Flag an article

On Cabdell weak work simply gets no votes and sinks. Unacceptable work (plagiarism, fabricated data, spam) is handled by flags, which are not votes. When enough flags accumulate, the article becomes disputed, a jury examines it and governance clears or retracts it. Flags never delete anything. Every flag deposits a bond, usually 1 ALGO, which comes back to you if the flag was justified. Terms are explained in the glossary.

Who can flag

• You need at least 10 reputation in the article’s primary field, and your reputation record in that field must be at least 30 days old (it was created by your first review, comment or reputation claim in that field).
• You cannot flag an article you are an author of.
• You can flag an article that is a preprint, under review, a closed version or already disputed, but not a retracted one.
• You flag an article once per round (see below). A flag is permanent: it cannot be changed or withdrawn.

When your account cannot flag yet, the flag panel says why, for example from which day your reputation in the field is old enough. Your flag, with its reason, its note and your address, is public and permanent on the blockchain.

Reasons

A flag carries one of four reasons, recorded with it: plagiarism, fabricated data, spam or other.

Flags are for unacceptable content, not for work you disagree with or find weak: such work simply gets no votes. To argue with an article, write a review or a comment. A flag on an article that is then cleared, or whose dispute expires, costs you the bond.

Flag an article

1. Open the article with your wallet connected.
2. Click Flag (in the danger colour, beside the vote button).
3. Choose the Reason.
4. Optionally, but jurors rely on it, write in What you found where the problem is and how to check it (at most 500 characters). The note is public and kept with your flag on the dispute page; the site does not show the notes of a round that lapsed without becoming a dispute.
5. Read where the round stands, the cost and what happens to the bond.
6. Click Confirm: flag this article and sign.

The button then stays as an inactive Flagged for the rest of the round.

What it costs

Amount	ALGO	What happens to it
storage deposit	0.0297	comes back to you when your flag is settled
bond	1, more after a cleared dispute	comes back to you, or is lost, when your flag is settled (below)
network fee	0.002	spent

The flag that opens a dispute pays 0.0073 ALGO more, for the record of the round’s outcome, which stays. With the usual bond your account therefore needs a little more than 1.03 ALGO, plus the 0.1 ALGO every account keeps.

The bond doubles after a cleared dispute. For 365 days after governance cleared a dispute about the article, the bond of a flag on it is 2 ALGO; 4, 8 and at most 16 after further clearances. The flag panel shows the bond in force. See costs and deposits.

How flags add up

A flag weighs like a vote, 1 + the square root of the flagger’s reputation in the article’s primary field, rounded down, but at most 10. When the flags of the current round add up to 30, the article becomes disputed. The threshold is always 30.

So a dispute needs at least three people: three flaggers with reputation 81 or more (weight 10 each), or eight with the minimum reputation of 10 (weight 4 each, 32).

Flag rounds

Flags are counted per round, and a round starts with its first flag:

• if the round’s flags have not made the article disputed 30 days after its first flag, the round lapses: its flags no longer count, the next flag starts a new round, and the bonds go back to their flaggers;
• when a dispute ends, a new round starts from zero;
• flags of earlier rounds stay on record but no longer count, and everyone, earlier flaggers included, may flag again in the new round.

An article can go through at most 65 534 rounds: the last possible round takes no flags, so no article can be stuck in a dispute.

What happens in a dispute

While the article is disputed:

• the article page says it is disputed, with the round’s weight and threshold, and links to its dispute page;
• a jury of qualified people is drawn to decide whether to clear or retract it;
• the author cannot publish a new version, but may retract the article;
• everything else goes on: votes, reputation claims, reviews, comments, resolving comments, confirming co-authorship, and more flags, which are recorded;
• a Peer-reviewed seal, if it had one, is shown as suspended.

How it ends

Outcome	Who, and when	Result	Your bond
cleared	governance, at any time	the article returns to the status it had before the dispute	half goes to the article’s submitter, half is kept by the application
retracted	governance, at least 14 days after the dispute started	the article is retracted: final, and every author loses the reputation they had not claimed yet	comes back to you in full
retracted	the submitter, at any time	the same	comes back to you in full
expired	anyone, 60 days after the dispute started	the article returns to its earlier status	kept by the application

What the application keeps stays in its account for ever: nobody can take it out. This is deliberate: an author who disputed their own article with accounts of their own would lose bonds either way, so the attempt never pays.

Governance carries out the jury’s outcome and records the CID of its published reasons with every resolution. A retracted article stays readable and marked as retracted. More on governance and its limits in flags, disputes and governance.

Get the bond back

Once the round is over (the dispute has ended, or the round lapsed), each flag must be settled: a transaction that sends the bond where the contract says and returns the flag’s 0.0297 ALGO deposit to you. Anyone may send it, for any flag, and pays only the network fee (0.002 or 0.003 ALGO); you, the article’s submitter or anyone else. The money goes to the same place whoever sends it, and a flag is settled only once. Nothing can be settled while the dispute is open. If you closed your Algorand account in the meantime and the round was cleared or expired, your deposit cannot be paid to the empty account: it goes with the submitter’s half, or is kept.

The indexer lists your flags with their outcome and whether they can be settled now (see the Indexer API).