Purely out of interest; what’s the general ratio of “reported posts that need mod action” and “reported posts that don’t”? I’d be curious to know roughly how good or bad posters are at recognising behaviour worth reporting.
I’d say 80% of “reported posts” in GQ need mod action. But, understand at least half of those are merely started in GQ when they should have been started in another forum.
25% are spam reports. 10% are reports indicating political posts in GQ. 10% are reports of “insults.” 40% are “needs a different forum.” 15% are in the “We(mods) don’t agree that this needs action.”
Colibri and _engineer_comp_geek might have their own analysis.
Chiming in for me in GD - and it doesn’t apply to Tom or Marley - but I probably do something with 50% of reported posts.
In Great Debates we get a lot of reports of ‘he insulted me!’ that I look at and decide one way or the other. But some are spam and some are real errors by posters that either need a note or a warning. But GD is likely our forum with the most warnings with emotions sometimes running very high.
I would have thought that spam reports were a higher percentage, but otherwise wouldn’t disagree with the breakdown. (I think that 99% of posts reported as spam actually are spam. Every once in a while a genuine newbie will include a link in his first post so it looks suspicious, but it’s not common.) A large majority of thread reports are something we end up doing something about.
Almost all of the reports I get need mod action, and most are spam reports. (If two people report the same spam, I guess technically only one report “needs action” because the spam is gone before I see the second report, but I’d say both of them count as “needs action.” And we’d far rather get multiple reports then have people sit back and not report for fear of multiple reports!)
And every report I’ve seen has been worth looking at. Some of the ones that don’t need action are close calls, sometimes it’s a case of "let’s keep an eye on this poster " (I guess that counts as action?)
I mostly agree too. I went back and counted, and 20 out of the last 50 post reports were reporting spam, so 40% there. There were only a couple where we didn’t think any action needed to be taken, so I’d put that down around maybe 5% or so.
There are a few people who generate a lot of spam reports (which we very much appreciate), but otherwise there isn’t anyone in GQ who is creating an excessive number of post reports.
Just to be clear, we aren’t seeking accuracy in post reports. If you’re not sure about something, there’s no penalty for reporting the post and having us decide that there’s nothing that needs to be done about it. If you aren’t sure, we would rather that you go ahead and report it and let us figure it out. We’ve had a couple of post reports lately in GQ where the person reporting the post wasn’t sure if ti was a violation or not, and reported it as such. We don’t mind those at all. Don’t worry about accuracy.
While we understand how you view it, it alerts other posters that the post in question has been reported for a change, so we don’t get 10 reports about the same thing.
It used to seem snarky and rather high-handed to me until I realized what the intent almost always was. I’d think it would be useful for the reporter to say something like “This looks like it goes in this forum over here rather this current one because x.” I mean, most of these come from first-time posters who might be confused as to what is going on.
I’ve never seen it as sarcastic, but terse can sometimes be taken as harsh, when it isn’t intended that way.
Brief formulaic “reported” comments may be functional and thus stirpped to the bone, but to a newbie they might be perceived as a criticism rather than just alerting participants to reduce duplicate reports.
Perhaps a little wordier would be politer.
“I think this is in the wrong forum, I’ve reported it to the mods for their review.”
I think Irishman hit it: terse can be seen as harsh. But I’m not sure that we can (or should) ask folks to be wordier. I’ve never seen it as a problem. They’ve already filled out a REPORT, and they’re being nice enough to let others know it’s already reported. Concise is probably the best we’ll get. And it’s become the tradition, it’s what one sees others saying.
Yes, I guess I agree that longer and more polite would be nicer, but I don’t see that we can (or should) demand it. Perhaps if more people start doing it, it will take over as tradition?
In the same vein:
*“Reported for spam” when the post in question is one of those with links to 42 free downloads of brand-new movies… well, I guess we don’t care much whether it’s seen as sarcastic.
*Reported for trolling" could be simply helpful to let others know it’s already reported, could be junior modding, and could be an insult. I guess it depends on the circs.
I actually specifically avoid that one. I think, if the trolling is obvious enough to say it blatantly outside the Pit or ATMB, just saying “Reported” will be enough.