Welcome to the WarFlagger User's Manual. The goal of this manual is to turn you into a useful flagger. It serves as an etiquette guide. It tells you what to do about the various problems that emerge in an internet discussion.
Just so you know, you don't need to use any of the features named in this manual to participate in a WarFlagger discussion. You'll do fine if you simply stick to upvotes, downvotes and comments.
WarFlagger is meant to deal with hard discussions. What is a good discussion about a hard topic? One where the participants are polite, statements are backed up with facts, and every point of view gets an even chance to present itself. WarFlagger is meant to foster all of that. Then it will extract the useful parts from the discussion, displaying them without clutter.
WarFlagger is about questioning things. Respect questions. Every claim of fact should be traced to its source. Everything can be questioned at least once.
We don't care about authority. We don't know who gave you that degree or hired you to that post. You are expected to establish a reputation here by providing good answers.
Attempts to shut down a good question before it has been answered will be noted!
Tools to deal with bad faith questions can be found in the Clutter section below.
When you request evidence for an opponent's point with the NeedsEvidence flag, your opponent will probably respond with an Evidence flag. This should contain a reference (ie. link) to an article that supports your opponent's point. From here it can go three ways:
You may concede the point, leaving the evidence to stand. You might even thank your opponent by upvoting the item.
You may contest the quality of the referred article, especially if it has not already been vetted on WarFlagger. Flag errors in the article and indicate places where further evidence is needed. If the article itself makes reference to further resources, you might want to chase these down in turn and comment on them.
You might notice that the article is good, but that your opponent has misapplied it to the situation. In this case you don't want to flag the linked article, which has done nothing wrong. Instead apply your flag - probably a Disagree - to your opponent's Evidence flag. Explain the lack of fit in the comment portion of your opinion.
When you post a NeedsEvidence, consider framing the question in such a way that responders are encouraged to create a list of answers: "Times when executive orders were used by US presidents", "List of the arguments that the mood landings were a hoax", "Examples of religious terrorism in the 20th century".
Each example should be attached as a reference in its own Evidence flag. That way each item can be critiqued individually. Viewers will be able to see the state of each piece of evidence: if it is solid, if it has been debunked, or if it has generated an ongoing debate.
The list of items can then be brought into other discussions when needed.
We can't always get to the bottom. Sometimes we only have anecdotal evidence. When discussing ancient history, we often only have one account of an event. Sometimes a debate can't be resolved.
That's OK. We can present the evidence that we have, present the caveats to that evidence, and agree to an informed disagreement.
At WarFlagger we are in favor of censorship. We think it's great. We just think that everyone else does it wrong.
Here are some things that you can flag for censorship.
It is best to discredit fake news with a negative Evidence flag. Point to an existing discussion where some part of the news article has been debunked. Use the excerpt feature to zoom in on the false claim. Almost as good: start a fact hunt using the NeedsEvidence flag.
How many times have you clicked on an article, only to find that the content didn't match the headline? Now you can fix it. Object to a headline, or suggest a more accurate, informative alternative with the title tool.
Use of the Inflammatory flag is obvious. It is meant for cases of name calling, insults and general rudeness.
Before you use it, consider a few things:
Questions of truth should usually be handled with Evidence/NeedsEvidence flags. If your opponent is making allegations, you might be best to challenge those allegations.
Not every thing that makes you uncomfortable should be considered Inflammatory. There is a line between the blunt truth and a label that is meant to demean. We don't want to interfere with plain statements.
There is a special flag under consideration for uncomfortableness: TriggerWarning. Sometimes people are not ready to look into the dark corners. You can use this flag to warn away the fragile.
The OutOfBounds flag is meant for things that need emergency cleanup:
Don't cry wolf. This flag is like that red "Pull in case of fire" thing that was mounted in your school hallway. Unnecessary use may lead to requests for detailed explanations of meaning in the principal's office.
You may use the Disturbing flag to label things that are obscene, violent or otherwise Not Safe For Work. The milder LanguageWarning flag is also available for those who wish to filter out four letter words and such.
These flags are user sensitive. Some people will flag with a high tolerance for the offensive. Others will be very picky. As a reader, you will be able to choose to ignore some and take caution from others. You might, for example, set your software up to be more sensitive when children are using it.
