Based on experience, I would say that a more functional solution would be for only moderators to be able to hide, delete, and edit messages. This makes the arrangement clear and understandable, and at best, increases the transparency of moderation (naturally, assuming that moderators’ decisions are monitored). Peer moderation is also a perfectly functional solution, right up until it stops working. Then, at worst, things turn into a shouting match and up-/downvote fishing or spam, when people want to ensure visibility for content that pleases them. And when you’re on a forum where the quality of the core discussion content requires all voices to be heard, that equation is admittedly difficult.
One good aspect of a moderator group would also be that the so-called “line” would remain consistent regardless of the thread or flagger, as the power and responsibility for decisions would lie with a smaller group rather than the entire forum user base. This is especially emphasized when one of the forum rules is the difficult-to-interpret “Do not comment if you cannot bring new content to the discussion.” In popular threads, many more messages violate this than are flagged - but this may not be apparent except to those who are well-versed in the thread’s messages. I’m not trying to unnecessarily categorize users, but it is clear that some are better informed about the content than others, and would therefore be better at evaluating the quality and necessity of messages.
The fact remains in both cases that the larger the group, the more moderators are needed.
I myself am a relatively new user on the forum, having only browsed for a little under two years. I still haven’t understood why flagging is considered so problematic?
If you write a message that gets flagged, the reason is probably one of the following:
The thread is likely incorrect.
The message does not bring a new perspective/information to the discussion.
Even if you respond to the previous off-topic message, it doesn’t change the fact that your message might also be off-topic. (This would avoid “but the other person wrote nonsense too, I just replied…”).
It’s a personal attack (offensive, racist, etc.), even if the content is otherwise gold.
Not once in these less than two years have I seen a message flagged that was a brilliantly argued post about the company in the thread.
I’ve been flagged too, and I found the reason for it quite quickly by looking in the mirror
This, in my opinion, is a good place for an update!
I just spent two weeks in the box for what I considered to be quite harmless sarcastic remarks on the Tecnotree board. Yes, I’m guilty, I admittedly posted a few zero-content messages – but two weeks in the box was quite an unreasonable punishment for that, considering I have also published a large number of informative messages.
And the sarcastic remarks were retorts to “I trust Padma,” “They won’t repeat their mistakes” type of completely contentless hype messages that haven’t been flagged or their authors put in the box. So, of course, I shouldn’t have stooped to snarking, point taken.
Having learned from this, in the future, I intend to only read the wisdom of others and reduce my own comments to zero. Let the hype continue.
I don’t believe that flagging and putting people in the box are very well balanced/aligned with each other, but this is, of course, Inderes’ board, and Inderes is free to follow its own line.
Hey. You can flag messages. And you won’t know what happened to them afterwards unless you specifically go digging for an old message and see if it’s still there. So, in practice, it’s left to guesswork whether the flagging was justified or not.
You’ll notice that moderation matures when you’re already in the booth. Warnings are not known. It came a bit out of nowhere for me when I got hit with a booth visit some time ago.
Usually, you only get sent to the basement if you’ve already received several flags. Not for the first offense, unless the message is somehow egregious. Flags tend to accumulate for a certain group of people, which also stays in the administration’s mind.
Mmmh, almost always flags are justified, and other members see if a message has already been flagged. Of course, multiple people can flag it at once, but their public visibility has a certain signal value. It’s up to the administration to decide whether the message is removed or the flag is rejected.
A thread gets closed if many flags come in, which is an extremely handy feature if the discussion gets out of hand at three in the morning..
For what on earth reason have @T3r00 and @Meri’s messages been flagged in the Hyzon thread? They are a direct continuation of the discussion about Hyzon; I simply do not understand these forum’s robot flaggers who destroy good discussion.
@Seinakadun_Keisari this is so familiar here . The intention was to continue on the topic more at night once the coin dip has been bought . But in the meantime, the flag petters had once again come to conclude that it’s useless to try and discuss, for example, Linde . They are the ones who produce content for this site . They probably think, knowing everything, that Linde has nothing to do with Hyzon . Well, then I didn’t get to elaborate more on Linde and its infrastructure development, which of course has nothing to do with Hyzon and its competitors. And at the same time, Linde’s relationship with its competitors like Shell, Total, etc. remained unaddressed, which I also referred to in my writing and which would have been good to discuss a bit, because I said that I myself follow Linde’s movements first…
This is exactly what happened with the FuelCell Energy thread the emperor surely remembers… I decided that if it’s true that the flag petters are the ones making the content, then let them do it … I deleted, if I recall correctly, over 200 of my own posts and links from the thread. After that, I haven’t written a single byte in that thread, and the thread is flourishing with the flag petters’ writings .
But yeah, this is how it is, and flags also have their place .
Now back to making money…
Did you read any of the discussion? If some people’s approach is not to follow the discussion at all, and as soon as another company is mentioned – let alone if someone dares to post that company’s stock chart – the flag button starts waving, then we have a big problem on the forum.
Is there even a single listed company whose share price development isn’t somehow significantly related to the share price/future/past of some other company? A company operating in its own closed sandbox could have a thread where others wouldn’t be needed, and therefore, according to the rules, shouldn’t even be mentioned.
There wasn’t really any discussion about it, but Linde had been mentioned in a previous message. I completely understand that “Is this Linde?” and “Yes” messages are flagged. No discussion has been blocked here.
For God’s sake, go read the discussion, then you’ll understand what it’s about.
Hyzon and Linde are being discussed as part of the future collaboration and/or merger scenarios of the entire hydrogen scene; it was certainly relevant and likely interested all Hyzon investors.
You don’t seem to have a single message in the whole thread, so how on earth could you even understand the overall picture?
What whole picture should one understand there? Have some messages been removed in between? If those two flagged messages were removed, nothing essential would be lost from the discussion. At least I don’t see anything so unpleasant in those flags that one should take offense and stop writing about the topic altogether.
I already explained. I recommend that you read the thread a bit more in this case, and maybe it will become clearer.
This discussion, by the way, explains very well why we are discussing these flags.
The fundamental question is what purpose the flagging of those messages served; those interested in the topic were certainly not bothered by them, and they were relevant to the discussion anyway.
It was a pointless flag. If those flagged messages hadn’t been posted in that thread, I wouldn’t have seen them. And I also thought they were related to Hyzon.
, if there’s an easy answer to this in some rulebook 
. The intention was to continue on the topic more at night once the coin dip has been bought 
. But in the meantime, the flag petters had once again come to conclude that it’s useless to try and discuss, for example, Linde 
. They probably think, knowing everything, that Linde has nothing to do with Hyzon 
. Well, then I didn’t get to elaborate more on Linde and its infrastructure development, which of course has nothing to do with Hyzon and its competitors. And at the same time, Linde’s relationship with its competitors like Shell, Total, etc. remained unaddressed, which I also referred to in my writing and which would have been good to discuss a bit, because I said that I myself follow Linde’s movements first…