Why do people flag questions? If you don't like them don't read them .

I flag to let the moderators know I, personally, disagree with the content or validity of something. If the moderators see the flags they will investigate for themselves. It’s much like a democracy. I am the congress and they are the governor.

I agree with you 100% with you. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Just ignore it.

I typically flag a question when I believe that the answer to what is being asked can be easily found online, or though a basic search on any given search engine.

Riser also provides a great point!

Their are some nice gentle, polite, people on here doing their best! Then their are some people who have no people skill’s. My spelling and grammar is terrible. But I know what I am worth?

Like chad, I tend to flag questions that haven’t been asked for a reason, or questions that haven’t had any effort put into them. Fluther is for questions where the answer cannot be found easily online, and it is not an ‘opinions central’ or a Google for people who can’t be bothered reading search results. That’s my opinion anyway.

Moderators, believe it or not, probably don’t have the time to read every single question and answer to weed out the bad. Flagging is a productive and simple way of letting moderators know that something may require their attention.

@brownlemur: Excellent point.

If it is not an “opinions central” then nobody should answer because it will all be opinions.

Rich, what you think people think of you on hear, is not the same as what they are saying about you in private chats!

There is also the big issue of keeping the site healthy and mature. The recent growing pains have been apparent to many of us. Check out the fluther news updates on right of home page.

I see it as ignoring the obnoxious child that won’t shut up.
You ignore him long enough, he’ll shut up and maybe even leave.

Same way with people who post ridiculous questions.
You don’t answer their questions, they leave.

However, there is fault to that argument, because in the room, there is only that one child. On the internet, anyone can join this website.

Oh well…

Another issue is if these questions aren’t cleaned up they will only conceal universally respected questions from the public eye. Fluther is unlike most forums that place the most recently posted topic on top. This site goes in chronological order. If “stupid” questions are posted they dwarf and devalue logically sound questions from exposure.

*I put stupid in quotations out of respect for opinion.

@thelove; anyone can, indeed, join. The flagging is a mechanism designed to help Ben, Andrew and Erik with the inundation. It has been in place for a long time and is part of the Fluther ethos.

@trainerboy: The thing that annoys me is when people post questions that are essentially just a poll. There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking a question that requires some opinion to answer, but too often I’m digging through terrible forum-post style questions that would be more appropriate elsewhere, looking for threads to follow where I feel I’m going to actually learn something interesting or useful (which is what Fluther is about). If all you want to do is chat, then sites like Yay Hooray! (http://yayhooray.com/) are much better for things like that (and I have invites if anyone would like them). Like I said, this is only my opinion, so by flagging questions all I can do is hope that enough other people flag things in order for them to be reviewed for moderation. If that isn’t the case, then I’m in the wrong and that’s the end of that chapter.

@thelove: And to continue with the metaphor of the obnoxious child, it would be much better parenting to deal with his behavioral problems and enable him to function in a happier and more productive manner. Children do not learn and grow by being ignored.

I wasn’t saying a parent/kid situation, I was saying more brother and friends/little brother situation. Should have specified.

Andrew, my old fruit, should I leave you all in peace, only never to return again?

@thelove; You were, indeed, not specific. Respectfully, the clearer the statement, the better the discussion.

I agree gailcalled. My error, and I did my best to correct it.

I think the suggestion of not flagging questions and answers would perhaps have a little more weight if anyone actually has a an example of an otherwise really productive or interesting question being removed. Are there any? Otherwise, is it really an issue?

Although it’s nice saying that everyone should have a voice, it’s like suggesting that everyone in the world should have ten minutes on television, and I don’t want to keep flicking through a million channels that are a waste of broadcasting resources (to follow my analogy).

Not everyone thinks the same, and that’s what makes Fluther fun, If we all thought the same, the answer people were givein would be boreing to read after the first few. I never thought a week ago I would be addicted to a website! If you don’t like what you see then don’t read it. I take it, no one read this?

