She'a a grand old unflag ... December 31, 2009 8:41 AM   Subscribe

Could it be possible to unflag a post?

While trying to flag Mutant's response in the banking thread as a fantastic comment, I accidentally did it to the post below it (which was humorous but not fantastic, nothing personal, goodnewsfortheinsane). It was a simple mistake, but I couldn't undo it.

While this particular example was my own fault, it's easy to see how one slip of a mouse/touchpad/trackball can result in a misflagging.

If this is a deliberate choice, I don't understand the rationale.

Granted, this may not be a common problem. And if this change would require a lot of coding work, I'd probably say never mind. But if it's relatively quick and easy, what would you think?
posted by pmurray63 to Feature Requests at 8:41 AM (38 comments total)

Just don't worry about it; flags work mostly in aggregate, so a stray flag here or there is not a big deal.

We don't provide an un-flag/re-flag interface because the headache caused by a rare misflag is less than the effort required to test and implement and maintain a more complicated flagging interface, basically.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:44 AM on December 31, 2009 [1 favorite]


It's actually ok to have the errant flag or two, we don't judge things based on single reports usually, and when we do review something it's easy to ignore (none of the mods act immediately on every single flag, there's a lot of noise in the system). So it's totally innocuous to have an accidental flag here and there, we're mostly interested in what a dozen or more mefites think is bad.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:45 AM on December 31, 2009 [1 favorite]


Can I flag this post as boring? Because there is nothing going on today at work, and if there’s no drama on talk and no one is really posting anything on the blue or green, this is shaping up to be a looonngg day.
posted by Think_Long at 8:47 AM on December 31, 2009 [1 favorite]


Accidental flags are ok.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:47 AM on December 31, 2009 [1 favorite]


we're mostly interested in what a dozen or more mefites think is bad.

There ya go. The Mods only love us in aggregate. :(
posted by Atreides at 8:52 AM on December 31, 2009 [3 favorites]


Ok, no problem. Close this thread if you like.
posted by pmurray63 at 8:53 AM on December 31, 2009


And thanks for the stunning quickly responses.
posted by pmurray63 at 8:54 AM on December 31, 2009


Stunningly quick, argh.
posted by pmurray63 at 8:55 AM on December 31, 2009


That Joachim dude is heading for a flameout, I can feel it.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 9:19 AM on December 31, 2009 [7 favorites]


Think_Long: "Can I flag this post as boring? Because there is nothing going on today at work, and if there’s no drama on talk and no one is really posting anything on the blue or green, this is shaping up to be a looonngg day"

Get posting then! I give you license to do so. Trust your instincts, your post will be aweswome.
posted by boo_radley at 9:21 AM on December 31, 2009


My interest in this thread is flagging.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:24 AM on December 31, 2009 [1 favorite]


You know, synaesthetichaze, I have a suspcious feeling about him, too. The weird Jachin/Boaz thing he's trying to do is, um, special. Is he trying to tell us he's some kind of super-Mason? It ain't working.

Also it's the same name as one of my good friends who tends to get involved in weird shit, which lead to me calling him and asking him if he had been posting weirdness to the internet again, but he's been nowhere near the internet all day...
posted by Weighted Companion Cube at 9:25 AM on December 31, 2009


But what if a mod sees my mistaken flag, checks out who posted it, and then forever after thinks of me as that nut who thinks people in favor rescuing cats break the guidelines?

But then, if I use the contact form to disavow the flag, I risk looking like I think I'm so closely followed my the mods that it's important to correct any possible misunderstandings of my position on any given issue, and I can just picture them rolling their eyes while they delete my half-read e-mail.
posted by longsleeves at 9:26 AM on December 31, 2009


followed by the mods. sheesh.
posted by longsleeves at 9:30 AM on December 31, 2009


Do you need a hug?
posted by The Devil Tesla at 9:31 AM on December 31, 2009


You know what we're due for? A Sarah Palin hate-in. Let's make a thread about how awful she is to wear a sharpie'd McCain visor. Or how her dad said she doesn't feel comfortable around Pacific Islanders.

I guarantee at least 300 comments and a bunch of bean plating about the name Trig.
posted by mccarty.tim at 9:34 AM on December 31, 2009


That Joachim dude is heading for a flameout, I can feel it.

I wouldn't be su prised if it.
Is Joaquin Phoenix in
Cognito ergo sum.

Acting?
He's here to chew bubble gum.
And he's all out of bubble gum.
posted by stavrogin at 9:41 AM on December 31, 2009 [3 favorites]


I've occasionally misflagged things, so I've hoped for an unflag feature for a while now.

