Currently, spam flags and rude/abusive flags age away in 2 days if not acted upon. This doesn't really happen on active sites, but it does happen elsewhere. (For example, I have four aged-away spam flags on Chinese Language and three on 3D Printing. And had a bunch on Русский язык before leaving that site.)

I don't think this aging does any good at all.

  • If a flag is invalid, it should be declined.
  • If a flag is valid but moderators are offline over a weekend (which is understandable), the flag should wait until they come back.
  • If a site doesn't have any active moderators, aging away flags is solving the wrong problem.
  • Offtopic, but I wonder if such happen a lot, maybe a mod can give us stat, as for me its maybe a sign those sites should elect more moderator, as I wouldnt want a abusing/rude stuff staying online too long – yagmoth555 Oct 9 '17 at 12:28
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    I'll support extending the period, e.g. 5 or even 7 days, but not totally removing it. It exists for a reason. – Shadow The Dragon Wizard Oct 9 '17 at 12:37
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    The timeout was probably put in for a reason, but is that reason still valid? Would it be better for the sites if the flags were around for a lot longer? – tripleee Oct 9 '17 at 12:53
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    Longer or not, if no mod act, should we just escalate those flag (abuse/spam) to mse staff when they ageaway? – yagmoth555 Oct 9 '17 at 12:55
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    Old spam on a site is a "broken window". It'll signal to new spammers that these sites will leave their spam online. Similar for rude/abusive posts. So, spam and rude/abusive content should always be removed. Better late than never. – S.L. Barth Oct 9 '17 at 14:39
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    @S.L.Barth it's also a signal it's time for new moderators, but guess that's a different issue. – Shadow The Dragon Wizard Oct 9 '17 at 18:49

Before making any changes, I did a bit of looking in the database to see how often these flags age away. While it doesn't happen very often, it is enough on some of the smaller sites that we don't want spam/offensive posts slipping through the cracks.

We went ahead and updated the setting to age away these flags after 4 days, instead of 2. This will leave them active long enough to cover weekends or extended holiday weekends when moderators might be unavailable.

  • Is the change from 2 to 4 days cross network? Or only on the smaller sites? – Shadow The Dragon Wizard Oct 9 '17 at 19:58
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    @ShaWizDowArd It was changed across all sites. – Taryn Oct 9 '17 at 19:58
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    Could you comment on the purpose of the age-away mechanism? The question seemed to make a good point that it'd make sense for the stronger flags to either be acted on or declined; it's not obvious why a flag should be forgotten. – Nat Jan 30 '18 at 7:47
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    @Nat Those flags have always aged away, similar to close voting. This is most likely due to the fact that a post could continue to receive flags until its deleted even though most people viewing it don't find a problem with it. If the community isn't finding the post spam/offensive, then there isn't a reason to keep the flag on it, so we age it away. – Taryn Jan 30 '18 at 20:24
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    @Taryn If you're aging them away to prevent a low percentage of visiting users from deleting a post, shouldn't that be based on the number of people who have visited the post since the flag was raised, rather than just time? Note that in such case, counting question visits doesn't actually mean that each person has seen a low-score answer. Yeah, it's more complex, but, frankly, aging away these flags is just masking the issue that the moderators are not handling them. IMO, if moderators are not handling them, then it's time for more/different moderators, & SE should be notified. – Makyen Mar 31 '18 at 19:11
  • IMO, the better solution would be to not age away, delete if enough accumulate, but keep the flags active and show the mods the deleted posts so the mods can confirm the action. Perhaps only show them to mods if it took > N time to accumulate flags, or > Q visits. – Makyen Mar 31 '18 at 19:12
  • @Makyen If you think the process should be changed, then feel free to propose a new feature-request with your reasons as well as the possible benefits for it. – Taryn Apr 2 '18 at 13:35

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