RiderFan said:
Chiming in here, is there a block in place to prevent the same user from re-flagging the same images?
The same flagger can't flag the same image twice.
Posted under General
To be honest, I don't see what problem this whole thread is trying to solve, other than people being upset that people can flag at all, but trying to argue around the margins because they don't want to be direct about it.
Squishy said:
This has been bounced back and forth in the queue about 3 times now.
Quite frankly this is getting ridiculous. I understand that we wish to keep high quality art but the fervor behind removing images that have minor flaws has me scratching my head.
The thing is, that post has been in my mod queue once because I didn't approve it when it showed up, and my vote stays for a month.
This is a post that has been approved twice, but also has four "poor quality" votes from approvers. (Maybe I was one of them, but I honestly don't remember... I can say I wasn't any of the flaggers, though.) Again, as much as people claim "tyranny" or some other hyperbolic term gets thrown out against flaggers, the fact of the matter is, there's just as much "tyranny" or whatever you want to call it if one approver can overrule however many other people are trying to get something deleted. I can't see flaggers, but I get the definite sense that the overwhelming majority of flags are placed by people who have approval privileges, themselves, and are trying to maintain a consistent level of approval quality. Right now, the multiple flags functionally create a situation where there have been 2 approvers voting that this should stay, 4 approvers voting it should go, and a dozen "I don't care," which is perfectly fine, as well. If four flags are taken to outweigh the two approvers who want it here... exactly what is the problem in that?
What problem needs to be solved, here? What would having a "cooldown" even do, outside of being an attempt by some approvers to make their approval power have less checks on it by making it so they can hope to wait out flaggers who will forget to flag every questionable thing they might have re-approved? And that, really, is why I can't conclude this is anything but a backdoor attempt at trying to weaken the only real check (outside of actually having a situation so extreme admin actually demotes people, which happens only very rarely) upon unlimited uploads and approval users.
Flagging is only a problem when flaggers flag frivolously, focusing too much on a small part of a whole.
Users can appeal via comments, the actual appeal method (once a day), or appeal directly to the flagger if you know who flagged it and reason out with them why you think an image should remain. I dislike flags based around small errors as much as anyone (Maybe more since I've studied anatomy and done lots of life-drawing), but there's no point blaming the function, unless for some crazy reason flagging becomes an automated process.
Also, bandwagons are a thing. Images get more popular/unpopular based around bandwagons and FotM, and this might be one such scenario. Who knows (I haven't seen the image in question).
NWSiaCB said:
Again, as much as people claim "tyranny" or some other hyperbolic term gets thrown out against flaggers, the fact of the matter is, there's just as much "tyranny" or whatever you want to call it if one approver can overrule however many other people are trying to get something deleted. I can't see flaggers, but I get the definite sense that the overwhelming majority of flags are placed by people who have approval privileges, themselves, and are trying to maintain a consistent level of approval quality. Right now, the multiple flags functionally create a situation where there have been 2 approvers voting that this should stay, 4 approvers voting it should go, and a dozen "I don't care," which is perfectly fine, as well. If four flags are taken to outweigh the two approvers who want it here... exactly what is the problem in that?
No one has said anything of this sort.
What problem needs to be solved, here? What would having a "cooldown" even do, outside of being an attempt by some approvers to make their approval power have less checks on it by making it so they can hope to wait out flaggers who will forget to flag every questionable thing they might have re-approved? And that, really, is why I can't conclude this is anything but a backdoor attempt at trying to weaken the only real check (outside of actually having a situation so extreme admin actually demotes people, which happens only very rarely) upon unlimited uploads and approval users.
Basically, trying to slam the same flag reason though the approval queue over and over seems against the spirit of the QC process. This isn't a meat grinder with numbers counting over reasoning.
