I just wanted to take a time out (and I’m sure other mods feel the same way) to say thank you to those of you who regularly report posts or topics that you think are breaking the rules. It helps a lot.
Like in the cases with spam, I’ll regularly get a lot about the same post…and that’s a good thing–believe me. I like that that happens. Same with when a thread is in the wrong forum or if someone is hijacking a thread or if insults are being thrown around. Reports really help in letting me/us know about things to look at…
…and over time, I see many of the same people reporting things again and again and again.
Even if no action winds up being taken, it’s always good to err on the side of caution and report something you think should be looked at.
And so, I just wanted to thank a few…posters like running coach, cochrane, John Mace…too many to list, really. These are just a few who are regularly on top of reporting things that need attention and get it to us ASAP. There are many others, but I’d be here listing members all night if I tried to get through them all.
My only point is: It’s not unnoticed. It is appreciated. Thank you.
This is only one mod’s opinion and does not speak for or reflect any other staff member on this message board…even though I have a good idea that it’s appreciated by all of them. They are free to reply if they wish.
As for this topic, it was just something I, personally, wanted to say on the spur of the moment.
You are welcome! But – being the the two sides of a coin type and because I just read through the “Why PM a Mod” thread – I find myself doing so less often than I did in the beginning because I rarely heard back about any of it. I have always written it off to all of you being too busy or 87 of us reporting the same post or thread for movement to a different forum so there are no hard feelings about it. It’s just that these days way too often I look, see and just move on. No complaint; just a report from the Peanut Gallery. And a gladness to see this thread.
They very seldom send personal replies (I think they’d have to do that manually-- Hitting “reply” won’t work), but I don’t think I can remember any time that I’ve reported a thread that hasn’t resulted in mod action of some sort or another. It’s not always the mod action I was expecting or suggesting, but it’s usually at least a reminder to the participants to keep it civil or stay on-topic or whatever.
The only times I’ve ever reported posts on this board have been occasions when I’ve asked mods to delete posts that I’ve accidently made in duplicate (sometimes I’ve posted and gotten an error message and nothing seems to have gone through, so I hit “submit” again, only to find that eventually both get posted). I think a mod might have deleted it once, but generally they just ignore such requests. Not sure why - probably just can’t be bothered.
As Chronos guesses, we can’t reply directly to post reports. Replying requires looking up the email address of the poster who made the report and entering it manually. It’s time consuming and a bit of a nuisance, and several posters often report the same thing, so I usually don’t do so unless it seems important to explain why I have decided to not take action. (Even then I usually use the PM system to respond.) You can assume that a mod has at least seen your report even if we decide not to take action.
Duplicate posts don’t really do any harm so I consider it a low priority. I’ll do it sometimes but deleting duplicates is mainly cosmetic.
In point of fact, I consider it a strong indicator that something’s truly wrong.
If I check my email and see five or six reports all coming at the same time it moves to top priority to get in there and see what’s going wrong. One report might make me do something else before checking but multiple ones? Think of it as expressing the wisdom of crowds.
