What does "flagging" a post do?

I accidentally flagged a post, there's no confirm button?

Does this report someone for abuse (when they weren't being abusive) - I don't want them in trouble and I don't want me marked as someone hassling other users. How do I clear a 'flagged' post?

or is this like just a "favourite" or a post?

Your reporting someone to the mods, and if they don't like what they see they'll delete your post or thread.

You get karma points on the number of posts you can flag in a given time so an accident here or there isn't going to hurt you. A moderator probably read it and either thought you were being mean/sensitive or otherwise realized it was an accident. I accidentally flagged some dudder a while back and nothing has happened to either of us.

Afew times I accidentally flagged someone aswell. So don't beat yourself up about it.

Flagged.

Just kidding, I'm sure it happens constantly. I really wish there was a confirmation prompt.

Yeah or aleast have the flag button all the way to the left side. Cus sometimes when I try to quote people I accidentally flagged them. Besides flagging people isn't my style.

The flagged subject gets on the government watch list.

No confirmation prompt and it's in the exact position reply should be in, odd design choice!

Every time you flag a user it automatically sends an assassin to their house for elimination. You just scheduled a hit on an innocent human being.

There was talk of something like this happening, but I'm not sure what the status of it is.

Reducing the number of accidental flags would definitely help us out on the moderation side, but don't stress out if you accidentally click the button. One karma point is inconsequential for you and the user that was flagged, and it's typically easy for us to recognize and dismiss the unintentional flags.

Especially on the mobile site holy fuck. I've flagged dozens of things by accident because my fat fingers was trying to press the reply button but hit flag instead.

@trafalgarlaw: You know, that adjusting to the new office meme is a bit tired and annoying. The engineers and designers work hard. The redesign and relaunch of GameSpot has consumed a lot of their time recently, but rest assured that they aren't finished with Giant Bomb.

@trafalgarlaw: Keep up the lip and I'll adjust to your new office. And by adjust to your new office I mean I'll do something about your forum, if you read me here.

@chaser324: Good to hear it's a feature that's getting discussed. I used to moderate on a forum with a similarly easy-to-hit flag button, and it definitely gets frustrating sorting through the misclicks. (especially since the community was prone to getting into flagging wars over disagreements, so it wasn't always clear if it was an accident or somebody to keep an eye on)

Yes, at least on the mobile site have a confirmation, I think I accidentally reported like 2 people the other day.

That's because the forum bugs/quircks are getting on my nerves, same stuff on gamespot since it now uses the same forum system. I'll be compiling a list in a minute (it took 10 mins of refreshing to actually see your post and anything after it).

Goog to see the mobile issues are being discussed so many flags by accident!

Since we're here talking about flagging, why don't mods have a flag button on their posts? That seems kind of unfair.

It's okay guys, we give everyone five mistaken flags before we ban them.

Just kidding. A real human looks at all of these submissions to the moderation queue and we can typically tell when something was intended to be flagged and when it was a mistake. That, and typically things that are worthy of being flagged are usually tagged by multiple users and we can see that too.

@missacre: If you actually have a legitimate problem with a moderator on any website, the only appropriate authority is to write to the site's staff. It would probably be inefficient to build a feature in a flagging system where only staff see the results of moderator posts being flagged. And the system is much less likely to be abused if a user actually has to put together a coherent and evidenced argument. It should be hard to become a moderator, and thus hard to lose the job. But it certainly has happened.

So I guess you have to outsource when it's time for somebody to look at the submissions?

If you see something dumber than dumb, remember: just flag and walk away.

You're fucked dude, banned for life.

Since my other thread is locked, I guess I'll post here? It's not really the same problem, but it's happening again. I was trying to flag a spam comment (a "work at home" one) in the new Worth Reading, but I just get redirected back to the same page without any confirmation. By which I mean there is no confirmation that I have flagged the post as usual (with the green bar at the top I think?). I don't know if I've actually flagged it or not.

There really should be a confirmation pop-up screen asking if the user wants to proceed or cancel the flag.

@audiobusting: That might happen in a case where the Javascript didn't load all the way / properly. Technically, the flag should have worked anyway, unless we broke something else majorly. Next time you see something flaggable, give it a shot. Let me know if it's still broken for you.

I heard that, if you have a problem with the moderators here, you should contact @rorie directly. I'm not sure if it's officially his job to, but he's been great at keeping an eye on the forums and comments section. If you have problems, he's usually pretty prompt with a response.

@jslack: I see that issue pretty frequently on video/podcast/article comments. I assumed it was maybe just an issue for mod/staff, but when I click the buttons, I frequently get redirected back to the same page or end up on a screen with a JSON response of { success: 1 }.

You can flag them on blogs.

Blogs.

Everything blogs.