Welcome to Codidact Meta!
Codidact Meta is the meta-discussion site for the Codidact community network and the Codidact software. Whether you have bug reports or feature requests, support questions or rule discussions that touch the whole network – this is the site for you.
Seeing which moderator marked my flag as helpful (which should be hidden)
Correct behaviour
At the bottom of the right hand panel of the user profile page (or at the bottom of the page on mobile where there is no right hand panel), the number of flags that the user has raised is displayed. When viewing your own profile page, this number is a link to the Flag History page showing all of the flags you have raised, and their outcome.
Here you can see whether a flag was marked as helpful, and you can see any response that the moderator added. However, the identity of the moderator is concealed. You can see what they said to you, but not which moderator said it, or which moderator marked your flag as helpful or otherwise. This is as intended.
Incorrect behaviour
The bug is that sometimes the identity of the moderator is leaked. If it was leaked to the person whose post is being flagged, I would raise this in private rather than advertising it publicly. However, it is only leaked to the person raising the flag, and only in cases where the flag is likely to be marked as helpful, so I'm raising it here.
The problem occurs when my flag leads to a moderator deleting the flagged post. I can now no longer see the deleted post directly (as I do not have the ability to see deleted posts), but it is still visible to me as a preview in the flagged posts page. In particular, this shows the username of the person who deleted the post, which is highly likely to be the moderator who processed my flag.
1 answer
We currently show who deleted a post -- regardless of whether anything was flagged -- to anybody who can see the post. This seems to me like a good thing for transparency.
If it was your own post, you don't know whether there were any flags. Ditto if you were not involved (didn't flag, didn't delete) but you can see deleted posts.
If it was a post you flagged, you can infer who handled the flag, but do note that sometimes moderators discuss cases before acting, so you only know one person who was probably involved. Also, speaking personally, I have sometimes deleted a post first and only afterward noticed that there were flags on it (which I then handle).
If we're directly revealing who handled flags, that would be a bug we would want to fix. I'm not sure we should worry about inferred handling, especially when this only arises for helpful flags. I think the largest potential for drama around flag-handling comes when flags are declined.
I'm speaking for myself not the team and I'm open to contrary opinions. If I've missed something about why this is bad, please correct me.
0 comment threads
2 comment threads