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Everyone has seen what happened to Mos Eisley.

The mods have better things to do with their time than sitting in our chats, and we'd all have a much better time if they didn't hover around and censor speech in rooms where "off topic is the topic", as it were. Essentially, the only people who should be in a room are people who want to participate or watch.

As everyone can agree that no one is being kept in a room when they're offended and would rather not debate, why can't we just have the option of removing the flagging capability from our rooms? Let the market hammer it out.

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  • 16
    Oh come on. This is getting ridiculous. I was one of those chat users that got drawn into chat the other day because of all the flags showing, and the problems has nothing to do with flags. The problem is you don't get along. If the problem is so large it's not going to go away then the solution is to either start handing out lengthy suspensions to the users involved or to forbid Scifi from having a general chatroom anymore.
    – Wipqozn
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 20:29
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    I think this makes more sense as an answer to meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/7514/…
    – user1027
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 20:29
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    @Wipqozn If they do just "forbid Scifi from having a general chatroom anymore", I expect all the Mos Eisley regulars will congregate in another chatroom. That won't make the problem go away.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 20:30
  • @Wipqozn When hundreds of topics, all controversial, are discussed you need to learn how to either debate or respect someone else's opinion. Those mods were drawn in because of a budding discussion where one statement was flagged.
    – user40790
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 20:38
  • @Keen Enderland's answer covers that. It doesn't point out the mod autoimmune issue, but it works. Two days with no acceptance, though.
    – user40790
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 20:56
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    With all due respect, you first started participating in Mos Eisley last week, and seem to be ignoring the literal months of these instances and arguments happening time and time again. While we've had some flags thrown over innocuous things, there are plenty that have come from poor behavior.
    – phantom42
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:14
  • @phantom42 I'll give you that. Now tell me why removing flags wouldn't resolve that.
    – user40790
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:15
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    because it doesnt resolve the issue of people not respecting each other.
    – phantom42
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:20
  • @phantom42 But it does resolve all the problems that come from that. You can't make people respect each other, but you can encourage it by letting them hammer it out.
    – user40790
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:33
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    Keeping flags to room owners/site moderators for a minute or two and only escalating to the wider set of moderators afterwards might be a good idea.
    – CodesInChaos
    Commented Nov 17, 2015 at 13:02

2 Answers 2

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I don't see us ever taking away the ability to report issues in chat or on our sites.

If you want a free-for-all chat where anything and everything goes, Stack Exchange chat is not the proverbial droids you're looking for.

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Because flagging does have real uses. If someone is coming in and legitimately name-calling, insulting users, and being disruptive, that's what flags are for. There is no perfect system, no way to prevent abuses of any system. But flagging is the system we have in place to prevent abuses of the chat room itself. Of course there will be those who want to abuse that system, but we can't stop that.

We've revised our chat rules since the nuking, and that should cover the issues when all parties involved are interested in being productive members of the community. I think the edge cases where they are not are rare enough that it's not a big issue, or as a commentor noted, symptomatic of a deeper issue among those particular users. Treating the symptom won't solve that underlying problem.

No, I don't think getting rid of flagging would solve any problem.

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  • The flags in the situation involved did not involve name calling, insults, or disruption. They were entirely placed on an opinion being stated in response to a controversial issue we were discussing, and the mod response was disproportionate.
    – user40790
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 20:40
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    The issue wasn't the flags, the issue was that folks brought up a hot-button topic and handled themselves poorly in the face of disagreement about it. Don't confuse the symptom for the root cause.
    – Ana StaffMod
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 20:57
  • @Ana The poor handling was the flagging. The discussion was less than ten sentences in. We'll never know how it would have resolved -- except that all the other controversial chats resolved themselves. People will agree to disagree and move on. The subject will change on its own. You don't need to threaten people to make them do things, you just need a cat picture on a stick.
    – user40790
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 21:09

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