When is reporting posts helpful?

honestrosewater

Is it really helpful to the staff for members to report obvious spam and such, using the 'report post' feature, or does it just become bothersome?

ZapperZ

It is never bothersome. While the staff usually can detect this, it is impossible to read all the messages all the time. We rely on the members to report such violations of our policies.

To quote Smokey Bear, "Only YOU can prevent forrest fires!".

Zz.

JamesU

It's not really bothersome. it's there just in case. maybe if nobody reports a post, it won't get deleted because the mentors haven't read it, and maybe offend more people. I see it as a useful tool

russ_watters

Just an fyi (people have asked before): while we typically don't respond to the reports (there isn't really a mechanism for doing that anyway), we do read every single one.

Ivan Seeking

We can't possibly monitor all threads 24/7. In fact, late last night we had some reports that were a great help.

By all means, please report bad posts.

Tom Mattson

Definitely, report any bad posts. You make us look much sharper than we really are by doing it.

JamesU

yes, spuij was getting annoying last night

Pengwuino

.... is that codename for Pengwuino by any chance?

JamesU

no, spuij posted in the guru topic, but his post was deleted. I quoted it tho.

Pengwuino

... I still suspect a conspiracy is afoot

JamesU

hmmm......

honestrosewater

Okay. There was some trouble-making going on last night, and I wasn't sure if it helped to report all of the different posts or just the different usernames. If it's one person opening new accounts to cause trouble, is it enough to just report one of the posts for each username?

loseyourname

I know I'm not a mentor here, but I do moderate other forums, and I usually tell members to report one post per member per thread. It does annoy me when there are five posts reported and they're all on the same page. Since you can include a message when you report the post, you may as well just mention in the report that there are multiple violations on the page (or thread) by that member you are referring to. That way you don't flood the staff inboxes.

honestrosewater

Right, I didn't think about the message. (I'm trying to be 'average' today.)