I note that oftentimes when a member reports a post that violates rules, they add a single post that says “Reported.” Ostensibly this is so other members will know that they don’t need to report the same thread. Or possibly to take public credit. Or whatever.
I am a member on a another forum that uses similar (same?) message board software (excelforum.com) and when someone reports a post, the “report” icon is not longer visible in that post.
Wouldn’t that be so much easier? Can’t that be done here?
That’s generally for spam post/threads(and sometimes forum changes). The mods prefer for more serious reports that it not be posted to avoid hard feelings or accusations of jr. modding.
It’s possible that the functionality they’re using isn’t available in the version of vB the dope uses. I can’t seem to find anywhere where excelforums states their version but according to a discussion on googlegroups back in 2015, they were on vB 4.1.8 which is later than the Dope’s version.
Also, wouldn’t that prevent multiple reports on a single post? I’m no mod, but I suspect that the frequency and maybe the different phrasings of reports are helpful to judge if the post is worth of the mod’s further investigation.
I am a mod, and the frequency and phrasing of reports is indeed useful for judging how much attention a post needs. We’ll always investigate at least somewhat, but sometimes we’ll wait until we get home or whatever, and sometimes it’s useful to see multiple viewpoints to determine if something is actually offensive. Plus, a post could be reported for multiple reasons: If the original poster reported their own post for a typo they wanted fixed, you wouldn’t want that to stop someone else from reporting a rules violation.
That is interesting. I am a moderator on the forum I linked in the OP. Post reports include the text of the reported post. I don’t depend on the report to determine if something is a violation, I simply go to the thread and review it for context for myself. We only have a handful of mods and our traffic is probably much lower than SDMB so that works well there but I don’t know if it would work here.
Actually, there is an email generated for each report. The email does not include the text of the post, but the report that is logged on the boards itself does have the entire post that was reported.
Oh, usually I determine it myself, too. But there have been occasions where someone has reported something as “This is offensive”, and I check it out, and conclude that that person is just too thin-skinned. But then, if six more people also report it and say “This is offensive”, then maybe I should be interpreting that to mean that I’m just too thick-skinned. It doesn’t often happen that way, but it can and occasionally has.
I don’t depend on the report to determine if it’s a violation either. But different points of view make me look at something in a new way. Or someone reports something as an insult and someone else as threadshitting, I look at it from both angles to make sure I’m not missing anything.
Plus, when I see 5 or 6 reports in rapid fire about the same thread I know this is not something to put off checking on.
I know I’m behind, but multiple reports are very helpful.
An individual report may lead to action or not. But if my phone explodes with reports all at once it’s almost always about one post someone’s made that is way over the top. It inspires me to more immediate action.