Various countries don't allow discussion of certain things.
Some have laws against speech that might cause hate towards certain special groups.
Some ban the questioning of historical events, such as the Holocaust.
Others consider the discussion of historical events, such as the Armenian Genocide or the Tianamen Square Massacre, to be signs of civil ill will.
Yet others forbid blasphemy against the state religion.
And other governments regard any criticism of the state at all to be unnecessary negativity.
Are you the representative of such a government? Have you found an item on the internet that is not in accord with your local law? Then you may flag it with the LegalIssue flag, with an attached hashtag designating the applicable region.
This allows citizens of good conscience in your country to obediently not look at it.
There seems to be a compelling urge to attack the messenger when the message is unpalatable. You can call this out with the LogicalFallacy flag.
Are your fellow forum participants in the pay of some shadowy dark entity? Aha! That would explain why they keep scoring against you. Unfortunately, accusing them of it constitutes an Ad Hominem attack, especially when such an accusation is made without evidence. Facts are facts, no matter who paid for them.
On the other hand, it may be of interest to know who is funding what. If you have evidence of shadow funding, you are welcome to post it. You might consider self-flagging your post as Offtopic to indicate that it should not influence the discussion of the actual fact in question.
You can censor censorship. If you notice that legitimate discussion is being suppressed, call it out. Remember that all of your votes are public. If you play dirty, other people can see it. At the moment, there aren't many automated mechanisms to detect dirty play, but they may be implemented in the future. Voting rings, reputation assassination, sock puppetry will all come out in the wash.
Internet conversations tend to be untidy. Here are some tools to clean them up.
Sometimes a point gets made multiple times. Find the best one, and flag the others with a Redundant flag that points to the best version.
Conversations tend to drift off point. That's OK, because you can flag them as Offtopic. Readers can go with the flow of conversation, or if they are in a hurry, they can choose the executive summary. You might want to flag your own post as Offtopic when you know that you are posting an aside.
Sometimes a conversation is still on topic, but it has gone off into the weeds of detail. The Arcane flag is made just for this.
There is also a Funny flag. Some people like humor with their discussion, others find it distracting. Flag it. Let them choose.
At WarFlagger, we are open to anonymity. We believe that most people won't speak freely when their well being is placed at risk. So we regard real names as optional.
This causes well known problems: some people behave very badly when they aren't accountable.
But these problems can be overcome.
The first line of defense are flags like Spam, Inflammatory, Disturbing, etc. But we can do more. Pseudonymous users can create a track record. We'll start out not trusting a new user with no history. As that user begins to post content and receive upvotes from other users, we will dial down the distrust. When you have put time into posting meaningful content, you are less likely to want to damage your investment by sudden outbursts of bad behavior.
This might mean that posts from new, unknown users will be hidden by default. When you spot new users who appear to be making an effort to participate in good faith, you can help them become more visible by interacting with them.
If necessary, we may add a feature that allows existing members to vouch for new users. Something like an open standards Linked-in network.
The majority is always right… except when it isn't. Most of the time, user moderated forums work well. Every once in a while, though, something very important needs to be said but the larger portion of society is not ready to hear it.
WarFlagger is specifically designed to amplify voices in the wilderness. We won't discard a voice just because 51 percent of users don't like what it says.
This is why WarFlagger has so many different flags. We want to know exactly why people are objecting to what a person says. Properly used, the flags allow us to divide between people who are misbehaving and people who have a genuinely unique and important message. So we are looking for people who use flags properly.
We at WarFlagger may be evil. We certainly have our biases. Putting "Don't Be Evil" on our masthead won't help at all. In fact, if we begin to claim that we aren't evil, it's probably a sign that something is going wrong.
At the very least, we won't last forever. Some self appointed committee or individual will make its way to the top of the moderation food chain. Or perhaps some democratically appointed entity, which is hardly better.
There is only one way that you can trust the integrity of this forum. The discussion data and the source code - at least, the ranking code - must remain open. When this organization becomes corrupt, you must be entirely able to route around it. You must be able to see that the moderation system does not discard the most important voices.
Trust no information source that fails this test.
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