Reported Posts

Eoin

Think this idea may be of use for the likes of the AH and PI mods who probably receive loads of reported posts:

Once a post is reported, the icon could be "greyed out" , so there aren't loads of multiple reported posts. Would save people having to look through the thread and see if it was already reported, and would also stop multiple reports. Once the mod has done what they have to do, they can reset it, so it can be reported again if needs be (e.g. if the poster goes back and edits the post etc).

CuLT

Hmm. Good idea.

The_Minister

Seems like a good idea.

Karl Hungus

That seems like a fantastic idea. Fair play.

humanji

I'm not knocking your idea(it's a good one), but I'm curious, does the Greystones & Charlesland forum get that many reported posts that this has become an issue?

aidan_walsh

Me likes. Clever.

Gordon

Nice idea if possible. It took me a while to figure out exactly what you meant as I'm on Cloud skin and we use this icon:

r3nu4l

Good idea, saves users having to reply with "Reported".

Eoin

humanji wrote:

I'm not knocking your idea(it's a good one), but I'm curious, does the Greystones & Charlesland forum get that many reported posts that this has become an issue?

No, it certainly doesn't (thank God!) Though, we had just one evening of handbags on the forum, and that was enough to make me think about it.

Gordon wrote:

Nice idea if possible. It took me a while to figure out exactly what you meant as I'm on Cloud skin and we use this icon:

Oops - I keep forgetting about other skins. I suppose you could change the yellow around it, or grey out the exclamation mark?

flogen

Yeah, nice idea; I'm sure in the busiest of forums and the most disturbing of posts a mod could get a tonne of reports on the one issue; this would probably make things a little easier.

Gordon

As opposed to greying it out wouldn't simply removing the icon completely be simpler? The way we don't have the icon for our own posts.

Eoin

Gordon wrote:

As opposed to greying it out wouldn't simply removing the icon completely be simpler? The way we don't have the icon for our own posts.

Then you may end up with threads in here asking why a post can't be reported!

If you greyed it out, and set the title of the image to "post has been reported", it would probably remove any ambiguity.

RuggieBear

i likes your thibnking i dowes

Ruu_Old

Yes please, greyed out sounds good. A foine idea. *goes back to sorting AH report emails*

tbh

like this idea - but I agree with the suggestion that the icon be replaced with "this post has been reported" or something - otherwise, lots of threads in feedback beginning "Why is the reported posts icon greyed out?"

Could just changed the rollover text (or whatever the pop-out explanation text is when you hover over an icon) from 'Report Bad Post' to 'This Post has already been reported'.

The only bad thing is that you don't automatically know why a post might have been reported - though for most cases, it wouldn't matter. Good idea.

Eoin

Myth wrote:

Could just changed the rollover text (or whatever the pop-out explanation text is when you hover over an icon) from 'Report Bad Post' to 'This Post has already been reported'.

The only bad thing is that you don't automatically know why a post might have been reported - though for most cases, it wouldn't matter. Good idea.

You could change the alt attribute for the image to include the explanation that the reporter gave, but I don't know if it's common practice to make this public?

Faith

eoin_s wrote:

You could change the alt attribute for the image to include the explanation that the reporter gave, but I don't know if it's common practice to make this public?

No, it's very much frowned upon.

Good idea in your op!

monkeyfudge

pffft... a sensible feedback thread? Where's the fun in that...? I don't know what the world is coming to...

Hobbes

You could just ignore the icon changing and when they click it do a look up in reported posts for the topic (topic id). If it exists then user gets a different screen saying the post is already been reported.

might be easier to do then dicking around with icons.

Time Magazine

It could be set so that when you click it a "YA, OLREDY" owl could come up.

Sparky

[html]<if condition="$post">Reported</if>[/html]

May only work on 3.6.0!

generalmiaow

Looking at the changelog I'm nearly certain that hack will only work on vb 3.6.* as Sparky suggests, but it might be possible to implement anyway. I'm sure this installation is far from unmodified ! It sounds like a good idea, I'm often put off reporting posts thinking others already have.

