The thread title is the preferred way, according to staff, to deal with a problematic situation, especially in circumstances that you or another might prefer not be public.
However, what it does not take into account is the fact that staff is human, with susceptibility to illness, problems in real life that interfere with board work, or even something as simple as being away at a rustic cabin in the mountains for a week. Staff will themselves arrange for coverage – but they hardly get each other’s e-mails. Lynn’s current illness, Alphagene being tied up after 9/11… examples are probably many.
I know on occasion staff make it a point to say “mail more than one staff member, so you’ll be certain someone gets it in reasonable time” – Dex has been especially good about pointing this out – but is there any sort of policy that can be made public about this – who to include as backup, other than, in the appropriate cases, the other mods of the affected forum; how to doublecheck on whether someone’s gotten a report and chosen not to act on it (“I dunno if this guy’s trolling, but I chose to report it and let you make the call on whether he is or not”); what to do, rather than open a Pit thread, if you feel that a moderator made a bad call in a given situation; etc.
It occurs to me that it might be possible to tweak VBB – within the existing programming – so that Private Messages are permissible only to and from staff, which would make the process of reporting problems and receiving such reports slightly easier to deal with, and provide a simple means for feedback.
If that’s not within the realm of possibility, some suggestions for members at large on how to most effectively handle dealing with staff when ya gotta for one reason or another would be useful.
