Whoops! You've Been Flagged!

July 18, 2012 8:20 AM

I use Metafilter on my phone a lot, and sometimes I mean to favorite a comment but I flag it by mistake, because the buttons to click on are tiny and right next to each other on the touchscreen. Oops!

When this happens, there's no option to "unflag" it. Instead, a drop-down window opens up asking my reason for flagging. There's no way to exit out of this window on the phone, so I instead ignore it, and click (more carefully) on the "favorite" button instead. I assume that since the drop-down isn't selected, the internal logic of the computer doesn't complete the flag "transaction", and therefore the post isn't flagged successfully. Am I right or wrong about this? If it turns out I've been flagging things accidentally after all, could we maybe get a button to undo the flag in case we clicked on it by mistake? I think it would result in better user content and less work for the mods, since they'd have less stuff in their flag queue to check on.

posted by wolfdreams01 to Feature Requests at 8:20 AM (35 comments total)

You are right; if you don't follow through by selecting a flag, there's no flag submitted.

And actual full-on accidental flags aren't super common and don't cause much trouble, which is why we haven't monkeyed around with any sort of unflagging interface. No worries.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:22 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I believe you're correct, opening the pull-down but not selecting anything does not send us a flag. That said, the stray flag is not a big deal and if you're in that sort of situation you can not worry about it since in most cases, especially on MetaFilter, we just look at flags in the aggregate so a random stray flag is no problem.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:23 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

When that flagging window pops up on the phone, click the blue "done" button at the top if it's an iPhone. That will close the drop-down selection and no flag will be set. Also, once you flag something the option to flag that item goes away and you see [Flagged] in its place. If you don't see [Flagged], nothing was flagged.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:24 AM on July 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

If the tiny links bug you, try out swipe to favorite, so you can be bugged by accidentally almost favouriting things instead.
posted by zamboni at 8:24 AM on July 18, 2012 [16 favorites]

I was wondering if you can flag something as both a fantastic post and offensive next time somebody does a Bill Hicks FPP?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 8:26 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh, and I just accidentally flagged jessamyn's comment above.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 8:27 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

You could also look into the swipe right to favorite option that we're testing. That would making adding favorites on your phone a little easier.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:27 AM on July 18, 2012 [6 favorites]

I would be a back-flagging superstar if all the times I'd invoked the drop-down menu by accident had counted.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:28 AM on July 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

I was wondering if you can flag something as both a fantastic post and offensive next time somebody does a Bill Hicks FPP?

The answer is no. You can only apply one flag on an item. Not sure if you could reflag once the flag is cleared on the backend, but I've never noticed an item I've flagged clear.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:29 AM on July 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

No, flags don't clear. You can only flag something once.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:31 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thanks for asking this question! I was 99% certain that my iPad false-flagging didn't go through because I never selected a reason to flag from the pulldown, but I had this 1% fear that I was coming off as Captain Crankypants about awesome things I meant to favorite.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:56 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Somewhat related, I use MetaFilter on my iPad a lot and at least once a week I'll hit logout in the upper right corner when I'm aiming for MetaTalk. Would it be possible to get a bit more space between those links? It's not a huge problem but it's a bit annoying to need to log back in and then hide the ads from The Deck again.
posted by 6550 at 9:05 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

No, sorry, there's a decent amount of space between the logout link and MetaTalk. There's enough room for a search form and the date between them. Rearranging the header is a fairly big project.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:09 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

There's always the mobile view...

Relatedly, I'm using Chrome on my iThing now, and can't swipe-to-favourite (I still can on Mobile Safari). Is that because Chrome doesn't support it, or do I need to re-enable it per browser?
posted by subbes at 9:12 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, you need to enable it for each browser. And if you log out somewhere, you'll need to re-enable it again.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:13 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

there's a decent amount of space between the logout link and MetaTalk. There's enough room for a search form and the date between them

No search form or date between them. Took a screenshot. I'm talking about the logout link above the MetaTalk link in the upper right corner.
posted by 6550 at 9:28 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

oh ok, the plain theme. I just added a confirmation dialog to the logout link in the plain theme for the iPad only. So instead of logging out when you accidentally click the link, you'll be asked if you really want to log out. You can cancel from there. That should save you having to log in again.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:39 AM on July 18, 2012 [6 favorites]

Sweet, thanks pb!
posted by 6550 at 9:42 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

No, sorry, there's a decent amount of space between the logout link and MetaTalk. There's enough room for a search form and the date between them.

Hmmm, I do this all the time on the iPad as well. Any chance of a JavaScript "Really logout?" alert to confirm it?
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 10:32 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Argh, that's what I get for leaving a tab open without previewing. Thanks.
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse at 10:33 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ooray! My swipes are back! Now to switch to the mobile theme and see if it remembers me...
posted by subbes at 10:34 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yay! I got hit by the log-out thing all the time.
posted by rewil at 10:35 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I love the swipe to favorite. Would it be possible to hide the [+] if one has the swipe enabled? I hit it way to often and the my fat fingers can't find it again and my favorites are precious to me.
posted by Uncle at 11:55 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Would it be possible to hide the [+] if one has the swipe enabled?

No, it's not possible right now. Swipe right to favorite is a test we're running to see how well it works for people. Once we decide whether to make it an official feature or not, we can revisit how favorites work on the mobile side.
posted by pb (staff) at 1:06 PM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Count me in as a vote in favor of swiping stuff!
posted by peppermind at 1:35 PM on July 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

You could also look into the swipe right to favorite option that we're testing

WHEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
posted by villanelles at dawn at 2:07 PM on July 18, 2012

I have an Android phone, and swipe-to-favorite doesn't seem to work for me. The flagging thing bugs me, too.
(People who have a nearly irresistible impulse to tell me to get an Apple product instead: do resist, please.)
posted by gingerest at 3:59 PM on July 18, 2012

I favorite things I intend to flag all the time. Which is actually more public and embarrassing.
posted by purpleclover at 4:13 PM on July 18, 2012

I occasionally delete things I mean to favorite (and then immediately undelete them) which, while not that public, is still stupidly embarrassing.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:53 PM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I did that once in Metatalk before were properly doing the hide-rather-than-nuke thing for Metatalk comments and felt totally ridiculous and had to explain it in thread to the user who I was just trying to favorite. Like, hey, that was a really great comment, why don't you go ahead and type it again!
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:02 PM on July 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

It's nice to see how the other half lives swipes.
posted by subbes at 5:27 PM on July 18, 2012

Gingerest, I use Maxathon browser on a Motorola droid and it works fine for me - maybe try a different web browsing app?
posted by peppermind at 6:18 PM on July 18, 2012

Yeah, I'm running the Android 4.0.x default browser. I keep hoping that if I just wait, it will magically gain the features I want, and I won't have to try to find a better alternative. But I don't want to derail this into what is a better browser than the one I have. That's what searching Ask is for.
posted by gingerest at 10:17 PM on July 18, 2012

I like the original request, but really, the site looks great in the default browser, Firefox, and Chrome on Android 4, mobile view on my phone and desktop on the tablet. The one pony I'd really like is just 3 or 4 unbreakable spaces between the closing bracket for favorites and the opening bracket for flagging to make it easier to favorite the first time I tap.

Also, swiping doesn't seem to be working for me, but I haven't tried all possible approaches yet. I'd rather just hit the + though.
posted by notashroom at 3:12 PM on July 19, 2012

Just a reminder, the swipe test is something you have to explicitly enable by visiting a specific link. So if you're having trouble make sure you do that and then reload any open pages.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:20 PM on July 19, 2012 [1 favorite]