The feature wouldn't have to actually do anything on the back end, mind you; merely reverting the display from [flagged] back to [!] would do the trick. It's silly and petty and a tad obsessive, but it would be, like, satisfying or something, you know?

Of course, then I'd need the option of reflagging, which would also have to be display-only, to prevent jerkitude.

So, hey, when can I expect these two shiny new completely useless ponies?
posted by Sys Rq at 9:50 AM on December 31, 2009


How about the ability to flag tags? A post with a flagged tag could thereby be untagged (unless someone had already unflagged the tag flag). It might then be beneficial to be able to tag and untag flags (as, e.g., "gag", "brag", "misflagged," "grab bag"), in order to determine which flags should cause which tags to be untagged. Naturally, both unflags and untags would require their own sets of flags, tags, unflags and untags.
posted by aparrish at 9:50 AM on December 31, 2009 [7 favorites]


metafilter:It's silly and petty and a tad obsessive
posted by Think_Long at 9:59 AM on December 31, 2009


false flag operation commences in one, two, ...
posted by fourcheesemac at 10:06 AM on December 31, 2009


So who's up for a game of Bag flag rag gag stag tag?
posted by Wolfdog at 10:21 AM on December 31, 2009


So has anyone ever gotten in trouble for flagging too much? Like some sort of stunt flagging?
posted by cimbrog at 10:29 AM on December 31, 2009


There ya go. The Mods only love us in aggregate. :(

Well, mathowie did say he was going to fuck all of us, not one of us...
posted by lysdexic at 10:56 AM on December 31, 2009


"In trouble" no. But sometimes we see someone go on a flagging tear. Either they flag like 20 things in one thread in a row [really after 4-5 flags, we're in there checking everything out] or they flag a bunch of stuff in Meta [which is very lightly moderated, you're welcome to flag but it's sort of worthwhile to know that most flagging in MeTa doesn't do much] or they flag a bunch of mod comments in a row [which just smacks of weird snotty behavior, unless we're really behaving weirdly] and so we'll drop them a note and say "you may be unclear how this feature works, just wanted to let you know..." and usually it clears things up. Sometimes/rarely we get a crappy GRAR response and then we just sort of make a mental note "huh, soandso seems sort of unhappy today."
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:57 AM on December 31, 2009


You know what's really weird? Loading a thread and seeing it say [Flagged] and being really confused because you'd never even seen this thread before and then realizing that you flagged it like three years ago. That happened to me the other day with an old AskMe thread that at the time must have seemed too chatfilter to me but survived.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:08 AM on December 31, 2009


Can we please not badger somebody into flaming out? We don't need the drama and it'd be nice to start this day/year/decade off without it.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:07 PM on December 31, 2009


UnFlag: The all teenaged Japanese girl Black Flag tribute band.
posted by The Whelk at 1:08 PM on December 31, 2009 [1 favorite]


UnFlag: The all teenaged Japanese girl Black Flag tribute band.

I dunno about that, but how about Princess Princess?
posted by delmoi at 1:27 PM on December 31, 2009


Our Safety Record: It Has Been 0 Days Since The Last Flag Accident
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:59 PM on December 31, 2009 [2 favorites]


unflag
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:00 PM on December 31, 2009


Flag accidents
posted by killdevil at 7:30 PM on December 31, 2009


Do you need a hug?

Only if it's a side hug.
posted by bitteroldman at 8:26 PM on December 31, 2009


That happened to me the other day with an old AskMe thread that at the time must have seemed too chatfilter to me but survived.

With me it's happened a couple times with stuff that I flagged as "fantastic" before we had favorites. The first time I spent a few minutes wondering what I found so wrong with that comment that I decided to flag it.
posted by qvantamon at 9:01 PM on December 31, 2009


Q: You know who else likes flags?
A: Vexilloligists.
posted by blue_beetle at 10:06 AM on January 1, 2010 [1 favorite]


The Mods only love us in aggregate.

No single one of us is a special snowflake, but billions of snowflakes (special or not) together make a devastating blizzard.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 12:54 PM on January 2, 2010


Hives are made of a collection of bees. Busy, busy bees.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:11 PM on January 2, 2010


Alternatively, could the little exclamation mark be changed to 'furl'? Really, we are opening up the list of flags. It seems like it should be called an unfurling.

of course, if this happens then the flagging will come from unfurling and the unflagging will be a furling. A little awkward, it's true.
posted by Lemurrhea at 1:49 PM on January 2, 2010


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