Flagging

[louiselux]

It's blowing a gale outside and raining hard. It's good being inside with tea and internets and writing.

However! I've been attempting to manage my stress levels by mostly ignoring the LJ flagging thing, but I'm failing because every time I see 'flag' on someone's post it gives me a nasty little shock and I get all mad. What's the point of it, if you can already just contact the abuse team about a post you are offended by? Also, their definition of offended is gloriously vague. As far as I can tell there is still no clear system for judging the complaint either.

I haven't changed my journal settings to 'adult concepts' or 'explicit adult content'. I can see how this might be genuinely useful though, to protect oneself. Especially now that LJ have upped the stakes.

Comments

[inksheddings.livejournal.com]

I have my viewing options (http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/) set so that I don't see the warnings, etc., and I guess nothing is filtered. So LJ looks the way it always did before all this flagging business. Have you done that? Not that it would change the...questionable sense of all of this, but at least then you don't see the weird cut tags, etc.

[avierra.livejournal.com]

I have been pondering how many people are hitting the "flag" button as they think "I wonder what this does."

I read LJ's flagging explanation and it's the same vague folderol they delivered after the TOS bannings. One would have thought they'd have learned from that to have a well-thought-out strategy in place before they do stuff like this, but apparently not.

[emungere.livejournal.com]

The only point I can see to this action is that, once everything is tagged, they will know where it is and it will be much easier for them to delete it, a la fanfiction.net. However, my give a damn seems to be busted. Eh. Whatever. Should I write the angsty duck feeding?

[harukami]

Since I saw a lot of misinformation in this post, some clarification from what I read from LJ employees:

LJ's already listed -- via marta, at least, if unclear in their original announcements -- the repercussions of flagging. People can (as per MOST sites) flag something they find deeply offensive, ONLY if it's not something the eyes of minors should see. If multiple people flag the same thing, LJ will review it, but not unless multiple people review. LJ has promised zero deletions -- the absolute worst-case scenario if things get flagged multiple times and they agree that children shouldn't see it is that they set the security to "over 18", which means that anyone under 18 sees an LJ cut with a warning and the content isn't visible, and everyone else views it normally. Even people under 18 can still read these rare posts by logging out and clicking; they'll get a "confirm your age" message and if they confirm it as over 18, they can read the post. No content will be removed, only put behind a security filter based on the date of birth given to LJ at registration.

Flagging is completely voluntary. There's no need to put one's own work behind an LJ cut; even if other people flag your stuff, LJ will review each entry (which receives multiple flags) individually. To prevent abuse of the "other people can flag entries" aspect, they have set a limit that each person can only flag five posts per... I believe it's week, but I might be misremembering it, it might be a day.

I'm leaving my own opinion out of this, and only posting it because the comments here showed that people commenting hadn't found LJ's explanations, while I know I had. *g*

[hibem.livejournal.com]

Okay, here's what I don't understand. If they're already allowing access to flagged content based on the age you report in your userinfo, why do I still have to tell them that I'm over 18 every time? Does that seem redundant to anyone else? I am really glad that I can turn that off, but still, as a concept, I just don't get it.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

And now we're all Russians to boot. I wonder what SUP's policies will be like?