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View Full Version : Mechanism for reporting moderator abuse?

wbeaty
Feb23-04, 03:25 PM
Is there a web form for "Complaint about moderator behavior" somewhere? Your moderator "Integral", rather than apologizing for a personal insult, declared my strongly-worded objection to his behavior as "off topic" and deleted it. Hmmmm. I'm a new user. Is this site moderated by flamers? Aren't there any checks and balances? Apparently not. I can't find them.

What should I do next? I've found no form for "complaint about moderator misbehavior" anywhere on this site, nor any way to contact a site owner.


Thread in question:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10509
chroot
Feb23-04, 03:40 PM
No, it's not moderated by flamers. It's moderated by people who attempt to keep discussions civil and on-topic.

The owner of the site is Greg Bernhardt. His profile is here (http://www.physicsforums.com/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=1).

You can PM him, email him, or even catch him on AIM for a chat.

Don't be terribly surprised if he agrees with the actions taken by his moderators.

- Warren
Greg Bernhardt
Feb23-04, 03:54 PM
Use the "Report this post to a mentor" link. For some reason sometimes mentors don't recieve the message, but I will recieve it so use it anyway.
chroot
Feb23-04, 05:26 PM
Originally posted by Greg Bernhardt
Use the "Report this post to a mentor" link. For some reason sometimes mentors don't recieve the message, but I will recieve it so use it anyway.
It's not a bug, it's a feature, right?

- Warren
Greg Bernhardt
Feb23-04, 05:44 PM
Originally posted by chroot
It's not a bug, it's a feature, right?

- Warren

Well the feature it, but there seems to be a bug where sometimes the mentor doesn't get the alert, however I always get a copy.
wbeaty
Feb23-04, 06:19 PM
Originally posted by Greg Bernhardt
Use the "Report this post to a mentor" link. For some reason sometimes mentors don't recieve the message, but I will recieve it so use it anyway.

DOH!

I assumed that such messages would go to the moderator on the thread where the offending message appeared: to "Integral," the very person whose behavior I was complaining about.

Since he earlier censored the complaint I posted to that thread, I had no doubt at all that my message to "report this post" would vanish for very non-mysterious reasons if they were sent to him.
Phobos
Feb24-04, 08:44 AM
Steps you can take...
(1) PM/email the mentor with whom you disagree
(2) "report this post to the mentor link"
(3) PM/email Greg (site owner)
(4) state your concern in a new topic in this "feedback" forum if you want to make it public to all PF members (starting a sidebar disagreement in an ongoing topic can be seen as getting off-topic...you could start a topic here in feedback, provide a link to the topic in question...and then state your concern about the mentor action)

In general, it works best to first approach the mentor via PM. If that does not satisfy you, then take it to Greg or this feedback forum.