NWSiaCB said:
What problem needs to be solved, here? What would having a "cooldown" even do, outside of being an attempt by some approvers to make their approval power have less checks on it by making it so they can hope to wait out flaggers who will forget to flag every questionable thing they might have re-approved? And that, really, is why I can't conclude this is anything but a backdoor attempt at trying to weaken the only real check (outside of actually having a situation so extreme admin actually demotes people, which happens only very rarely) upon unlimited uploads and approval users.
I already added a three-day cooldown. I made it three days because, while I do think it makes sense to prevent posts from being immediately reflagged, I also share your concerns about this being used as a backhanded way to gimp the flagging system even more than it already is.
Squishy said:
Basically, trying to slam the same flag reason though the approval queue over and over seems against the spirit of the QC process. This isn't a meat grinder with numbers counting over reasoning.
The post in question was deleted on the first flag. It did go through the QC process and it failed. If we're saying it shouldn't go through that process again, then we could just as well say that first flag should have been respected and the post should not have been undeleted.
Forgive me if I'm reading this particular thread wrong, but a lot of these recent flagging discussions read like a series of proxy wars between people who are in favor of (and/or carry out) anatomy flags and people who are opposed to them. Maybe that is the subject we should be discussing.
evazion said:
concerns about this being used as a backhanded way to gimp the flagging system even more than it already is.
I'm not sure why this over-dramatic interpretation of this concern is being entertained.
My reason for restarting this discussion is to see if anyone else can see the problem that there is nothing stopping the non-stop back and forth bouncing for an image between flagged and approved. Whether it be for anatomy issues, for western content issues, or any other reason.
At some point, this pass-the-ball back and forth needs to be curtailed. It wastes everyone's time.
One way that would help would be engaging in discussion instead of going over one another via the process, especially after a certain amount of passing along has occurred.
Unfortunately, it seems that discussion is not encouraged, seeing as how flagged image borders were changed to blue (in this very thread) to avoid attracting attention and comments. If we are playing at bad-faith finger pointing at each other for trying to undermine the process, I would bring this up as an example of trying to prevent communication between people who have different viewpoints. IMO that is far more damaging, as now we lose a venue for people to come together to discuss things.
evazion said:
The post in question was deleted on the first flag. It did go through the QC process and it failed. If we're saying it shouldn't go through that process again, then we could just as well say that first flag should have been respected and the post should not have been undeleted.
Thanks for clarifying. I can't see the exact details of the image and I've only recently come across it, so I do not know its history.
Regardless, my concern still applies: After the second or third flag/approval, I think there needs to be a 'stop, please see past actions and consider current course' or something.
Squishy said:
Unfortunately, it seems that discussion is not encouraged, seeing as how flagged image borders were changed to blue (in this very thread) to avoid attracting attention and comments. If we are playing at bad-faith finger pointing at each other for trying to undermine the process, I would bring this up as an example of trying to prevent communication between people who have different viewpoints. IMO that is far more damaging, as now we lose a venue for people to come together to discuss things.
"Different viewpoints" is quite the sugarcoated turn of phrase. While I don't think it was all that effective in the end, the entire purpose of that decision was to deter drive-by commenters from personally attacking flaggers and generally being nuisances. I agree that more should be done to foster a productive environment for discussion around here, but wanting to take action against nonproductive commenters isn't wrongheaded.
Squishy said:
Regardless, my concern still applies: After the second or third flag/approval, I think there needs to be a 'stop, please see past actions and consider current course' or something.
That wouldn't accomplish as much as you might think. A significant portion of reflags come from regular flaggers, people who I would assume are aware of past flags and explicitly disagree with the current consensus.
To that end, I don't see a problem with the way things currently work. The idea of people actively colluding to delete posts is entirely hypothetical, and would need to be dealt with directly if it ever manifested. More often, a high number of flags on a single post indicates that there's a significant discussion that needs to be had. For instance, the infamous Doom post created a lot of dialogue about what constitutes "off-topic", or to use an earlier example, huge chains like post #574061 resulted in the one-approval-per-mod limitation being implemented.
Speaking as a regular user who occasionally comes across flagged images in general browsing, it always seems extremely petty to see chains of 3 or 4 flags with the same reasoning repeated over and over again. I think that they should at least have to come up with some alternative reasons at some point.
