# In which forums is the use of "tard" acceptable?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-forums-is-the-use-of-tard-acceptable/813762
**Category:** About This Message Board
**Created:** [May 7, 2018, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-forums-is-the-use-of-tard-acceptable/813762 "2018-05-07T15:44:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 56

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### Author: ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2018, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-which-forums-is-the-use-of-tard-acceptable/813762/56 "2018-06-03T15:47:01Z")

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> [@Colibri](#):
>
> As has often been pointed out in this forum, non-moderation of a post, even a reported one, does not justify the conclusion that it is within the rules. A few of us mods actually have lives;), and may have been busy or overlooked the report. Unless a mod has positively made a ruling that something is within the rules, you shouldn’t jump to that conclusion.

I seem to recall it being the other way around. If no action is taken on a reported post, it means it wasn’t actionable.

From a thread asking about how to know if a report was received (because nothing ever happened):

> [@Acknowledging a sent "report"](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acknowledging-a-sent-report/653739/9):
>
> I think if you’ve sent a report and no action was taken, it’s probably a sure bet that the mod didn’t think any action had to be taken OR the mods are busy discussing the situation.

> [@Acknowledging a sent "report"](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acknowledging-a-sent-report/653739/15):
>
> As has been said, you can usually assume that the report has gone through, and that if no action was taken we decided none was warranted. (In GQ, it usually means that all of the mods have seen the report and all of us decided to take no action.)

From a thread about responding to reports:

> [@Response to reported post?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/response-to-reported-post/768528/4):
>
> As for regular reports, **BigT** is correct. Normally mods will just take no action at all if they don’t think a report needs action and they will not reply to the reporter because, again, it takes an extra step in order to reply to a report. First you have to copy the email of the poster, you can’t just reply back to the report, because that just gets sent back to the SDMB email. Then you have to create a new email entirely and paste in the poster’s email and then create your own title, etc.

I know I’ve seen other similar posts and I too was under the assumption that if you report something and nothing becomes of it, whatever you were reporting is ‘allowed’.

These are just a few posts I found by quickly googling the board. On preview, I see one of them is from Colibri and directly goes against the Colibri post I quoted.

“Unless a mod has positively made a ruling that something is within the rules, you shouldn’t jump to that conclusion”  
and  
" if no action was taken we decided none was warranted"

You can understand why, as posters, we get confused about the subject.

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