Karoma

Gordon wrote:

As opposed to greying it out wouldn't simply removing the icon completely be simpler? The way we don't have the icon for our own posts.

Nah. In many cases(Where the issue is borderline), it's best to get more reports than just the one piss-poorly explained one along the lines "OMG! DIS HURTZ MY FEELINGZ" - if there are considerably more reports, and better reasoning - I'd give it a lot more consideration.
The idea of fading/greying the icon would really shine for spam.

Definitely a thumbs up for changing the icon-if it's not too much hassle.

Sparky

Someone out there make a bloody plugin!

Karoma

Sparky-s wrote:

Someone out there make a bloody plugin!

Indeed. If only there was someone out there with an unhealthy interest in vB. And hacking vB. And has a copy of vB. And has a nick like Spanky-s... Get to it. ¬_¬

aidan_walsh

Karoma wrote:

Nah. In many cases(Where the issue is borderline), it's best to get more reports than just the one piss-poorly explained one along the lines "OMG! DIS HURTZ MY FEELINGZ" - if there are considerably more reports, and better reasoning - I'd give it a lot more consideration.
The idea of fading/greying the icon would really shine for spam.

Definitely a thumbs up for changing the icon-if it's not too much hassle.

As it stands though, and if this is the case, perhaps its the listings of the reports that needs to be changed so.

Have the post reported, and the number of reports beside it, sorted descendingly. Then either click on the number of reports, much like the forum posts, and be shown who complained and why, or have a small text listing of the first x people to report, assuming that not many posts get large numbers of reports it shouldn't clutter too much.

That way, mods get a better system for viewing reports, and users don't need to be alerted that a post was reported at all.

Sparky

Who is this Spanky-s you speak of Kar?

Nah, no plugins for me. I will not be liable for breaking boards or offering support for the issues.


Anyway, all the better to wait for boards to be upgraded to 3.6.* and then we can remind cloud to add it if he likes.

The_Minister

aiden walsh, I don't quite get wat your saying.
Are you suggesting that we arrange for multiple reports to auto-merge for handy mod use?

aidan_walsh

The_Minister wrote:

aiden walsh, I don't quite get wat your saying.
Are you suggesting that we arrange for multiple reports to auto-merge for handy mod use?

Pretty much, yeah. See which posts are least popular first, in a non cluttered way.

Unless of couse they already do, but thats not the impression I'm getting.

The_Minister

aidan_walsh wrote:

Unless of couse they already do, but thats not the impression I'm getting.

/wags finger
Don't you be trying to pry into mod business;)

BuffyBot

What about cases where somebody reports a post, Mod sees nothing wrong with it, but another reporter might be able to give extra context/background that might illuminate the situation.

Eoin

BuffyBot wrote:

What about cases where somebody reports a post, Mod sees nothing wrong with it, but another reporter might be able to give extra context/background that might illuminate the situation.

That's why I said the mod can reset the status of the reported post (although I didn't make that too clear in my OP).

Talliesin

r3nu4l wrote:

Good idea, saves users having to reply with "Reported".

Which is a good thing because it's worth posting "reported" in the case of obvious Spam but can be flame-war fuel in other cases.

That said though, I know I take a case of a bunch of reports of the same thread in a row as an indicator that I should possible read those reports with my s-mod hat on even if its not one of the forums where I'm a mod.

eoin_s wrote:

You could change the alt attribute for the image to include the explanation that the reporter gave, but I don't know if it's common practice to make this public?

No, it's not.
It's perfectly reasonable to say "someone complained about X" but repeating a report verbatim can give a lot away about who reported it.

Of course when you just say "someone complained about X" the offending poster will often leap to a conclusion about who that someone is, which is very often erroneous, but still.

eoin_s wrote:

That's why I said the mod can reset the status of the reported post (although I didn't make that too clear in my OP).

I've a feeling this will be the tricky part in this hack.

