Hey Community, it's time to take back the control

One of the things that excites me the most about this Discourse platform is that it empowers you to take control over the kind of content that you want to see around here. For years my staff and I have run around these forums like police, wiping out spam, fluff, fake signatures and rubbish posts. Now you can do that yourselves with a couple of clicks.

We need you to step up if you want this community to be somewhere you find enjoyable and be a part of.

Here are two key things that you can do.

:hearts: POSTS
If you see something that you like, :hearts: it (the icon is at the bottom right of every post). That will cut down on the amount of “nice post” and “thanks sir” posts that fill up the forums, while at the same time it shows the original poster that you appreciate their work.

FLAG POSTS
If you see a post looks like spam, or fluff, or abuse, or is simply something that you don’t want to see in your community, then flag it. You do that by clicking the flag icon at the bottom right of the post.

That will bring up a dialogue box giving you a number of options:

The choices are fairly well explained and if you’re not sure, click anything, it honestly doesn’t matter. If two of you flag the same post it will be hidden and the person that wrote it will be given the opportunity to edit it. You can’t break the system and flagging is anonymous so the poster will not know that it was you.

Here are some examples of the kinds of posts that you should be flagging.

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This topic is now a banner. It will appear at the top of every page until it is dismissed by the user.

Here is a classic example that I had hoped someone would jump on and flag.
Is this the kind of thing that you want to see in the Community category?

We need your help with this!

I would have flagged it if possible. Just throwing this out there Hawk - That was posted in the middle of the night for people in the US. That’s the main market, yes?

You’re correct, however no one at all (aside from you and staff) are flagging posts so this isn’t about telling people off so much as trying to draw their attention to the fact that they do have the ability to get rid of things.

We’re trying to take a step back in order to let the community take control, but without education it won’t happen.

So this is me educating. :smile:

Edit: another important point that I should make is that it takes TWO people to flag the same post for it to be hidden.

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I call lies on this. lol

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Perhaps it’s only a select few, she means :stuck_out_tongue:

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I figure that, I was just giving her a hard time. :wink:

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And totally justified. Apologies @mawburn!

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