Again, I am not quite sure if this goes here or in the Newcomer's Forum...
When I usually post a comment or check back to see which of my comments were merited, I usually go through and weed out the 1 and 2 word comments, flagging them with spam. Sadly, I rarely see anyone putting any effort into comments, so Voting Up is rare.
However, is this work making a difference, or is it just sending information to a database somewhere where the information is never seen again?
I have heard that Voting Up comments makes comments more visible to moderators, but does it only take one vote up or flag to increase the text size for moderators?
I think there's no use in flagging every individual post, I usually just leave them alone, but if there is a post with excessive language or other inappropriate material, I just alert a mod. I don't really see a difference in text size when I vote something up, so I usually leave that alone, too. It's better just to tell a mod.
I have heard that Voting Up comments makes comments more visible to moderators, but does it only take one vote up or flag to increase the text size for moderators?
You've got it mixed up. Flagging sends the comment to a database for the admins (only?) and up-cotign makes the text-size bigger, so I never bother to up-vote.
Meh, there was a thread about flagging in the newcomers section earlier today... And this has been brought up before...
The deal with those functions is as follows (with information about flagging from Devoidless): You flag a comment. Some little message about it gets sent to an admin-only database. Mods sees nothing. You upvote a comment. If it has been upvoted enough times (don't know how many, but more than once or twice) the text grows slightly bigger. And the more it is upvoted, the bigger it gets, until it almost looks like a merit. The function of that is supposed to be that moderators (and everyone else) will see them more easily, but it isn't really effective, since long comments are easy to see in the piles of spam anyway.
You flag a comment. Some little message about it gets sent to an admin-only database. Mods sees nothing. You upvote a comment. If it has been upvoted enough times (don't know how many, but more than once or twice) the text grows slightly bigger. And the more it is upvoted, the bigger it gets, until it almost looks like a merit.
Pretty much. And the flagging option really does help us out. But the thing is, people don't tend to use it. It require more than one flag click to get sent to us. So the more people that are flagging, the more chances that we will see it. With some members this helps a lot. I catch a lot of advertisers and spammers this way.
By spammers, do you mean malicious individuals, or do you include people with 1 or 2 word comments in that?
We consider spam to be short, nonconstructive comments. Malicious individuals would probably fall more under breaking our trolling, profanity, or flaming rules.
I've always flagged the individual cruddy posts, since on the internet forums, there is no such thing as a citizens arrest, so I always flag them. I often do wonder whether flagging actually work though, considering that it is a ton of work and I expect it's a little bit of a blargh to go tag n' bag the spam, considering it'll just build up again within the day. Whoops, I'm ranting again. Anyways, I don't think it has too much avail, since (what I figure) the mods just don't get around to it sometimes, because they know for every page they delete, 2 more grow in it's place. Saddening, really.
Thanks Carlie and Zophia, this thread really cleared some things up a LOT. There have been threads about this sort of thing, but the problem was never solved, just buried in pages of threads. I'm sure the flagging rate will rise, once users see this. Again, this really helped a lot.