That being said, I've never really seen Danbooru as a museum of only extremely high quality stuff, so I guess I look at pretty much all the flags with a kinda "haha, what's up this guy's ass" feeling. If that was the intention, it never really came across that way. I think that especially the anatomy stuff is really "who caaaaaaares", since so much of that can come down to artist personal style and whatnot, and tamping down on that so hard leaves nothing but nasty generic looking stuff.
basically i guess i'm sayin calm down with yer mongolian fingerpainting aggregator
We take anime pictures on the internet entirely too seriously here. It's kind of how we roll. For a lot of casual users, flagging is an unpleasant first glimpse at what goes on under the hood, but think about it: without this mindset, we wouldn't have built the robust tagging system and image quality standards that most of this site enjoys.
I feel like we need a new wiki page or something to deal with the specific subject of relatively casual users getting involved with flags for the first time. There's a lot of misplaced apprehension and anger going around over what boils down to another cog in the moderation machine.
Squishy said:
I'm not sure why this over-dramatic interpretation of this concern is being entertained.
And why is it over-dramatic?
This topic was started specifically by someone who was reapproving the off-topic Wendys images as there were more people coming on to sustain the flag. How is it over-dramatic to infer that their motivation for doing so was a worry that they would be out-voted?
Squishy said:
My reason for restarting this discussion is to see if anyone else can see the problem that there is nothing stopping the non-stop back and forth bouncing for an image between flagged and approved. Whether it be for anatomy issues, for western content issues, or any other reason.
At some point, this pass-the-ball back and forth needs to be curtailed. It wastes everyone's time.
One way that would help would be engaging in discussion instead of going over one another via the process, especially after a certain amount of passing along has occurred.
Unfortunately, it seems that discussion is not encouraged, seeing as how flagged image borders were changed to blue (in this very thread) to avoid attracting attention and comments. If we are playing at bad-faith finger pointing at each other for trying to undermine the process, I would bring this up as an example of trying to prevent communication between people who have different viewpoints. IMO that is far more damaging, as now we lose a venue for people to come together to discuss things.
Thanks for clarifying. I can't see the exact details of the image and I've only recently come across it, so I do not know its history.
Regardless, my concern still applies: After the second or third flag/approval, I think there needs to be a 'stop, please see past actions and consider current course' or something.
There absolutely is discussion when a post is flagged multiple times. After all, you can only approve a post once, and only flag it once, so if you get overruled, there's nothing to do BUT discuss the topic to try to persuade others to your point of view. That's part of what people are complaining about, here, since those discussions are what attract attention to these posts.
The point of asking for a cooldown isn't to encourage discussion, it's to discourage it, and hope that people will forget about the image as more images come up and few people remember it a month down the line.
And again, I have to ask, what, exactly, is the problem with an image being flagged two or three times if there is a disagreement between a majority of approvers and a minority of outliers that want to keep their subjective opinions absolute and unquestioned? Again, flagging is the ONLY thing that prevents unlimited uploads users from uploading literally anything, and if you make it so that just one reapproval means an image is untouchable, you basically make it so that one approver can keep posts everyone else believes deserves to be deleted in play forever... which is exactly what a few users want. (After all, there's no call for blocking re-approval after a post has been flagged until it's been deleted for a month...)
For that matter, how does this waste "everyone's" time? A majority of users just skip right past most of these discussions. I don't see how anyone is really being harmed by an image being in the status:flagged bin unless they're already going out of their way to trawl through it routinely... and if they're doing that, they're already someone who's taking pictures on the Internet really seriously, and actively looking for these types of arguments. And then, you have to ask the question of why they're doing that in the first place, as well... The people who are so worried about what's being flagged that they notice these things are also the people who probably think they have something they stand to lose if they don't control the process of flagging or deletion, and they're the people already most active in this argument.
