In the spam report for comments (only accessible by admins) there is just now two flags for an opinion posted in the Drupal core issue queue. Basically, one of our community members is not happy with the direction Drupal took with release 8, and vents his/her frustration about it. While filed as a "Bug report", no actual bug described, just some invectives and nasty language (which has been cleaned up by other community members in subsequent edits).

These spam flags have been up for about five days, so I am probably not the only site moderator that has seen them and wonder what do about them. This is not the first spam flag I've seen for (misplaced?) opinion posts, but it is the first one I've seen that no site moderator has acted on for some time. Maybe we need to discuss what our policy (as site moderators) should be about these posts.

Just to get the discussion going:
IMHO, such posts are not spam (i.e. unsolicited advertising). The site moderators are not censors, and should not use site moderator powers to censor opinions, even if they are expressed in ways that are many people (including me) would regard as misplaced and unconstructive.

If somebody thinks that such posts violate the Drupal Code if Conduct, they need to consult the Community Working Group, not the site moderators.

To conclude: When somebody flags a controversial (but relevant to the community) post as "spam", the site moderators should take no other action that unflag those reports (and maybe suggest to the flagger that the right place to report such posts is to the CWG).

However, I'll be interested in hearing other's opinions about this before taking any action.

Comments

gisle created an issue. See original summary.

avpaderno’s picture

avpaderno
he/him
Primary language Italian
Location Brescia, 🇮🇹 🇪🇺
commented

I agree: The spam flags don't mean I don't like this post or I don't find this comment relevant for the issue. If the user isn't following the DCoC, that should be reported to the CWG.

I have seen many spam flags for legitimate posts. I take some users think it's a flag to require site moderators do something, but that isn't really its meaning.

gisle’s picture

gisle
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Primary language Norwegian Bokmål
Location Norway
commented

Thanks for weighing in, kiamlaluno.

I suggest we leave those two flags up for about a week, just to let other site moderators review the post in question. If there are no objections from anyone in a week, we can conclude that that such opinion posts should not be considered spam.

avpaderno’s picture

avpaderno
he/him
Primary language Italian
Location Brescia, 🇮🇹 🇪🇺
commented

It would also be interesting to hear from other site moderators if they think it's should made clearer that spam flags aren't for asking site moderators to act on a post that isn't spam or unsolicited advertisement.

volkswagenchick’s picture

volkswagenchick
she/her
Primary language English
Location San Francisco Bay Area
commented

Thanks for creating this issue. I also agree that this set of comments are not SPAM.

The CWG Community Health team has been working on a "nudge" initiative that may work better in these types of situations than a SPAM flag. Not every scenario is laid out in a nudge, but the team feels it can be used as a tool to help de-escalate some interaction within the queues and general Slack space.

gisle’s picture

gisle
he/him
Primary language Norwegian Bokmål
Location Norway
commented
Status: Active » Fixed

Nobody disagreed, so, as a matter of policy, we do not censor opinions when they are flagged as spam.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.