When I send a PM, it appears in a message format very much like a regular post, and in my user profile I can find folders containing these post-like messages of every PM I’ve sent or received (until I delete them).
BUT, when I report a post, does the message in my report get saved anywhere where I can see it again later?
I just sent an admittedly somewhat intemperate report, and I meant every damn word of it. But I’d like to have my own access to the evidence too.
No. The report is saved, but it is not accessible to regular members.
Although it should be obvious, the best way to ask a question of a mod and get an answer is to send a PM. Reporting a post is not an efficient way of doing that.
When you report a post who reads it?
Why is this so, and why should it be obvious?
An e-mail is sent to the mods of that forum. A message is also posted to a private forum that is accessible to all the mods.
I usually only read post reports I receive by e-mail, but if necessary I can consult any post report.
It’s a lot easier to respond directly to a PM than to an e-mail. To respond to an e-mail, I have to manually enter the poster’s e-mail address rather than simply hitting “reply.”
Emails don’t have a reply button?
Or did you mean: To respond to a report this post you have to manually enter some one’s email.
(Either way, I’m still not seeing why that fact should be obvious to us mere mortals.)
The latter. “Report this post”'s come through as an email from the SDMB. But I agree with you: if I hadn’t used to be a mod, I wouldn’t know that.
I haven’t been a mod for very long. As a long time poster I understood that the report function was not an interactive process. It is not directled to a specific mod. You report a post and sometimes it is acted on, sometimes it is not. On very rare occasions I received a message back explaining why no action was taken. Most often I heard nothing. I never expected a reply. It’s a report not a personal message. That seemed obvious to me as a poster. If I wanted to get an answer, especially from a certain mod in particular, a PM or email would work much better. If that doesn’t seem obvious to others I guess I’m different.
Now as a mod I can see that the report function is not set up at all as a means of back and forth communication. It is very important as a means to bring attention to issues that might otherwise be missed but it is not the best way to communicate with a mod.
How much do you mods (individually or collectively) actually want to have a back-and-forth interactive conversation with people on this board?
You keep saying, for example, that if we want to know why someone was banned, we should PM a mod. Do you get lots and lots of requests like that? I could imagine you might get inundated with a torrent of individual requests like that, at least in some cases. Is that what you want?
My OP, above, refers to a report I made, that contain an implied suggestion of a conversation that the entire mod staff needs to have. The remarks from mods, above, suggests that neither a PM nor a post report would do that, as neither comes to the attention of the whole mod staff (unless the mod who reads it brings it up).
OTOH, if I make such a suggestion by posting in ATMB, then it’s entirely public for the whole board to see. In the case in point, I didn’t want to do that, and I didn’t think the mod staff would appreciate it either. (In light of recent developments, I’m all the more utterly convinced that the staff absolutely positively adamantly doesn’t want us hoi polloi discussing it.)
I personally have no problem with answering any questions directed to me in a PM. Usually the answer to the question of why someone was banned is “It was a sock.” That doesn’t take too long. How many of those questions we get really depend on how big a splash the poster had.
Yes, the cases where the banned poster had made a “spash” of some sort. Often, that would be a moderately (but not too terribly severely) trollish poster who has inspired a lot engagement, some of it borderline-Pitworthy, among the responding posters. Then the troll gets suddenly banned and the thread closed (and sometimes even disappeared) right in the midst of an active conversation that hadn’t gotten too out-of-hand yet.
Then you get the obligatory ATMB thread asking why that happened, and some mod will always answer “PM a mod to find out why the guy was banned” and immediately close that thread too – when the question isn’t really why the guy was banned (which is often obvious), but rather: Why did you ban and close when there was an active conversation being had there?
The implication often seems to be: There is an unwritten orthodoxy on this board, at least among the mods, that certain topics are not to be discussed, nor can we even have a meta-discussion about why not.
