A Friendly Reminder About Abusing the Flagging System

Hi all!

So recently, we have had an influx of new people. That is great! We love seeing you all and I am glad that you’ve decided to spend some time here.

However, we have also seen a huge rise in the number of unfair and incorrect flags. A vast majority of these flags are coming from the new users.

So I want to remind you of the rules here on the ShanniiWrites Forums and how they may differ from some of the other forums that you might have visited in your life, namely Episode.

As a result, I feel the need to reiterate the rules a little and explain the reasoning.

First of all, if you are new, please read our rules. I have seen some people say things like “No I haven’t read the rules, but if they are anything like Episode, then I have already”. While that is completely understandable, as I use the same forum software as Episode and Wattpad, I want to make this clear:

The rules here are quite different to the ones on the Episode Forums

We do not flag people for saying a few off-topic things. That is why it is so important to make sure you brush up on the rules of a community before you engage with it, especially if you are trying to get people in trouble.

Like, it’s fine if you don’t understand the rules and you’re not making an effort to enforce them, either. Occasionally, you might break the rules and we will just explain what’s going on and let it slide. However, when you are actively trying to get others in trouble, that is where you need to make sure you know what it is you’re getting them in trouble for.

The Rules

To give you an idea of how the ShanniiWrites Forums work, I am going to quote a few of the rules that I think people are misunderstanding.

Off-Topic Posting

What I mean by this is pretty simple. There is nothing wrong with a short off-topic exchange. This includes a chain of up to 5 posts that are not on-topic. However, after you have hit that 5 post limit, please either make a new post or go to DMs if you want to continue the discussion. After that, the conversation needs to go back on topic.

Tone Policing

Tone policing is when you try to tell someone how to talk rather than actually arguing against the points they are making. This is against the rules.

This includes saying people are being “too negative” or that they’re being “haters”. I don’t care if you don’t like the way someone said something. That doesn’t give you the right, on this forum, to try to police their speech.

Your Right to Have an Opinion

If I see anyone saying anything like “don’t say anything at all if you can’t say anything nice” or “maybe you should shut up and find something else to read” or anything like that, I will be flagging them personally. We do not attack someone’s right to have an opinion on this forum.

At the same time, if someone is disagreeing with you in an aggressive way and you can’t take it and you start whining about how you’re allowed to have an opinion without being shut down, that is your problem. If you can’t handle disagreement, you’ve lost. Your argument clearly isn’t strong enough. I am an opinionated person and I don’t have sympathy for people who complain they’re being shut down because people don’t like what they say. And since I own the forums, that means my rules don’t have sympathy for that either.

People are allowed to disagree with you. They just aren’t allowed to tell you not to have your opinion or to delete your post. If you find the way they disagree with you to be mean, rude or blunt, that doesn’t make it flaggable. What we consider to be “mean” is subjective and trying to get someone in trouble for saying something in a way you don’t like is tone policing, so technically, if you flag them for being mean, you are breaking the rules. They need to have actually broken a rule.

If you have a query about something someone has said and you aren’t sure if it is against the rules, speak to either me or @ChaoticDeluge and we can clear things up with you. Think before you flag.

If You Abuse the Flagging System

People make mistakes. We aren’t tyrants here! If someone has flagged a post and it doesn’t break our rules, we give our moderators a strict policy to press “ignore” on the flag, rather than “disagree”.

Why? Well, having too many disagreed flags in your name affects your ability to reach trust level 3: regular. At that point, if you have reached every other criterion to become a regular, you will have to speak directly to me if you want to get your disagreed flags record cleared. I will review your flags and assess two different things:

  1. Were you deliberately abusing the flagging system?

  2. If your flags were deliberate and/or malicious, have you showed that you’ve changed since then and you want to be an upstanding user?

If I can’t come to a favourable conclusion for you on those two things, then that will mean that I will not clear your flagging record.

So we only disagree with flags if we think the flagger is deliberately trying to make the @ForumStaff’s lives harder, antagonise another user, be a troll, or silence someone you don’t like.

If we come to the conclusion that you are abusing the flagging system on purpose, we will discuss with the staff, make a note in your profile notes and start disagreeing with your posts.


I love having new users. However, I won’t accept malicious behaviour just because you are new.

If you have a problem with my rules, you can either make a suggestion in the #site-feedback section, or make your own forum. Or, you know, you can rant about it in private if you want. It doesn’t make you right.

I am not going to hold it against anyone if they don’t know the forum rules before they post. I know I don’t always read the rules of every website I go on!

However, if you are trying to enforce rules by flagging people, you better know what the hell you’re talking about.

Thanks.

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TRU

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People could start a salt mine in this post :pick:

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Just need some chips for that salt

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Yum. Salt. :yum::white_heart:

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Also the forum staff aren’t biased so please don’t assume so based on what we do with your flags

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We have had… Lengthy discussions about what do with flags :joy:

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And if I think a staff member has dealt with a post in a biased manner, I will apologise. I have done it before and I will do it again if necessary. I’m proud, but I’m not purposefully unfair

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Well yeah it’s pretty easy if we’re not sure then we just ask you so that the best decision can be made :joy:

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And if he’s not sure, he can ask me :eyes:

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Huh?

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Well that was confusing considering I didn’t press anything other than the like button :slightly_smiling_face:

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What happened? :eyes::eyes::eyes:

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The thread said I had made it into a PM even though I just pressed the heart on Shannii’s reply to me :joy:

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:joy::green_heart::eyes::sparkles:

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Does saying to someone that they were/are disrespectful towards somebody else count as breaking a rule of the forum? :no_mouth: (Like, the “criticize ideas, not people” rule)

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No

Basically you can say that you find somebodies response to be a little rude but you can’t say “stop being rude, don’t talk like that”

At least that’s my understanding of it

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No, you can absolutely criticise someone’s actions, so long as you can avoid ad-hominem attacks. Actions can be immature, stupid, bigoted, etc. etc.

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Yeah. Also, usually when you say you find the response rude, you’re talking about what they said, rather than them as a person. If you’re attacking who they are as a person, that’s against the forum rules

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