As a moderator of several groups myself I would welcome some sort of algorithm as well, although none of them are too large that members couldn’t get in touch with me directly if there was an issue.
If there are repeated issues with a poster they are removed. I’ve only had to do this once or twice, after several warnings.
I’m not sure there is this feature available in Discourse. But interesting thinking.
A flag also means the poster will know who has flagged. If you want to be more discreet, instead of flagging, just PM a moderator.
When one person, a popular poster, is getting tons of likes, and another poster who is engaged in the dialogue with a popular poster, is getting zero likes, it can feel like a Middle School pile-on.
Anyone who is posting a lot, who is passionate about a topic, can be impulsive or snarky, or engage in a stupid debate.
I’m guilty of this.
I sometimes speak up when someone seems snarky, dismissive or rude. I am sometimes snarky or rude.
I’m seeing the HO equivalent of the subtweet in some threads.
It’s less in your face, but it’s passive aggressive. It is still rude.
When I see people pile the likes onto a HO subtweet, I’m like, Okay buddy, nice.
The good thing about these kinds of posts is you can rethink what kind of poster you want to be.
Should I have engaged when a poster was responding with criticism to only my posts, without adding any content to the thread? I don’t know. This is supposed to be a Discussion Board.
I think some of us use social media as a way to connect when we are isolated. I know I do. I also am not a Silent Treatment person. It is not natural for me to ignore people who are responding to a post or comment.
I can work on my replies when I’m responding when I’m in a shitty mood.
I generally hit like when I a) want to acknowledge having seen/read a comment, or b) overall agree with someone else’s comment & either have nothing enlightening to add (or am too lazy to add anything).
Given how likes can be perceived I don’t think adding ‘unlikes’ would make this site any better.
Hi Naf. Are you certain of this? I’m a member of several other Discourse communities and have had a lot of posts flagged (Belieb It Or Not!!! Shocking!!!) but have never known the identity of the flagger in any of those cases.
The only exception is if they select the more modest “hey I want to talk to you about this” flag option, which does not gray out/hide the comment being flagged. I’ve used that option many times to ask a poster that I’m friendly with, if they might want to moderate their comment a bit. (Sometimes it actually works!)
I’ll try to make a few test with a non mod account to verify this for sure.
Thanks! I do know that Discourse is very configurable, so what happens in those other communities may not be the case here.
Edit - oh, hey, I’ve Had Beer So My Brain’s Not On Straight - but if anyone wants to just flag this post, then I’ll report back if I can see who killed Colonel Mustard in The Library with The Lead Pipe.
Seems easier than Naf having to create new non-mod accts and test it.
Edit2 - I’m soooo sowwy, please forgive me (etc. just junk to add into an edit to see if it unflags/ungrays).
Consider your post flagged by request.
Twice, even 
Curious to know if @CCE @Phoenikia and @linguafood can see the names of the flaggers.
Thanks Natascha (@linguafood) and Prima (@Phoenikia). Nothing so far as it relates to notifications.
Also, it isn’t grayed out, which in other versions of Discourse happens as soon as someone flags. But Discourse is popular because it is quite configurable, and a decent cost per month to boot.
What I mean is, in the other versions of Discourse I’m used to, as soon as some jackanapes flags a post, it grays out the post, hides the text, and says
Oh, hilarious. I decided to flag it myself (notwithstanding my long-held insistence on never obtaining the Discourse badge for “First Flag” (which thankfully we do not have here, vs. other Discourse settings)) and it immediately grayed the comment out.
Edit - I wonder now, does it take 3 flags to immediately gray out a comment as of the third flag? Discourse provides for this. Alternatively, a single flag can do it, too, given that config settings - also, sometimes flagging is more immediate depending on user trust level. For example, in some Discourse configs, a single Level Three (“Regular”) flag will immediately gray out a comment while it takes multiple Level Two/One flags to do the same.
Question for @naf or other mods - at Level 3 (Reg) can Regs change thread titles? Or is that shut off here? I was active in one community where the Regs could change thread titles and it lead to all kinds of mischief!
Is that badge for getting your first flag or giving your first flag?
It was for giving the first flag. It’s standard in Discourse (there are like a hundred standard badges) and it’s usually available where they suspect they’ll get a lot of spam. Otherwise, the admins turn it off.
In one Discourse community, they turned it (as a badge award) off because (like me) some people were loathe to flag any regular commenter, so people started looking at who had and who had not flagged.
Edit - tons of info here about how Discourse works. But as I said, it’s very customizable and so every iteration you run into (every community using Discourse) can be quite different than you expect. I’m not an IT guy, though - just someone who tends to test shit to destruction every time I run into it (I am a chemical engineer, though, so it comes naturally with the territory - we like to blow stuff up!).
An interesting question for which I have no answer. I’ll raise it on the mod board.
Note to all who are interested. Shortly after I made the 3rd (so far as I am aware) flag on my post, I got this message as a PM. No persons who flagged my post were identified (which frankly I think it a good measure!). I am now going to attempt an edit to the post to determine if it will actually be un-hidden (this has been an off/on thing with other Discourse communities I’m a participant in).
(Report: Editing the flagged post ungrayed it, but still left the hyperlink to “view ignored content” which, when clicked, was null (i.e. all the same content including my mea culpa was still present.))
Hello,
This is an automated message from Hungry Onion to let you know that your post was hidden.
Your post was flagged as spam : the community feels it is an advertisement, something that is overly promotional in nature instead of being useful or relevant to the topic as expected.
This post was hidden due to flags from the community, so please consider how you might revise your post to reflect their feedback. You can edit your post after 10 minutes, and it will be automatically unhidden.
However, if the post is hidden by the community a second time, it will remain hidden until handled by staff.
For additional guidance, please refer to our community guidelines.
Wait. What is happening?
Regular members cannot change titles after 1 hour edit time is up. Only moderators and a few helpers can edit titles and move posts.