As I said, most of these flags are placed by the same people who are already approvers, because they're also the people who are most interested in what is or isn't included on Danbooru's archives, and that's usually why they even became approvers to begin with.
M_Q_N said:
Speaking as a regular user who occasionally comes across flagged images in general browsing, it always seems extremely petty to see chains of 3 or 4 flags with the same reasoning repeated over and over again. I think that they should at least have to come up with some alternative reasons at some point.
Why do flaggers need to come up with new reasons when approvers do not? post #574061 serves as a perfect example, since in that case, you have one person constantly re-approving the same thing against the chorus of everyone else saying it was crap. What more needs to be said about that image other than that it is crap? Why do they need to jump through hoops to come up with some new, entertaining reasoning for random other users, while the person reapproving needs give no explanation whatsoever?
As I've said several times in the "Flag Vandalism" thread, flagging is basically just an anti-approval. Especially when it comes from an approver, it's basically nothing more than one "vote" against an image countermanding the "vote" of another approver. Why, then, is there this greater onus (including references to the likes of "tyranny" in the Flag Vandalism thread) upon flagging than there is upon approval in the first place?
And having that power is important if you're going to have any kind of discussion at all, because nobody would have noticed the DOOM image unless it wasn't a symbol of a larger discussion on what approvers should and shouldn't be approving. (And that argument led to a change in the TOS, at that...) At best, this is a complaint that the lay user is capable of seeing and participating in what would otherwise be a behind-the-scenes policy discussion by "staff", and I don't really see that as a problem, either, since I don't think further centralizing power and obfuscating the discussions from anyone who isn't in the "elites" would actually make anything clearer or seem fairer to the average user.
Updated
Edited the flagging wiki with the information @feline_lump suggested in comment #1698894 .
NWSiaCB said:
And why is it over-dramatic?
This topic was started specifically by someone who was reapproving the off-topic Wendys images as there were more people coming on to sustain the flag. How is it over-dramatic to infer that their motivation for doing so was a worry that they would be out-voted?
The topic starter's concerns were deemed valid enough to implement a 3 day cooldown.
To characterize this discussion as some kind of sinister plan by saying that you "can't conclude this is anything but a backdoor attempt at trying to weaken the only real check" seems unreasonably and needlessly sensational.
There absolutely is discussion when a post is flagged multiple times. After all, you can only approve a post once, and only flag it once, so if you get overruled, there's nothing to do BUT discuss the topic to try to persuade others to your point of view.
Agreed.
Except in this case, other than the initial comments, flaggers just kept pushing back with the same flag reasons. Who knows how long this would have kept going if I had not noticed the post and took the initiative to say something?
No discussion was occurring, just a game of ping pong with the image post as the ball
The point of asking for a cooldown isn't to encourage discussion, it's to discourage it, and hope that people will forget about the image as more images come up and few people remember it a month down the line.
But isn't the change of the flagged image border colour from red to blue doing this? If discussion is encouraged, which is what I would like more of, how does trying to hide flagged images get a pass?
Whereas, having a cooldown period for flags encourages flaggers to take time to write out their concerns instead of being limited to the briefness of the flag to build a stronger case instead of kicking the post back into the queue. By the way, those discussions only occur when commentators engage the flag, so I am quite puzzled why comments of such nature are looked down on.
And again, I have to ask, what, exactly, is the problem with an image being flagged two or three times if there is a disagreement between a majority of approvers and a minority of outliers that want to keep their subjective opinions absolute and unquestioned? Again, flagging is the ONLY thing that prevents unlimited uploads users from uploading literally anything, and if you make it so that just one reapproval means an image is untouchable, you basically make it so that one approver can keep posts everyone else believes deserves to be deleted in play forever... which is exactly what a few users want.
Again you are being needlessly sensational by dragging in this "us vs them" mentality.
I do not understand why it is a valid argument separate viewpoints into majority and minority camps. Not only is this assessment disputable, but does this have anything to do with the legitimacy behind the reasons being discussed at all?
