Delete/withdraw flags that you created

This morning I had a moment of name-change confusion during which I flagged a taxon and then realized immediately afterward that the flag isn’t necessary. I can’t delete it because I’m not a curator, but I feel as the creator of the flag, I should be able to delete it.

whoa I was just this morning thinking about posting the same request. here was my draft:

Allow person who created the flag to delete it (again)
We used to be able to delete the flags we created, but can’t anymore (or maybe it was just curators?). Sometimes I flag things as a test or on accident, or I figured it it out already and just don’t really need the record. Lately I’ve seen people accidentally flag their own content as spam, but then they can’t resolve it, or better yet just delete the mistaken flag.

Are there any reasons why we shouldn’t be able to delete our own flags, like we can for any other content? Assuming it would be pretty rare that someone who flagged the content deleted it after there was a long, useful discussion by other people - but even in analogous cases, we can still delete our own observations, journal posts, taxon changes, atlases, etc. that might have long, useful discussions.

6 Likes

I have some reservations about this request. On taxa, and in a lot of other contexts, flags provide valuable history of the community’s discussions and interactions with the content.

In general, I would like to see a policy that the only things a user can delete individually are the things that would be deleted if they chose to delete their entire account. I hope and trust that those things don’t include user-created content like flags, committed taxon changes, taxa, TFRs, atlases, etc., otherwise that could really throw the site into chaos.

For flags, I could see allowing it in limited circumstances:

  • flag created by user
  • flag not previously resolved
  • no comments on flag other than by user

And maybe similar circumstances for uncommitted taxon changes.

1 Like

That’s a valid argument. I think it might be best that flags with those criteria are delete-able, and that we re-give users the ability to resolve their own flags, so comments etc are preserved.

1 Like

Yes I suppose resolving it myself would also work.

2 Likes

I mean it would work if I had the power to do so. So the feature request could either be for the power to delete your own flag or the power to self-resolve it.

1 Like

OK, added an issue here going with @jdmore’s suggestions. https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/2852

This is now live, you should be able to delete one of your own flags if:

  • no one else has commented on it, and
  • it is unresolved

Works for my test account, let me know if you can delete a flag you’ve made.

6 Likes

I could’ve use this an hour ago! :laughing:

1 Like