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flagging a topic

 
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Our Flagged Topics view has a new feature - flag timeout. We noticed people were flagging a topic and never unflagging it making the view older posts. Now flags timeout.

Once a week, one flag is removed from each thread each user has flagged. Suppose I have flagged two topics with three flags and another one with one flag. In a week, I will have two topics with only two flags and none at all on other topic.

Make sense?
 
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Makes sense for me. The only issue I see with this timeout approach is say there is only one flag. What happens if no one responded after one week? That topic will become unflag or ordinary thread.

Another approach may be to see that topic has anyone (not the OP) responded. Yet this approach will lead to "not good answers" discussion.

What do the others think?
 
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If a topic hasn't gotten a response in a week, it isn't likely to, flag or not. Topics without any replies can also be found with the "Zero replies" link.
 
Jeanne Boyarsky
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K. Tsang wrote:Makes sense for me. The only issue I see with this timeout approach is say there is only one flag. What happens if no one responded after one week? That topic will become unflag or ordinary thread.


You can add more flags. Or re-add the original flag.

The idea is not to have flagged items for weeks. It turns into "well, there are always the same topics there so why read them".
 
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This is a good idea to stop the "Flagged Topics" section filling up with stale topics. I had a topic I started ages ago that got a flag from someone, which did encourage a bit more discussion at the time, but then the conversation died and it just sat there stagnating. I did not know who added the flag and that person probably just forgot about it.

I was thinking at the time that it would be nice if the OP was able to remove flags from their own topics but I think the timeout thing solves the problem quite nicely. It's a bit more predictable that one day 7 flags, next day none.
 
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Sorry if I missed this in the notes...but when exactly does the un-flagging occur? If it is once a week, what happens if I flag topic 'A' on Monday, and topic 'B' Sunday. Do both topics lose one flag at the same time?

Or does the job run daily/hourly, and only removes a flag after that particular flag has been on for a week?

What if I add one flag on Monday, and another on Friday? Does that impact the removal?
 
K. Tsang
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Fred has a point. Does the unflagging know when the flag is added? Such that it only removes those flagged threads 7 days before.
 
Jeanne Boyarsky
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Fred: You didn't miss it in the release notes. I didn't think about edge cases. Right now it runs at 1am the day after I happened to deploy plus a week later and a week after that, etc. If someone is unlucky enough to flag something at midnight that day, their flag disappears.

This is clearly not desirable. I've changed it for the next release to skip removing flags if any flags were added/removed in the past six days. (It's much easier to implement 6 days than 7 because then I don't have to keep track of the automated process differently than human users)

The un-flagging is based on both thread and user. If you flag topic 'A' on Monday and topic 'B' on Sunday, both lose a flag at the same time. That will continue to be true once a week as past.

Have a cow for the edge cases.
 
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