The people who are so worried about what's being flagged that they notice these things are also the people who probably think they have something they stand to lose if they don't control the process of flagging or deletion, and they're the people already most active in this argument.
I only speak for myself that I do not appreciate bad faith accusations cast upon my participation. If my behavior and talking points are problematic or bely some kind of ulterior motive then please feel free to take that up with me before making such conclusions. I am sure that others would have similar responses for being accused of this without good reason.
As I said, most of these flags are placed by the same people who are already approvers, because they're also the people who are most interested in what is or isn't included on Danbooru's archives, and that's usually why they even became approvers to begin with.
In which case shouldn't they be discussing this amongst themselves instead of playing dodgeball with the queue?
Why do flaggers need to come up with new reasons when approvers do not? post #574061 serves as a perfect example, since in that case, you have one person constantly re-approving the same thing against the chorus of everyone else saying it was crap. What more needs to be said about that image other than that it is crap? Why do they need to jump through hoops to come up with some new, entertaining reasoning for random other users, while the person reapproving needs give no explanation whatsoever?
My understanding is that a mod can only approve once. If so, then the act of a flag being rejected means 'disagreed base on provided flag reasons' and trying to push the same flag reason through without additional discourse seems like brute force mentality that is not constructive.
As I've said several times in the "Flag Vandalism" thread, flagging is basically just an anti-approval. Especially when it comes from an approver, it's basically nothing more than one "vote" against an image countermanding the "vote" of another approver.
This precisely why there needs to be discussion.
Did I misunderstand the spirit of the approval process? Is there not some kind agreed upon approach by approvers?
If it's only just a majority vote, then what happens approvers vote multiple times per appeal/flag of the same image when they cast the "moderator as reviewed this image" counter?" One approver can say no multiple times without limit?
Why, then, is there this greater onus (including references to the likes of "tyranny" in the Flag Vandalism thread) upon flagging than there is upon approval in the first place?
Approvers are questioned when they approve questionable stuff. A recent flood of re-qc tells me that approvers are held to standard as well. So it's not just flaggers who are scrutinized.
At best, this is a complaint that the lay user is capable of seeing and participating in what would otherwise be a behind-the-scenes policy discussion by "staff", and I don't really see that as a problem, either, since I don't think further centralizing power and obfuscating the discussions from anyone who isn't in the "elites" would actually make anything clearer or seem fairer to the average user.
Agreed. And on that point, what is your assessment over the flagged image border change?
Updated
Squishy said:
Did I misunderstand the spirit of the approval process? Is there not some kind agreed upon approach by approvers?
If it's only just a majority vote, then what happens approvers vote multiple times per appeal/flag of the same image when they cast the "moderator as reviewed this image" counter?" One approver can say no multiple times without limit?
Approvers are questioned when they approve questionable stuff. A recent flood of re-qc tells me that approvers are held to standard as well. So it's not just flaggers who are scrutinized.
Agreed. And on that point, what is your assessment over the flagged image border change?
?
If one approver thinks it is somehow ok, then it gets approved.
If one flagger thinks it need review it gets review.
This process is absolutely unbound from any majority or minority: Only one approval is needed to debunk a flag and no majority vote.
And if one Contributor and/or Approver receives too many (re)-flags on their uploads/approvals, then one should question if this Approver/Contributor is still ready to fit the position.
So yeah, everything is somehow scrutinized.
The blue color is also not destroying anything, but its effect is that people might think twice before complaining about a flag.
Off course there are always people that still complain about a flag, because they just want to (see post #2729937). I thought that writing in ALL CAPS is discouraged.
The blue border does not destroy anything, but it helps to get more civilized discussions and besides this exception, it seems to be true.
Updated
Provence said:
The blue color is also not destroying anything, but its effect is that people might think twice before complaining about a flag.
Off course there are always people that still complain about a flag, because they just want to (see post #2729937). I thought that writing in ALL CAPS is discouraged.
The blue border does not destroy anything, but it helps to get more civilized discussions and besides this exception, it seems to be true.