Flutherers tend to flag questions that don’t meet the question guidelines; when a question is flagged, the poster of the question has an opportunity to respond to the admin in kind-I believe it to be a fair process.

Also, I believe the purpose of the flag is to keep the quality standards and integrity of the site intact.

Does Fluther have a bullying policy?

@axlefoley That depends on whether you stop asking poll questions and clean up that spelling and grammar. =)

Why do we remove questions? To keep Fluther a place that is consistently interesting; a place where diverse thoughts and well-thought-out opinions can flourish. @richardhenry stated it well. We remove questions to maintain a (relatively) high level of discourse on the site. Tragically misspelled, totally open-ended, poorly thought-out questions, questions that are asked for the purpose of self-promotion (either for spam or attention), 192 questions on the iPhone SDK or ‘how to jailbreak me iPhone’, questions that are trivially answered by google, questions that aren’t questions but thinly masqueraded propoganda, flurries of one-line answers, personal attacks in responses, responses that are bigoted or homophobic or racist or patently false, responses with abysmal spelling, off-topic chatter, inside jokes and responses that have nothing to do with the question asked simply don’t benefit the community,

How do we decide what to moderate? That’s tricky. We’re human. We make judgement calls. We recently expanded the moderator program to help with the inflow of traffic. Many of the questions removed aren’t ever flagged. Honestly, we could do with more flagging, since there are many responses that leak through. So sometimes a stinker gets through the gates.

Once we implement the following feature the community will be able to weather polls, teenage drama and multiple questions about the iPhone, how to crack a dvd and bittorrent, since the people that aren’t interested in that type of discourse can filter it out.

Until then, we simply ask that members of the community follow the culture that has been eloquently, creatively, and amazingly demonstrated by scores of prior questions.

I’ll do my best, I am not perfect and never said I was. I do struggle with my grammar and spelling. I do like to think I add a tinge of humour. Maybe you should have to sit a test, and if you pass you could enter this site. The one thing I will say is, I will not apologise for being human?

Humor is only funny if other people find it funny. No one is asking for superhuman qualities or perfection, BTW.

@Axle, you might do well to spend more time reading (particularly Andrew’s clear and thoughtful answer above) and less time sending off answers as fast as you can.

Why shouldn’t people have the right to flag questions? The moderators can’t be everywhere at all times, and I think there’s nothing wrong with us policing ourselves as well. Flagging a question doesn’t necessarily mean that it will get deleted, either.

If people have the right to be nasty or absurd, that decreases the integrity of Fluther, then why shouldn’t people have a right to respond to that?

@trainerboy: You seem to be confusing the issue here; it’s not an issue of choosing/not choosing to read a question or respond to a thread, it’s an issue of quality of the Q&A, and the standards and guidelines for this site.

Some users, either of their own ignorance or volition (or both), choose to ignore them, and this is where problems and the misunderstandings arise.

I agree with DeezerQueue-the flagging (especially at present) is really, really necessary-it serves the community and the esprit des corps, and does keep the quality and standards high. I have also observed that in recent weeks, clicking the flag takes you to an expanded list of reasons to choose from-again, in the effort to better serve the community.

IMO, it’s all constructive and positive, but only to those willing to lend a positive and constructive ear to it. I believe the Fluther gods listen and really do refrain from throwing down “lightning bolts” at us!

We flag because there are questions that do not fit the tone of Fluther, because they’re inane, easily answered by Google and by Wikipedia (and recently, by IMDB), because they are duplicates from yesterday’s advice to lovelorn teenagers, because they deal overmuch with bodily functions, because if you don’t know what an SDK is you don’t need to worry about when it comes out.

We flag answers for much the same reasons.

We do this because we care about the quality of questions and answers on Fluther. If new visitors read Fluther questions and get the idea that it’s an iPhone support site, we all suffer. If an old visitor makes homophobic sex jokes in multiple places and is not flagged or censured, he will get the impression that it’s acceptable, and new readers will too.

Communities have standards for what behavior they accept and don’t accept, and flagging is one of the ways the Fluther community enforces its standards.