How flexible is the flag commenting system?

Question

Right now, I can only click the "flag comment" and that's it. I have no way of choosing an option such as:

• irrelevant to question/answer
• spam
• abusive insulting personal language
• other (text box for reason)

What options, if any, are there in customizing the commenting system to make it more flexible in sorting out the current problems with respect to moderation?

Comments

The flagging system is more of just a quick flag for users with less than 500 rep (although users with more than 500 rep can also use it, if they're not sure, for example, if a question should be closed or deleted), I'm not sure if adding options really helps (it's quite obvious in most cases).

---

@Dimension10 I think some kind of a message box that allows the flagger to shortly tell what is wrong with the post (in non-obvious cases) might be helpful, it would also be a way to learn more about what the community dislikes and why, as many people who are naturally not interested in meta issues dont use meta.

Answer 1

Actually, flagging a post increments a flag counter in the database entry of the post and adds an entry in the uservotes table. The implementation of this request would require an additional box with radio buttons to click for the flag reason (as @physicsnewbie proposes) or a comment box to edit a text with the flag reason (as @Dilaton proposes). Additionally, a new database table would have to be created to store the reason for the flag. The implementation of this feature would be feasible, but would require a major change in the core code.

Comments

At first glance, do you think it's something that could be done using standard Q2A techniques of adding to its functionality via plugs-ins and calling functions from its API?

---

@physicsnewbie No, changes in the core code would be required in any case. However, the customization of Q2A to PhysicsOverflow required already so much changes in the core code that I would not mind to do it again. Should it be desired to realize this feature, @dimension10 may put into our roadmap.

---

Awesome. The commenting system as it stands seems to be generating a lot of noise at the moment, with decisions still to be made on just what mods should be allowed to delete, and whether these deletions should be made temporarily public.

If a mod deletes a comment, can it be transferred to a category of "deleted comments" with the most recent at the top ?

---

@physicsnewbie I am not sure if I understand you. This would mean that deleting a comment would not really delete it. Wouldn't it be better to use the 'hide' feature? Hidden posts get not deleted and there exists already a list for hidden posts, visible to all moderators.