I’ve observed that some of my posts, which I believe adhere to the forum guidelines, are being hidden shortly after posting. I’m reaching out to understand if others have experienced similar situations and to discuss how we, as a community, can ensure constructive and inclusive dialogue.
Any insights or suggestions on navigating this would be appreciated.
It’s against forum policy to discuss forum moderation, so probably not. Your best bet is probably to contact support instead.
I think certain members of the community are the ones hiding those posts — this isn’t actually a case of “moderation.”
Community members can hide others posts? News to me and I have been here a while.
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Sort of, if a post gets flagged by some number of people, it gets replaced by “This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden” until it gets reviewed by forum moderators I assume? Which still makes this a discussion about forum moderation.
When a post is hidden there is a related automated message. Under that there is a comment section just like here (but private) where you can ask the moderators privately if you really don’t know what rule you broke (though the moderation message always states the general reason) but discussion of moderation (in public) is against the forum rules.
The forum operates on Discourse software, which allows posts to be automatically hidden when flagged by multiple users. While this system aims to maintain constructive discussions, it can be misused to suppress differing viewpoints.
I’m not discussing “moderation”. I’m discussing Forum Post Visibility.
I would imagine flagged posts will eventually get looked at by mods, and unhidden if they didn’t break any rules, or kept hidden if they did. It should be a temporary thing.
I’m trying to prevent abuse of the system. In some ways, this kind of coordinated flagging feels like a loophole that undermines fair discussion.
https://forums.eveonline.com/faq
If You See a Problem, Flag It
Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.
When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.
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Have you factored ‘bad actors’ into your analysis? In systems like this, coordinated misuse can skew visibility and suppress legitimate discussion—even unintentionally.
Actually you do…
No matter what, in the end, a moderator will look into flagged posts.
So yes moderators enter the chain even if a post is autohidden (in which case the author can edit the post and if not flagged again then it stays and will be reviewed by a moderator later but if flagged again it is hidden and enters the moderation queue) thus there is no way for users to hide posts permanently without a moderator approving.
As such this is indeed discussion of moderation.
Sure, but Occam’s Razor suggests that a post was hidden because it was against community guidelines, the poster is informed about why and can discuss this topic with the mods rather than because of some conspiracy to silence you specifically.
It seems like there’s a lot of strong opinions forming sides here. But it’s worth asking—why is this particular issue so off-limits to discuss openly?
Not a conspiracy—just pointing out that the silence on this issue is loud. If open discussion is welcome, then let’s have it.
It is not a special thing, any controversial subject that can lead to flame and whatnot is off-limits (including but not limited to real-life politics and religious subject and so forth).
As you can see in the forum engine related guide I’ve linked in my previous post a moderator always checks hidden posts so your worry is unwarranted.
Also take note that user trust level and weight of their flags depends on how much moderators approve their flags and if someone tries to misuse the flags their flagging power will be reduced accordingly, thus misuse will just make those users have less flagging power.
As such the system has built-in functions to handle such issues already.
Is there any room in this “system” for bias?
You don’t pay much attention though.
It is an automated system.
If you feel like your posts are being unfairly flagged and hidden, contact the mods. What’s there to discuss? We’re not a court, we’re not going to vote on whether your posts are against forum guidelines or not. Some people apparently thought so. I don’t mean to be rude but you seem to have some comprehension issues amplified by a roundtrip through an LLM, for whatever reason.