So then the issue is with the flag reasons and not the colour of the border.
Squishy said:
So then the issue is with the flag reasons and not the colour of the border.
Don't know how you can do this leap of logic.
I actually think that the border color still does play a part in it. If you click on a blue bordered post then you don't know before looking at it that it has been flagged. So you don't get agitated before.
That the reason per se is also sometimes a reason: No doubt, but some people just want to make aggressive statements. There's no helping it.
Updated
Provence said:
I actually think that the border color still does play a part in it.
How so? When people are commentating on the flag it's because they are questioning the reason.
I have not encountered statements that say 'this red border triggers me'. That seems to be a rather simplistic and inappropriate conclusion to equate people behind the comments as bulls. However I'd be glad to be proven otherwise if there was rampant aggressive comments due to the border flag colour rather than the flag reason.
If you click on a blue bordered post then you don't know before looking at it that it has been flagged. So you don't get agitated before.
Is it unreasonable for me to say that this is an admission in trying to hide flagged posts? Furthermore, doing so by mixing them with pending posts to further reduce visibility?
That the reason per se is also sometimes a reason: No doubt, but some people just want to make aggressive statements. There's no helping it.
There are already existing mechanisms to discourage 'aggressive' posts. Downvotes, negative feedback or plain ignoring them.
The issue with confrontational comments about flags has always existed (see feline's link to beedrill). The people making nonconstructive contributions should be coached or dealt with accordingly, not have a veil pulled over their eyes like bulls.
Were the existing mechanisms insufficient in dealing with roudy commentators?
Seeing as how flagged images are still receiving heated exchanges I would say that the hypothesis about red borders being the issue needs to be re-examined further.
I do only observe that the amount of "bad" posts under a post is now minimized but discussions are still up. Colors are still important in our decisions we make and red does surely not help to get in touch in a friendly way.
Blue borders don't hide a flag post, nor should they, since there are easier ways to find flagged posts than just looking after red border: status:flagged.
And there have been two negative feedbacks (including one ban). Those were issued to people that didn't know how to use the comments, anyway.
So I guess it is quite a good action to make less wind about such posts, but still keeping it open for anyone to discuss if they really, really want to.
Updated
Squishy said:
Is it unreasonable for me to say that this is an admission in trying to hide flagged posts? Furthermore, doing so by mixing them with pending posts to further reduce visibility?
Like Provence said, considering you can see all posts with status:flagged regardless of border color... Flagged posts aren't "concealed" when you can find them with a simple tag query. It just serves its purpose: avoiding angry drive-by commenters who bring nothing to the discussion anyway. "Ugh flagger are you blind use your fucking eyes"
Yeah you can downvote them, yeah you can give them a feedback. You can also try to curb them even appearing which is what this change does.
Flandre5carlet said:
It just serves its purpose: avoiding angry drive-by commenters who bring nothing to the discussion anyway. "Ugh flagger are you blind use your fucking eyes"
Yeah you can downvote them, yeah you can give them a feedback. You can also try to curb them even appearing which is what this change does.
And yet the the change was instigated due to content disagreements over western-style / western subject matter disagreements.
So if the issue with vitriol being heaped toward flaggers over their reasoning was that much of an issue (which I remain unconvinced if) it seems unusual to me to have that slipped in through the shadow of an unrelated content issue spike where people flung crap at each other in favor of both keeping AND deleting smug wendy images.
A question about flag cooldowns to give the queue a break somehow led to changing flag visibility to cut down on 'bad comments' against flags. Flags and comments questioning flags are opposite components in this consensus, or is there a connection between the two that flew over my head?
Furthermore, would I be out of line by suggesting using only one narrow criteria (abusive comments about the flag) to measure the effectiveness of this change seems shortsighted and narrow without considering the effects it has on constructive discussion, or even discussion over the merits of the image? If we lose the worthwhile exchanges to avoid having to deal with worthless ones (that already have controls in place) might there be an overall net loss?
Updated