It does seem rather odd though that there seems to be some sort of balance required in terms of Shodan’s liberal vs. conservative complaints before his reports will be given credence. One would think that an offense would be an offense, no matter who reports it or the nature of their politics.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT HERE. Official Policy is that Reports are confidential, and that moderators do not tell a poster that so-and-so reported their post. Generally speaking, policy is that moderators do not even indicate that a post has been reported.
The purpose of the report is to allow members to bring something to a moderator’s attention, since mods can’t be everywhere all the time. It is one not evidence of wrong-doing, it is a way of helping moderators spot potential wrong-doing. And as such, it is considered confidential.
Well, sure. I can’t prove that it never, ever happened. I guess that someone could examine every post by every moderator since the beginning of the boards, to show that it never happened, but I’m not about to waste my time doing that.
Instead, we’ve asked if any has an example? A verifiable, provable, an actual post or PM or email, not just “memory” or angst. Let’s be honest: people get worked up over things, and memories play tricks.
So far, we have the following claims:
(1) Crazyhorse has cited, from 2006, that a poster Weird Dave made a public accusation, had already reported it, and was in fact becoming repetitive and annoying. fluiddruid told him to stop it, and mentioned that he had reported it already. Since Weird Dave had already breached any confidentiality by making public accusations, I can’t see that fluiddruid was in any way at fault.
(2) Fenris has cited, from 2008, a situation where tomndebb told Shodan to stop sending in reports. Shodan had already admitted to sending in many reports, so tomndeb didn’t say anything that Shodan himself hadn’t said.
So, please, folks. This seems to me to be a temptress in a teapot. First off, the “claims” are over three years old. This isn’t hot news, or something to get worried about. Second, the “claims” are NOT about moderators violating any confidentiality of reports.
Can we put this to bed?
Thank you Dex. Then again, “you guys” could have posted something resembling that in like the first few posts… rather than the 41st.
But I am still going with 2 technical violations and one as yet unresolved one for the win 
My point exactly. Was it so hard to deny categorically? And THEN to add a challenge to refute the categorical denial?
I don’t see that it was productive to indicate to the Teeming Masses how officialdom reacted to the bulk of Shodan’s reports. Tomndebb should have reiterated that decisions about individual reports are private and that’s it.
What was served by that whole mess? If there was an issue that couldn’t be dealt with by private message than he could have been warned or suspended. Shodan didn’t seem to have broken any rule other than reporting liberals more often than conservatives - which doesn’t seem a crime to me. After all, we more often depend on our adversaries to keep us honest.
Something to keep in mind going forward, IMHO.
I did, in post #3.
It took an hour and 22 minutes to get an admin in to repeat what I said in post #3.
I’m not seeing that as particularly unresponsive, given that not everyone on staff is online at all times.
Dex got here before me – and he’s spoken well.
This is the first time I’ve seen the thread. None of us are able to sit here all day and night and read everything, we do our best to get to things in a timely fashion.
(I was out of town. It happens sometimes.)
This would be fine if Czarcasm’s first response had simply affirmed your response. Instead, he weaseled around for a few hours, and evaded every attempt to confirm or deny SD policy when plainly that would have shut me up right quick.
Why does everything have to be a major production around here? “Is this policy?” “No.” Very simple.
Bolding mine.
No, you did not. You said YOU wouldn’t do it and you’d didnt think other mods would.
Heck, I know plenty of people that I consider smart, considerate, moral, and ethical that often do stuff that makes me go WTF? when it comes to smarts, consideration, morality or ethics.
You did not indicate that it was policy or that you thought it was policy or there was no policy or you didnt have a clue as to what the policy was or that you or someone would come along and tell folks about the policy or discuss the policy or whatever …
All you said was what you would do and what you figured others might do. Then, shortly after that there were two separate posts that indicated anonymity was NOT A given. And after that no more mod input. Which made me go WTF? And only AFTER that was it resolved.
If it was just a time thing and the mods have all been away/busy thats fine. But, IMO the question was answered very poorly.
Some people just love the drama. I don’t know what their deal is. Do you?
The OP’s question was answered pretty quickly by two individual mods (and I should have chimed in myself to make it three). Since an official response was asked for, the mods conferred briefly and there’s now a definitive official response as well. The thread is about 24 hours old. Complaining that you question was answered but not in the time frame or style you desired is bordering on unreasonable. We don’t have a 30-minutes-or-less guarantee, we don’t have free crazybread, and we don’t do service with a smile.
When a post is reported, we don’t disclose who did the reporting. (I try not to even say if the post was reported, since it’s usually not relevant.) I don’t know about the situation Cub Mistress described and it’s possible something got confused or someone messed up at some point. But the board’s been around for 12 years and if there are only two or three arguable exceptions, I think it’s pretty clear that we don’t disclose who reported a post. If we need to make an official note amongst ourselves that we can simply quote the next time this question is asked, we can do that. But I can tell you that in the brief time the staff discussed this issue, the response was unanimous and everyone agreed that you don’t disclose who reported a post. I think the only reason twickster and Czarcasm did not come out and say “this is our official policy” is that they did not know for sure it was OFFICIAL policy. That’s now been cleared up.
Doesn’t count. Tomndebb does not list any specific report or specific person reported, he just mentions trends in Shodan’s behavior. No confidentiality violated.
Well, if a particular poster reports tons of reports from one side while simultaneously ignoring the same or worse from the other, it does tend to suggest that poster has an axe to grind rather than actually being concerned.
That said, each incident does need to be evaluted on its own merits. Which the Mods have stated is the case. They may look at the reporting poster as 1 filter in the situation, but they do still look at the situation.
And the first two mod answers were pretty much non-answers as I explained.
The thread asked if mods tell posters who reported them, and two mods said “I don’t.” I added that the incident that prompted this thread was based on BS, not the disclosure of a real thread report. Those aren’t “pretty much non-answers,” they’re answers. I will grant you that it doesn’t provide the overall answer to “what is the policy,” but that wasn’t the only thing that was asked for. twickster and Czarcasm were being cautious and the policy has now been posted. I think this ought to satisfy everybody.
Did the moderators really not know whether this was or wasn’t SDMB policy? So your answer, Marley, seems to imply.
Holy crap. I have been plenty critical of the Mods in my time here but this is fucking asinine. twickster gave a perfectly good answer almost immediately. Czar asked if anyone had any examples and then clarified that twickster was correct in his opinion. In less than a day, we got an OFFICIAL ANSWER to a question that was asked generally and not even about a specific recent event.
I can see how a Moderator wouldn’t know if it was an “official policy” or not off of the top of their head and needing to quickly check in just to be sure. That’s totally reasonable.
That would be a poor reading of my post.
All the mods know not to disclose who reported a post. I said twickster and Czarcasm did not want to say “the policy is this ____” without checking. You might notice that the answers from the mods and admins have all been consistent.
Can a Mod stick his finger up my ass through the monitor if he doesn’t like my tone?
I’d imagine that policy question would get a categorical answer, and it’s only a little more difficult than the policy question under discussion here.
I’m sorry, but you’ll have to wait for the next upgrade.
I just reread the PM in question. I assume moderators can read our PMs as well? I 'd rather not have the PM in question made public, but I can forward it to a moderator. If it helps any at all, I would have assumed (correctly) who made the complaint.
No, we can’t read other people’s private messages. You’d have to forward it.