Everyone reading this thread can easily guess that I’m talking about that recent thread. Y’all know which. But it’s not just that. This happens from time to time. One that still sticks in my craw is from a couple-years-ago or so: That user (name began with Y) who posted several threads discussing his unconventional life-style choices, written heavily in txtspk. The guy got a very active (and not even highly Pitworthy) discussion going, although at least one user got PO’s enough about his txtspk to complain in ATMB about it. (Hint to user: If you don’t like txtspk, just don’t read his threads.) Then suddenly he was gone, without a word about it.
I never PM’s a mod then. But the real question would have been why you cut off an active and borderline-civil conversation, more than simply asking why he had been banned.
(Note, Loach, this was before you became a mod here.)
I personally don’t receive too many requests for information about why someone was banned. Once in a while we’ll get a torrent of requests, but that’s pretty rare.
As for how much back and forth interaction we want, the answer to that is that we want as much as is necessary. If you feel there’s an issue that you want to discuss but you aren’t sure whether or not to contact us, please, contact us. We would rather have too much contact than not enough. Don’t be afraid to contact us, for whatever reason.
As for your post report, since you reported the post in ATMB, I was the one who received the report. I don’t believe that the moderator whose actions your report was in response to has seen the post report yet. I’ve been busy today, and I’m still moving a bit slow from getting injured a couple of weeks ago, so sorry for the delay there. When I get more time (probably later tonight) I will read through what you wrote a bit more carefully. It’s not something that I can just quickly reply to. I may need to discuss some things with the other modertor(s) involved, and not all of them are available for the next few days, so please be patient.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Can you send it to me in a PM?
I’m not joking at all.
I’m speaking generally here since I haven’t looked too much into the actual thread that this concerns, but the whole point of trolling is to post something inflammatory knowing that it will cause people to react. What you may be calling an “active conversation” may likely be exactly what the troll wanted, a bunch of people responding to the trollish comments. In those cases, we don’t want to leave those threads open since they are just troll bait.
That said, once in a while a troll or a spammer will come by and may start a conversation that others find interesting. A lot of times we will ban the troll/spammer and will wish the thread away to the cornfield. If however you feel that there is enough substance there for the thread to stand on its own even without the troll’s input, feel free to PM a mod and request that they re-open the thread. Be sure to clearly explain why you think the thread isn’t just a response to trolling and why you think the thread has merit on its own. The moderator might agree with you and might re-open the thread (maybe with a mod note or two regarding what is acceptable in it). The mod might disagree with you and might keep the thread closed. The mod might also think that the topic has some merit, but that the thread as it stands is too far poisoned by the trollish behavior to re-open it. In that case, the mod might instruct you to create your new thread on the same topic (if you want), and might give you some instructions on what is or is not acceptable based on the other thread.
It doesn’t hurt to ask. The worst we will say is no, we don’t agree that the thread should be re-opened.
As for the ATMB threads, we don’t want to give trolls and socks any more attention, which is why those threads are immediately closed. That’s all there is too it. You shouldn’t take that as meaning that certain topics are completely forbidden here. You are reading more into it than there really is.
Interesting, since the mod who I think the report should have been directed to, responded quickly (Post #2) in this thread. But my complaint was a more general one, that I think all the mods need to see.
I read ATMB all the time and I haven’t the foggiest. Do tell.
Any “report this post” in ATMB goes to Ed Zotti and engineer_comp_geek. “Report this post” goes to the moderator(s) that is(are) assigned to the forum, and you can find out who is assigned to what by clicking “View Forum Leaders” towards the bottom of the main SDMB page.
If you think it is really important that the mods as a whole discuss whatever issue it may be, you can always email all of them. It would be a pain to collect all their email addresses from their profiles and paste them into cc:. But still. . .
To those truly wondering, the closed thread here in ATMB titled “… you do not have permission to access this page” references and describes the thread to which Senegoid is referring. It’s currently still on this page (if you have the forum setting set to the default of Show Threads From The Last 2 Days.)