Eoin

Talliesin wrote:

Which is a good thing because it's worth posting "reported" in the case of obvious Spam but can be flame-war fuel in other cases.

That said though, I know I take a case of a bunch of reports of the same thread in a row as an indicator that I should possible read those reports with my s-mod hat on even if its not one of the forums where I'm a mod.

Well, that's probably the main factor - is it actually more valuable for mods to get multiple reports of one post? If so, then this change wouldn't help at all.

Talliesin wrote:

It's perfectly reasonable to say "someone complained about X" but repeating a report verbatim can give a lot away about who reported it.

Of course when you just say "someone complained about X" the offending poster will often leap to a conclusion about who that someone is, which is very often erroneous, but still.

Personally, as a normal user, I'd prefer the choice to report a post anonymously, even if most mods would prefer that a user posts saying they've reported a post. If nothing else, it would make the clean up easier, because you wouldn't have to also remove the posts that may quote an offending post, with "reported" underneath etc.

Talliesin wrote:

eoin_s wrote:

That's why I said the mod can reset the status of the reported post (although I didn't make that too clear in my OP).

I've a feeling this will be the tricky part in this hack.

I'd imagine so, unless by chance each post has a column in the database that indicates if it has been reported or not. If it doesn't, then you're talking about some kind of database schema change somewhere along the way.

User45701

Would it not be better to have a system where whenever a post is reported there is a mark at the bottom of the post under the sig to show that it has been reported, each seperate post gets a kindof "black mark" thing.
Would also let people know exeatly how many people they have offended with a single post,
Actually mods, whats the most reports you have got from a single thread?

aidan_walsh

User45701 wrote:

Would it not be better to have a system where whenever a post is reported there is a mark at the bottom of the post under the sig to show that it has been reported, each seperate post gets a kindof "black mark" thing.

Not really, IMO. Its bad enough that we often have sigs longer than posts without a barrage of what is really mod-only information added at the bottom as well.

The user doesn't really need to know how often something has been reported, there is something of a debate happening as to whether a user should even know if it has been reported at all. But even if you were to include a tally of reports on the thread, would not in the alt tag of the image be a better place to do so?

BuffyBot

That's why I said the mod can reset the status of the reported post (although I didn't make that too clear in my OP).

Sounds unessecarily complex.

Eoin

BuffyBot wrote:

Sounds unessecarily complex.

The whole thing may be - I don't have any PHP or vBulletin development experience at all. But if this was to be implemented, then you would have to cater for a post being edited at a later stage by the user and therefore being eligible to be reported again. Also, if a mod doesn't deem the post reportable, then the icon shouldn't be greyed out as it could infer something wrong with the post, when the mod doesn't think there is.

Sparky

I've tested the conditional that only works in 3.6.0

All it will do is output 'Reported' beside the report icon, meaning that the post can still be reported, but is there to let people know that post has been reported already.

I don't see the need at this moment to spend time on hacking vB and adding DB queries to the current installation when it can easily be added when boards so wishfully upgrades.

Talliesin

eoin_s wrote:

Personally, as a normal user, I'd prefer the choice to report a post anonymously

Then we couldn't siteban people who kept reporting crap and hence made the reported posts system useless because your genuine report would be lost in the thousands that just say "Mods suck!"

That there should be different rules than there are on who sees what is a matter of current debate with valid points on different sides.

User45701 wrote:

Would also let people know exeatly how many people they have offended with a single post,

I see this encouraging Spamming reports too.

User45701 wrote:

Actually mods, whats the most reports you have got from a single thread?

Haven't a clue, though I'd bet on the thread in question being the Know your nerds AH thread.

aidan_walsh

Talliesin wrote:

Then we couldn't siteban people who kept reporting crap and hence made the reported posts system useless because your genuine report would be lost in the thousands that just say "Mods suck!"

I think he means he would like to be able to report a post without "having to" post that he reported it in order to stop other people reporting, hence the colour change suggestion.