Moving posts is the most passive aggressive thing and it mildly amuses me. It also tells me I was very successful in what I did lol.
3 Likes
@penguinpbx so you take the time to split out my post and set some subject you like but refuse to answer the question. What is your problem. Do your actual job here and answer questions.
5 Likes
I was telling a coworker yesterday that this is the only forum Iāve ever been a member of where you cannot flag a mod or administrator post. Definitely doesnāt seem to be the norm, at least in my experiences.
4 Likes
The specific Discourse setting in question is āallow flagging staffā:
If enabled, users can flag posts from staff accounts.
This setting was recently disabled on the FreePBX Community Forums as we have several admins and moderators who are able to help correct any issues.
From Discourse guidelines, the purpose of flagging:
Flags help maintain community standards by allowing users to report inappropriate content.
There are multiple flag types available that you can see when you click the ellipsis below a post and then click the 
icon ā and recently custom flags were added to Discourse but weāve yet to utilize those ā anyhow, one of the default flags is:
Itās Inappropriate
This post contains content that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, to be hateful conduct or a violation of our community guidelines.
This is a good choice for users to help fellow users by notifying the admins and moderators of violations of the Code of Conduct ā which was last updated in September 2024.
That said, if you disagree with the technical content of a post because you think you have a better solution, then flags are not appropriate as they send false alarms to the admins and moderators, which takes up time that could be spent helping other users, so, it is almost always better to discuss in a DM with the user and/or publicly post a reply that makes your case based on the merits.
From Discourse Moderation Guide on Flags:
Flags can be your best friend or the entrance to a rabbit hole.
I would love to read something other than a canned answer or copy and paste rubbish. Every response from you so far has been some long winded cut and paste from elsewhere. Remember the community standard said post original content?
If you are truly a member of the community and stand for the community you wouldnāt fear feedback including flags. The only reason to disable flags is if you KNOW the community disagrees with you in general. Spoiler alert they do. But rather than evaluating if youāre the problem, spoiler alert you are, you disable any form of descent.
Back in the day, long ago the people that created all this stuff that pays your bills were often disagreed with, disliked by some and had heated discourse (hey thatās the software this forum uses). You could flag any staff member, moderator, or user. Spoiler alert it wasnāt used or abused. This isnāt supposed to be an echo chamber and if it were someone certainly more knowledge about the project, itās functionality and history should be the voice. As you have shown through countless comments and posts you do not have the technical or historical knowledge of FreePBX to be that voice.
The best way to regain respect and salvage your reputation is to NOT put yourself above everyone, including those who know more than to. To accept you donāt know a lot and learn. Take feedback from a community that is established and has been doing this a long time. Quit being āthat guyā.
Literally EVERYONE has been trying to help you and they grow more and more frustrated. Look at the post histories and see the tone change over time. Spoiler alert itās not us itās you. But you can still turn this around.
6 Likes
The problem with this is that while they are able to help, they donāt. Only half the moderators (5) have even logged into the forums over the last 6 months. One hasnāt even made a single post since their account was created and the rest really havenāt been models of activity or firing off solutions. Only 16 (5 of which are moderators) of the 69 users in the Sangoma group have logged into the site in the last 6 months as well. Again, the activity level is almost nil. Some havenāt even made a post in the forums at all and most of the rest havenāt made a post in years.
One might even draw the conclusion that some of these users in the Sangoma group that are logging in but not being active are just here to lurk and monitor what is happening. Whatās even worse is when someone like @mwhite has been tagged for a follow up last week on an issue @mwhite inserted themselves in and despite logging in daily @mwhite has been radio silent.
Right now, pound for pound, there are community members providing more support and solutions to problems than admins, moderators, Sangoma staff and the development team. In some cases (at least in mine) weāre picking up the ball even after the paid support team drops it or doesnāt attempt to go even the extra inch in solving the users problem.
You can blow sunshine up my skirt all day but I can still tell itās raining.
7 Likes
As someone who has possibly been banned more than anyone else, I totally agree with @jfinstrom 's post, If you are our āadvocateā yet remain aloof and uncommunicable with, apart from by your own byzantine methods, you will never get most of our trusts. Remember the boy who shouted āThe Emperor has no clothes!ā 
4 Likes
I think we all need to come to terms that the Open Source Advocate is an advocate of the Open Source division of Sangoma. Not Open Source itself or this community.
5 Likes
If your going to make changes to things like who is allowed to do what in Discourse should this not be discussed with the community. This sure feels like Chris decides whatever he wants and who cares what the community thinks.
The beatings will continue until morale improves seems to be the MO lately to the community from Sangoma.
2 Likes
I might suggest an alternativeā¦ Just get rid of flags all together. That way censorship is more transparent
Hereās what they used to call a nickelās worth of free advice: spend more time studying FreePBX and helping users with techical problems and less time studying the Discourse manual and micro-managing the forum. People are coming here for the tech help, first and foremost.
6 Likes
Maybe replace flags with
1 Like
The abuse of flags brings to mind āThe boy who cried wolf!ā 
EDIT TO ADD:
ā¦āPost Votingā sounds great, thanks! There are polling options within the post itself. But this is a self-hosted instance, so a few extra steps are needed internally. Maybe add another plugin while weāre in there ?
Out of curiosity, are flags only being abused when they are weighted and yielded by staff to remove dissenting conversations? Or are they abused when the community, the entire community disagrees with staff yet staff wants to carry a narrative?
1 Like
@penguinpbx So the post that started this whole thread you want to keep hiding. What is wrong with the post? What exactly is it violating in your COC? What is the point to all the responses if you are going to block the post that started the conversation that you split off from a different post a day ago and had no issues with it at that time.
3 Likes
6 posts were split to a new topic: Dev team nostalgia [forked by mod]