Why is the "other" option for flags not enabled in this forum?

[paulakreuzer]

In every other discourse forum you can flag a post as spam, inappropriate, off-topic or other. If you choose other you can then send the moderators a message along with your flag.
I think this is a very helpful tool and on the Fairphone Forum - where I am a moderator - it’s being used a lot.
Btw, there is usually also an option to send the author of the post a PM about their post (without flagging it).

Why are these options not available here?

[mfmeulenbelt]

I can do that. Maybe you haven’t been around for long enough yet so the option is not yet available for you?

[paulakreuzer]

Well I am a “member”, just like on a few other forums where I can do it.
You are a “regular” and there are currently only 26 of you.
I don’t know if it makes sense to only allow a very select group to use this function.

[Freso]

@paulakreuzer

Why are these options not available here?

I wasn’t aware of this option, it’s not something that I have explicitly disabled/not enabled. I just spent some time looking through settings, and I can’t find anywhere to enable this for you. FWIW, I also do not have an “other” option when flagging (but that might be because I’m already admin, maybe?). If you can find out how/where to enable this, I’d be happy to do so.

[paulakreuzer]

@Freso

If you can find out how/where to enable this, I’d be happy to do so.

I couldn’t find anything on discourse meta, so I asked.
I’ll holler back when I know more.

[jesus2099]

For information, here are some earlier thoughts on this.

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Spliting and moving topics

According to topics I see here, it seems that it’s incredibly flexible how topics can be manipulated (split, move, merge). I used to tell in IRC when I saw Picard topics created in wrong channels for administrators to move. Now here I’ve been using the flag feature (off‐topic). It is great be cause it seems to be understood well, but still, as we cannot write a comment when flagging, so I’m little scared that flagging means too much. When I flag as off‐topic, I just want to suggest a move in…

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Cleanup / moderation / split / complex requests

For all the obvious tasks we have some nice report flag. But when we need to explain the forum moderator what we would like, there is no comment. I think it’s good that the comment has been deactivated because most of the time it’s better to be straightforward for most cases. Here is a topic for all complex forum moderator requests.

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Btw I like it without comments, more straightforward for reporters.

[paulakreuzer]

@Freso

we have user-to-user messaging turned off for the forum (for a couple of reasons), could this be the reason?

@codinghorror

With PMs disabled that would indeed remove the user to user PM and the user to staff PM options from the flag dialog.

That makes sense and I guess you have good reasons to disable PMs.
I’ll just use the other options and wait for the moderators to contact me in case something is not clear.

[Freso]

It seems like those options are missing due to internal messaging being disabled for our Discourse instance:

How to set which options are available for flagging?

We won’t be turning this messaging on anytime soon, until we have some resolution for MBS-8721:
https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-8721

[Freso]

@paulakreuzer

I’ll just use the other options and wait for the moderators to contact me in case something is not clear.

You’re always welcome to contact us directly if you have something specific on your mind. I’m pretty much online 24/7 on IRC (username “Freso”… ) , so you can message me there (I may not always be around though, so don’t expect an immediate reply). You can also write me directly at freso@metabrainz.org or to MetaBrainz in general via Contact - MetaBrainz Foundation

[paulakreuzer]

@Freso

IRC

I can’t seem to figure out how that works, but since it’s not about anything sensitive anyway I’ll just stop beating around the bush:

I think this discussion should be split from post 9 on. Not because it is completely off topic, but because it is an interesting new discussion that deserves it’s own topic title so people who might be interested will find it more easily.