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I just had a quick look at my profile and flag weight is no longer listed. All that's there is the number of "helpful" flags, which on it's own is pretty meaningless. While a given number might look good it's irrelevant if the same person has had twice that number declined.

Edit

Image to illustrate that declines are not showing on my profile.

enter image description here

1 Answer 1

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I refer you to waffles answer over here:

Flag weight is now dead, you should decline flags that are not helpful and teach people how to flag in a helpful way.

Basically, people were not learning about bad flags because almost every single time a mod declined a flag, they would be berated by the person (ok, occasionally you'd get a request for constructive criticism, but they are few and far between), as the cost for a bad flag was massive compared the be reward for a good one.

I for one am glad to see it go, for the exact reason above. It wasn't worth the effort to decline a flag, because for someone like Iain, he had to flag 92 successful flags to undo one bad flag.

However, bad flags are also shown - in red in brackets.

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  • Frankly, I'm glad they did. It was a useless stat. Jan 23, 2012 at 21:28
  • I don't mind that FW is gone. But 1. The effort to undo a "bad" flag was massively over weighted. 2. People usually got the most frustrated when mods had a relatively minor difference of opinion, declined the flag as unhelpful, didn't leave feedback (including when there wasn't a mechanism) and refused to respond when the users tried to have a public discussion about the matter. I feel that the mods who participate most in the site got the lion's share of the complains; while the "less active" mods were more likely to "blame". In any case, scorched earth does "fix" the symptom...
    – Chris S
    Jan 23, 2012 at 21:31
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    I think that having some jeopardy was a good thing - will be interesting to see if a flagfest ensues.
    – user9517
    Jan 23, 2012 at 22:13
  • I know on other sites, righteous indignation was the most frequent response to an 'unhelpful' flag. Kinda like a person who had a question closed and wants to know why THAT question was closed when three more JSUT LIKE IT are still open. One of those comes from an otherwise upstanding citizen (flagger) the other is usually pretty new (close-victim). A system that causes indignant whining by regulars is broken.
    – sysadmin1138 Mod
    Jan 23, 2012 at 22:39
  • Ok but I have had flags declined (with no complaint from me) and they're not showing on my profile page. Jan 23, 2012 at 22:53
  • @JohnGardeniers - interesting. Maybe it's a mod-only thing? I can see two declined flags in red on your SF profile page Jan 23, 2012 at 23:12
  • I can see my most recent f-up. They should be showing for you as well.
    – Chris S
    Jan 24, 2012 at 0:09
  • See my edit.... Jan 24, 2012 at 1:20
  • @JohnGardeniers - ... weird. Maybe ask over on meta.stackoverflow to see if they know why it's not showing up? (btw, that's a lot of profile views - you must be popular!) Jan 24, 2012 at 1:30
  • @Mark, I'm not going over to MSO without a LOT more reason than that. As for the number of views, I've always thought it seems like an absurdly high number. It's not like I'm the most active, nor the most controversial, person on SF. I certainly don't believe it to be accurate. Jan 24, 2012 at 1:37
  • @JohnGardeniers - I guess I can relate to your MSO hesitation. Only I very much doubt that anyone who knows the answer will see it here. Jan 24, 2012 at 1:39
  • @JohnGardeniers: They only show helpful flags on your profile. Click on the number next to Helpful Flags you should see all of your flags and what happened to them.
    – user9517
    Jan 24, 2012 at 9:23
  • Ok, that's it, Iain no longer has a perfect flag weight of 750, better cancel the moderator election! Jan 24, 2012 at 20:05

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