It may look as a stupid question because the old “Report this post to a moderator” link was renamed to “Report Bad Post” (now with the “!” sign). But not always reporting a post has been for acussing baddies.
Sometimes (very few times) I reported my own post, because sometimes I’m not sure if I’m doing right or wrong (like this one ), or because I try to bring a mod’s attention for a mistyping (my mistyping). Of course, in other occasions, “accusing” as well.
Now the consensual opinion may have been that “why would someone need to accuse himself?”. Ok, I gave you at least 2 cases.
As I understand, the “Report Post” function is for when you see any breach of the registration agreement, Lobsang, not just spam. And I can see where it would be useful for contacting the mods/admins for Grousser’s examples.
When they first implemented the Report this Post feature, it did indeed say something like it does now, “This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising messages, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts.” However, after a few people asked for clarification on what it should be used for, they added something like, “or anything else that requires a moderator’s attention.” It sounded much more inclusive (although it was still in scary red text ;)). I assumed they just hadn’t gotten around to making the same change since the upgrade.
It works specially for me: Sometimes I mistype because I’m a native spanish speaker, from Mexico. Different language, slightly different culture, and I often doubt if I wrote it ok, or if I’m accidentally offending someone. I think this is a more honest way to avoid misunderstanding of my humble contributions.
Speaking for myself, I have no problem if people email me with serious typos that they’d like fixed. I guess it could easily get out of hand, but I think most of us recognize that everyone makes silly little typos and there’s no need to get your knickers in a twist over them. A typo or grammatical error that could lead to misunderstanding (like “now” for “not”, say), we’d be happy to fix.
That sounds good. Besides, most people aren’t going to go to the trouble of emailing someone to edit their post for a typo; those who do are going to be really, really anxious to get the typo fixed. So even if you broadcast from the heavens that the moderators will fix your typos, I bet you still wouldn’t get a massive deluge of emails.
The “Report this post to a moderator” (now “Report bad post”) is a very useful feature. To clarify, the message you see currently, “Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising messages, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts.” is the default message of the new version of the board software. However, please feel free to use it for purposes of reporting posts as you have done in the past (e.g. typos, coding mess ups, title edits, incorrect forum, troll suspicions, etc.)
It is the easiest and most efficient way to reach the moderators. Please do not hesitate to use it for legitimate purposes. A good part of the standard of moderation on these boards (and the moderator response times) is due to the vigilance of our members in reporting incorrect or inappropriate posts.
Please feel free to continue to use the feature as you have done previously.
We are aware that you cannot report your own post in the current version of the software. I’ll have to check with the CR team to see if we can change that, but for the moment, feel free to report the post that is immediately above or below your post, and explain yourself in the report.
p.s. I tried reporting my own post by substituting the postid with the postid of my post, and I got the following message “You are not allowed to turn yourself in.” !
Off topic: I think that you’re really doing well. Yeah, sometimes you DO have a different outlook on things, but that’s usually something positive. I’m always impressed by people who express themselves well in a foreign tongue, because I’m so bad at it. I lived in Spain for a couple of years, and despite having had several years of Spanish language lessons, I was really not good at communicating with the Spaniards. Partly this was because I’d learned Mexican Spanish, as opposed to Castillian Spanish, but it was also partly because I’m an indifferent language student.
So, Grousser, I may not always agree with what you’re saying, but I’m glad you’re on this message board.
I know what you’re saying, Lynn. Although I write and read english faster than I speak, I usually understand better what you north-americans are saying than spaniards, in movies for example. Without offending them, and despite of spaniards are our ancestors and we took the idiom from them, I think we mexicans have a clearer pronuntiation.
Anyway, and I said it early, I’ve been in SDMB since almost one year and my worries always have been what I stated: being misunderstood in some comments by exponents of a culture that it’s not precisely the same as mine, but one which I know very well through movies, novels and magazines. And now, the message boards help me to expand my horizons without having to go there. I hope to met all of your staff in person, some day when I’m famous (I’m a long-to-be movie director, he-he). Thanks for your thoughts.
), or because I try to bring a mod’s attention for a mistyping (my mistyping). Of course, in other occasions, “accusing” as well.
