to the subject matter, and @rawtaz, would you please answer my original question if still relevant?
(FWIW, I would actually prefer this tangent to be moved into its own separate thread.)
Should be do-able since there are now two threads on this. Comments could be moved to the meta topic.
See meta where there is already an additional topic.
Clearly those flags do not cover this circumstance. Could you please edit your original comment into one that contributes to the original projects discussion so the thread can get back on-topic.
I’ll look into to re-writing the default discourse flags so they correctly ask for users to kindly make edits, but that will require admin assistance. Can follow up on meta.
This is ridiculous. I am still waiting for an answer to my questions over in Meta. Whoever flagged the post should explain their reasoning for it there.
I am frankly astonished at what has happened here. This is truly amazing, both what initially happened with my post as well as the lack of proper handling of it.
I wrote a one sentence post that as far as I can tell does not in any way violate any of the guidelines or has any of the traits that it was accused of having. It was not offensive to anyone, it was harmless.
I then kindly asked that whoever flagged it and thereby accused me of having violated guidelines and what not, to simply explain their reasoning. How else am I/we going to know why they felt it was wrong.
Despite this, whoever flagged it is still hiding instead of simply explaining why they felt they needed to flag the post. Why on earth doesn’t whoever felt my post was bad simply explain why they feel that way? They could have messaged me in private, if they are too scared of explaining their reasoning in public. It didn’t have to be more than that!
a) To top it all off, despite not having violated anything and despite not having gotten an explanation to what I am accused of having done wrong, I was asked by some moderator to modify my post. b) And to even further top it off, someone is now marking a third party’s input as an answer to my original questions[1]. c) And not to mention that my initial post is still censored, despite not violating any guidelines or rules and despite not being offensive towards anyone.
This is truly mindblowing. I never meant to make a big fuss out of this, not at all. I asked two extremely simple questions. It could have ended there. No one, including me, would have cared about this after a reasonable answer had been given.
[1] The “answer” you marked is nothing short of speculation - however kind, constructive and helpful @wwe is and was, as long as the person who actually flagged the message doesn’t explain their reasoning, that is simply not an answer to my questions. What other people think might have been the reason is not the same thing.
I have unmarked the post that you marked as an answer, simply because it is not an answer to the two questions I asked. Please respect this. If you don’t, this just makes this whole circus even more absurd.
I kindly request that you/moderators unhide the original post I wrote. It’s been over a week since I asked what it violates, and no answer has been given. Presumably then, it does not violate any rules or guidelines and should hence not be censored.
People won’t have to endure any more of my posts. Congratulations to the flagger on showing the true face of how Nextcloud handles its forum and community. If this happens when posts are completely harmless, I cannot even begin to imagine what happens to posts that are an actual problem and that do violate rules or guidelines.
Final note; None of this would have happened if whoever flagged the post stood by it and simply explained to me what was wrong. What makes it even more funny is that I think I know who did it and the fact that they still haven’t contacted me about this is laughable, in particular given their role in this forum. I’m happy to be proven wrong about that.
I don’t know why it was flagged, and for that thing I don’t want to go through the details (not sure if it is possible, perhaps in some of the logs). I don’t want to spend more time on that.
I don’t see it offensive, it’s a reply to Daphne, if someone can explain some hidden message, I don’t see any. The rest is @rawtaz 's opinion, not the most valuable post I have ever seen, not the most constructive contribution either, but to this standards we would have to hide a lot of posts. I don’t see either what specific information was “censured”.
Some issue we have, and that might be a case here, some do slightly off-topic comments or try to divert the discussion that it isn’t related to the original topic at all. Then you have several parallel discussions, which is very hard to handle. We have this off-topic flag, which is not very precise, because sometime there is also stuff completely off-topic to Nextcloud. If different questions are coming up in the same thread, as a moderator, I tried to split them.
Ideally we have a precise question and an discussion that leads to an answer so it helps other people with the same problem.
We are currently reviewing the flag reasons. Perhaps more precise categories help to understand why it was flagged.
Just keep in mind, the people on the forum are volunteers, and with all the spam-flags moderators go through a list of mostly spam/unrelated posts, often bots can post stuff that is not related to the thread but just from keyword, so the posts often look somehow unrelated and are removed. I haven’t reviewed anything in the last weeks, but probably something wrong slipped through or was in the wrong category etc.
Sorry, I did it. I just had the first two posts (the rest was loaded much later) and since there appeared no more activity, I thought you didn’t object / were happy the possible reasoning …
I’m going to close this thread and I want the people who came this far into this post to understand why.
Whether the flag was appropriate or not became a heated discussion. I personally see both perspectives, I think the original comment that was flagged was far from helpful or constructive, while I also see that perhaps the level of inappropriateness was not high enough for everyone to see the lack of tact and thoughtfulness in the message. However I lean towards more sensitive moderation since I believe sensitive moderation is critical for a respectful community, and I explicitly support the moderator who took the decision.
While it should be fine to raise questions on this forum about why a post was flagged or not, it should not be fine to turn it into a blaming game or a discussion in which we assume our own point is the only valid point. In the best case scenario people try to understand each others perspectives and I don’t see that happening here. I have the assumption at this point that with these levels of energy no constructive conversation can take place which is why I will close this topic.
While I appreciate the passion that everyone brings to this community, I want to remind everyone that we are all here to engage in civil discourse and to learn from one another.
In the interest of promoting constructive dialogue, I ask that we all take a step back and consider how we can communicate our thoughts and ideas in a more productive manner. Let us focus on finding common ground and exploring different viewpoints, rather than trying to prove that our own perspective is the only valid one.
I hope that we can all work together to create a forum that is welcoming, inclusive, and making meaningful discussion possible. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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but there more posts which don’t do either. maybe responsible mod will explain it further
keep going 