Flag an article

On ARIADNE 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 and governance decides whether to clear it or retract it. Flags never delete anything. Terms are explained in the glossary.

Who can flag

• You need at least 10 reputation in the article’s primary field. Without it the Flag button does not appear.
• 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 A flag is permanent: it cannot be changed or withdrawn.

Your flag, with its reason and your address, is public and permanent.

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.

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. Read the cost and the note: “A flag weighs your vote weight. At 30 in a round the article becomes disputed and governance decides.”
5. Click Confirm: flag this article and sign.

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

The deposit is 0.0265 ALGO, plus the network fee. 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. When the flags of the current round add up to 30, the article becomes disputed.

For example, a flagger with the minimum reputation of 10 weighs 4, so it takes eight such flags (32); three flaggers with reputation 100 (weight 11 each, 33) are enough too.

What happens in a dispute

While the article is disputed:

• a banner says “Disputed: flags in round N reached weight W (threshold 30). Governance will clear or retract it. Votes and reputation claims are paused.”;
• nobody can vote for the article, its reviews or its comments, authors cannot claim reputation from it, and comments cannot be marked resolved;
• the author cannot publish a new version or change its status, and declared co-authors cannot confirm;
• reviews and comments continue, and more flags are still recorded;
• a Peer-reviewed seal, if it had one, is shown as suspended.

How governance resolves it

Governance is a single address with two powers only: registering new fields and resolving disputes (it can also hand its role to a new address). It cannot edit, hide or delete anything, and it cannot change the rules. For a dispute it records one of two outcomes:

Outcome	Result
cleared	the article returns to the status it had before the dispute (preprint, under review or closed version)
retracted	the article is retracted, exactly as if its author had retracted it: final, and every author loses the reputation they had not claimed yet

The protocol defines these outcomes, not how the decision is reached. A retracted article stays readable and marked as “Retracted by governance after a dispute”. More on governance and its limits in flags, disputes and governance.

Flag rounds

Flags are counted per round. When governance resolves a dispute, a new round starts from zero:

• flags of earlier rounds stay on record but no longer count;
• everyone, including earlier flaggers, may flag again in the new round;
• the article becomes disputed again only if the new round’s flags reach 30.

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